Chapter 2
Extreme Weather, Extreme Trouble
As our climate changes, extreme weather will become more frequent — and more costly.
“We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy and the most severe drought in decades and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen, were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science and act before it’s too late.”
— President Obama, February 12, 2013, State of the Union
The year 2014 was the planet’s warmest since record-keeping began in 1880; 14 of the 15 hottest years have occurred this century, and the trend has continued into 2015, with the hottest four-month start of any year on record.
Climate change is upon us, leaving behind a trail of death, injury, and destruction that damages communities, harms our health, and undermines our economy.
Heat waves have become more frequent and intense, especially in the West, where drought has also become more frequent and severe. Fire season starts earlier in the spring and lasts longer in the fall.
“All weather events are now influenced by climate change because all weather now develops in a different environment than before.”
Heavy downpours are increasing nationally, with the largest increases in the Midwest and Northeast. High tides are flooding downtowns. Severe storms are wreaking havoc.
“Over the last 50 years, much of the United States has seen increases in prolonged periods of excessively high temperatures, heavy downpours, and, in some regions, severe floods and droughts,’’ according to the Third National Climate Assessment: Climate Change Impacts in the United States, released in May 2014.
Climate change increases the risk of extreme weather the same way steroids make a baseball player stronger. Like how steroids increase the chance of a home run, climate change increases the likelihood of dangerous, extreme weather events.
“If climate change isn’t the main driver behind a given extreme, it might still play an important role — perhaps as the straw that breaks a camel’s back,’’ says the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, a Colorado-based consortium of research universities.
Climate change is warming the atmosphere and oceans, fueling weather events with more energy, such as higher wind speeds. As temperatures rise, more moisture evaporates from the oceans; bigger storms can be one of the results. Warmer air over land evaporates more water from soil and plants and can create or extend drought. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s most respected scientific body on the subject, has said that further climate change will likely amplify extreme heat, drought, heavy precipitation, and the highest wind speeds of tropical storms.
“All weather events are now influenced by climate change because all weather now develops in a different environment than before,” said Dr. Richard Somerville, a professor emeritus of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and science director of Climate Communication, a project of the Aspen Global Change Institute. “Some types of extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and/or severe due to climate change, heat waves, heavy rain, floods, and droughts among them. Climate change is increasing the odds that extreme weather will occur.”
The IPCC has said that the warming of the climate is “unequivocal.” According to the organization, since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are “unprecedented” over decades to millennia.
“The atmosphere and oceans have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased,” the science panel said.
In May 2013, the daily mean concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere surpassed 400 parts per million for the first time since measurements began in 1958, according to data from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii.
“We are in uncharted territory,” reported the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). “Ice core records show CO2 levels never exceeded 300 ppm during the last 800,000 years until the early 20th century.”
Summers are longer and hotter, and extended periods of unusual heat last longer than any living American has ever experienced.
Then came March 2015, when the global monthly average of carbon dioxide concentration surpassed 400 ppm for the first time.
Scientists tell us that if we don’t take action to slow, stop, and reverse the carbon pollution that is turbo-charging climate danger, the extreme weather we’re experiencing today could become the new normal tomorrow.
Each of the past three decades has been hotter than the one before, and the past three decades were hotter than any time in the past 1,400 years.
“Summers are longer and hotter, and extended periods of unusual heat last longer than any living American has ever experienced,” says the 2014 National Climate Assessment. “The incidence of record-breaking high temperatures is projected to rise.”
California is now suffering from its worst drought in more than a century. In mid-April 2015, snowpack in the Sierra was at a record low. That same month, Governor Jerry Brown ordered the first-ever mandatory statewide water reductions.
In 2011, Oklahoma broke a Dust Bowl–era record, set in 1934, of the hottest summer for any state since record-keeping began in 1895. Many locations in Texas and Oklahoma experienced more than 100 days over 100 degrees.
In 2011, Texas suffered through the worst one-year drought in the state’s history.
The year 2011 brought a record-breaking total of 14 weather and climate disasters that each caused more than $1 billion in damages, according to NOAA.
“Sure, we’ve had years with extreme flooding, extreme hurricanes, extreme winter snowstorms, and even extreme tornado outbreaks,” said National Weather Service director Jack Hayes, referring to the extreme weather in 2011. But I can’t remember a year like this in which we experienced record-breaking extremes of nearly every conceivable type of weather.”
In 2012, 25 states east of the Rockies recorded their warmest March on record, according to NOAA. Every state experienced at least one record warm daily temperature during March.
In March 2012, Chicago recorded eight days with temperatures of at least 80 degrees.
“To have as many [80-degree days] as we did is just unbelievable and historic and unprecedented,” Richard Castro, a weather-service meteorologist, told the Chicago Tribune. “Summer in March is basically what we had.”
Last year, Alaska, California, Arizona, and Nevada each had their warmest year on record.
In only five years, the 2010s have witnessed almost as many extreme weather events as the 1960s and ’80s combined.
Residents of some coastal cities are seeing their streets flood more regularly during storms and high tides, according to the 2014 National Climate Assessment. Inland cities near large rivers also are experiencing more flooding, especially in the Midwest and Northeast.
Global sea level has risen by about eight inches since 1880, according to Climate Central’s Surging Seas, which provides online data on areas exposed to coastal flooding. It is projected to rise another one to four feet by 2100, says the National Climate Assessment.
And there was Superstorm Sandy in 2012, which then–New York Mayor Bloomberg called “a storm of unprecedented proportions.’’
“The storm itself we can’t immediately link to climate change, but the flooding damage we can,” said Cynthia Rosenzweig, a climate impacts expert at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “As sea levels continue to rise, a storm of the same magnitude will cause even greater damages due to storm surges coming in on top of a higher ‘baseline’ water level.”
“We know that no single weather event is caused solely by climate change,” President Obama said in a 2013 speech at Georgetown University. “But we also know that in a world that’s warmer than it used to be, all weather events are affected by a warming planet. The fact that sea levels in New York, in New York Harbor, are now a foot higher than a century ago — that didn’t cause Hurricane Sandy, but it certainly contributed to the destruction that left large parts of our mightiest city dark and underwater.’’
Climate change is making the West warmer and its summers drier, setting the stage for even bigger wildfires, according to NRDC’s 2013 “Where There’s Fire, There’s Smoke” report.
In 2012, Western wildfires scorched an area larger than the state of Maryland. Two years later, Washington experienced the largest wildfire in state history, covering about 400 square miles and destroying an estimated 300 homes.
Even Boston’s record snowfall for the winter of 2014–15 doesn’t contradict the fact that global warming is happening; it could be another example of climate change in action. In 2015, the city recorded its snowiest winter since record-keeping began in 1872 — recording 108.6 inches at Logan International Airport. As incongruous as a warming planet and a record snowfall seems, warmer ocean temperatures produce more moisture in the air, which means more snow.
“The conditions that have generated this winter’s historic snowfall are consistent with global warming: record high sea-surface temperatures off the coast have provided moisture and energy to fuel these storms,” Juliette Rooney-Varga, director of the Climate Change Initiative at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, wrote in the Boston Globe. “Ironically, it is also possible that the rapid decline in Arctic sea ice over the past several decades is causing the polar vortex to wander farther south, bringing frigid Arctic air into our region.”
Extreme weather has not been limited to the United States.
This winter, Arctic sea ice was the smallest since satellite record-keeping began in 1979. “The Arctic Ocean is expected to become essentially ice-free in summer before midcentury,’’ the National Climate Assessment warned.
In 2014, 19 European countries reported record high temperatures, according to the World Meteorological Organization. In 2013, Australia saw its hottest year on record.
Extreme weather events are taking a toll on life, property, and the economy. In the last four years, such disasters across the United States caused 1,286 fatalities and $227 billion in economic losses across 44 states, according to an analysis by the Center for American Progress entitled “Extreme Weather on the Rise.”
“In only five years, the 2010s have witnessed almost as many extreme weather events as the 1960s and ’80s combined,’’ according to the report.
Climate change could add up to $60 billion to annual wildfire costs by 2050, according to “Flammable Planet: Wildfires and the Social Cost of Carbon” a report by NRDC, the Environmental Defense Fund, and New York University Law School’s Institute for Policy Integrity.
And flood damage to the world’s largest coastal cities could rise to $1 trillion a year unless protective measures are put in place, says the World Bank, which listed Miami, New York, New Orleans, Tampa, and Boston among the cities at greatest risk in overall cost of damages.
“On our current trajectory, we are creating for ourselves — and even more so for coming generations — a future of extreme and catastrophic risks from a dangerously disrupted climate,” said Franz A. Matzner, director of NRDC’s Beyond Oil Initiative. “We must protect them from the worst impacts of climate disruption, and that means starting to cut carbon pollution now.’’
From Clean Power: The Case for Carbon Pollution Limits
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