Something For Everyone Depending On Location In America's Climate 2.0; Lethal Heat, Crop Failures, Floods, Fires

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16112023/fifth-national-climate-assessment-regional-impacts/

Every state in the Southeast except Mississippi experienced population growth during the past decade, even as the region historically has suffered more billion-dollar disasters than the rest of the country. Since 2018, the region has also weathered multiple hurricanes, researchers wrote. The population growth in the Southeast exposes more communities to climate impacts like hotter temperatures, rising seas and more damaging hurricanes. Meanwhile, decision-makers have tended to develop adaptation plans based on outdated or limited information that fails to account for future risks. ​​”We’re moving more people into harm’s way, and we’re not doing it in a very coordinated way,” said Kathie Dello, state climatologist in North Carolina and director of the North Carolina State Climate Office. One of the co-authors of the study, she spoke Wednesday on a call with journalists. “Our cities just aren’t moving fast enough to keep up with climate change.”

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After days of heavy rains caused the Winooski River to swell in July, Vermont’s Wrightsville Dam nearly failed. The narrowly averted disaster could have unleashed a catastrophic wall of water on the state’s already inundated capital, Montpelier. Boston’s newest neighborhood, once branded the “Innovation District,” is now called the “Inundation District” as sea level rise threatens recently completed streets where city planners failed to account for climate change. Heat islands in historically redlined areas of the Bronx in New York City, neighborhoods that were once deprived of federal loans and insurance, are now hotter than nearby areas. Communities with lower socioeconomic status and higher percentages of racial and ethnic minorities pay the price in the form of increased heat exposure. These three examples underscore the three “key messages” of the National Climate Assessment’s Northeast chapter: Extreme weather events are occurring more frequently and having greater impacts, ocean and coastal regions are experiencing unprecedented changes and climate-related hazards, including extreme heat, and are disproportionately impacting low-income communities and communities of color.

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The effects of climate change on the Midwest’s agriculture and infrastructure can have significant trickle-down effects on peoples and systems, and its resilience to climate change is critical for livelihood and economic sustainability in the region and beyond. The Midwest drives a large agricultural economy, with three states in the region—Illinois, Indiana and Iowa—growing a third of the world’s corn and soybeans. “Climate-smart” practices like cover crops could mitigate some of the challenges in crop and animal agriculture posed by rapid swings in extreme wet and dry conditions, snowmelt timing and earlier spring rainfall. Increasing amounts of rain are causing more intense floods, stressing the region’s infrastructure. The region’s complex system of transportation, movement of goods, energy generation and water infrastructure needs repair and is at greater risk of climate change than some other parts of the country. This is partly due to the infrastructure aging but also because of increasing flood exposure and fluctuating water levels in the region’s rivers and Great Lakes.

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Hotter temperatures caused by climate change are leading to record-low precipitation and making the atmosphere thirstier; water from soil and plants is being sucked up into the atmosphere via evapotranspiration. That’s led to reduced runoff in the Colorado River Basin and elsewhere even in wet years, affecting agricultural production. Those dryer soils, combined with long-standing policies of “fire suppression, widespread logging and livestock grazing, and elimination of Indigenous fire use,” have made wildfires bigger and deadlier than ever before. “Our scientific understanding of climate impacts on these sectors has improved to the point where we’re now able to understand how the risks can cascade and how risks from one sector can translate into risks in other sectors,” said Dave White, the director of the Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation at Arizona State University and a lead author of the chapter.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16112023/fifth-national-climate-assessment-regional-impacts/