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Extreme Storms and Flood Events Cause Damage Worth Billions to Ports – and They Are Most Disruptive to Small Island Developing States
Shipping ports are crucial for the global economy. But ports, by their nature, are located in coastal areas or on large rivers and are exposed to natural hazards such as storms and floods as a result. Scientists refer to the physical damage caused by natural hazards and the monetary loss associated with port closures and reconstruction as “climate risks”. 1,340 of the world’s largest ports in terms of trade flow are vulnerable to climate risks.
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Flooding in California: What Went Wrong, and What Comes Next
Battered by storm after storm, California is facing intense flooding, with at least 19 lives lost so far and nearly 100,000 people evacuated from their homes. And there’s no sign that the storms will be letting up soon.
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2022 Was World’s 6th-Warmest Year on Record
The planet continued its warming trend in 2022, with last year ranking as the sixth-warmest year on record since 1880. Antarctic sea ice coverage melted to near-record lowsand global ocean heat content (OHC) hit a record high.
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2022 U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters in Historical Context
2022 was an intense year of costly disasters and extremes throughout much of the country. 2022 tied 2017 and 2011 for the third highest number of billion-dollar disasters. 2022 was also third highest in total costs (behind 2017 and 2005), with a price tag of at least $165.0 billion. This total annual cost may rise by several billion when we’ve fully accounted for the costs of the December 21-26 Central and Eastern winter storm/cold wave.
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Growing Interest in, Planning for, Managed Retreat from High-Risk Areas
Strategically moving communities away from environmentally high-risk areas, such as vulnerable coasts, has been referred to as “managed retreat.” Of all the ways humans respond to climate-related disasters, managed retreat has been one of the most controversial due to the difficulty inherent in identifying how, when, where, and by whom such movement should take place.
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Compound Extreme Heat and Drought Will Hit 90% of World Population – Oxford Study
More than 90% of the world’s population is projected to face increased risks from the compound impacts of extreme heat and drought, potentially widening social inequalities as well as undermining the natural world’s ability to reduce CO2 emissions in the atmosphere - according to a study from Oxford’s School of Geography.
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For 400 years, Indigenous Tribes Buffered Climate's Impact on Wildfires in the American Southwest
Devastating megafires are becoming more common, in part, because the planet is warming. But a new study suggests bringing “good fire” back to the U.S. and other wildfire fire-prone areas, as Native Americans once did, could potentially blunt the role of climate in triggering today’s wildfires.
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California Declares Storm State of Emergency
A huge storm has hit the West Coast of the US, prompting California’s governor to declare a state of emergency. Officials said it may be “one of the most challenging and impactful” storms to hit the state in five years.
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Towers in the Storm
The problem with the U.S. electrical grid is that many transmission towers have exceeded their design life by about 50 years, which means the aging grid today faces bigger chances of failure. One threat to the grid is from damaging winds of extreme storms such as hurricanes.
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Americans Are Flocking to Wildfire
People are trading hurricane zones for wildfire areas, says national study of migration, natural disasters, and climate change.
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Wildfires in Colorado Are Growing More Unpredictable. Officials Have Ignored the Warnings.
A year after the deadly Marshall Fire drove thousands of Coloradans from their homes, the state’s densest communities aren’t preparing for the next climate-driven wildfire.
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Insurance for a Changing Climate
Among the many facets of the economy being challenged and changed by warming global temperatures is the insurance industry. Damaging extreme events such as wildfires, hurricanes, and floods are happening with greater frequency and intensity, which leaves insurance companies facing larger financial risks and paying out more in claims — and it also leaves policy holders paying higher prices to insure their homes and businesses.
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Coughing Up Billions of Dollars to Save Florida’s Insurance Market
In the three months since Hurricane Ian struck Florida, the state’s fragile property insurance market has been teetering on the brink of collapse. The historic storm caused over $50 billion in damage, and dealt a body blow to an industry that was already struggling to stay standing: Several insurance companies had already collapsed this year even before the hurricane, and major funders are now poised to abandon those that remain.
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Machine Learning Could Predict Rare Disastrous Events Like Earthquakes or Pandemics
Researchers suggest how scientists can circumvent the need for massive data sets to forecast extreme events with the combination of an advanced machine learning system and sequential sampling techniques.
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What's the Link Between Global Warming and Extreme Weather?
Heavy snowfall und subzero temperatures have wreaked havoc on the United States this holiday season. DW takes a closer look at how this and other types of extreme weather link back to climate change.
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More headlines
The long view
Using Drone Swarms to Fight Forest Fires
Forest fires are becoming increasingly catastrophic across the world, accelerated by climate change. Researchers are using multiple swarms of drones to tackle natural disasters like forest fires.
How Climate Change Will Affect Conflict and U.S. Military Operations
“People talk about climate change as a threat multiplier,” said Karen Sudkamp, an associate director of the Infrastructure, Immigration, and Security Operations Program within the RAND Homeland Security Research Division. “But at what point do we need to start talking about the threat multiplier actually becoming a significant threat all its own?”