Every Place Has Its Own Climate Risk. What Is It Where You Live?

[brooklynite]

New York Times

For most of us, climate change can feel like an amorphous threat — with the greatest dangers lingering ominously in the future and the solutions frustratingly out of reach.

So perhaps focusing on today’s real harms could help us figure out how to start dealing with climate change. Here’s one way to do that: by looking at the most significant climate threat unfolding in your own backyard.

Thinking this way transforms the West Coast’s raging wildfires into “climate fires.” The Gulf Coast wouldn’t live under the annual threat of floods but of “climate floods.” Those are caused by ever more severe “climate hurricanes.” The Midwest suffers its own “climate droughts,” which threaten water supplies and endanger crops.

This picture of climate threats uses data from Four Twenty Seven, a company that assesses climate risk for financial markets. The index measures future risks based on climate models and historical data. We selected the highest risk for each county to build our map and combined it with separate data from Four Twenty Seven on wildfire risks.

[northoftheborder]

1. Texas: desert; water resources drying up

[bamagal62]

2. Pay wall.

[FM123]

3. Heat, hurricanes, rising sea levels....

Another day in South Florida.

[genxlib]

5. You beat me to it.

We're neighbors

[FM123]

8. Hi Neighbor - hello from Broward county!

[genxlib]

10. Boca Here

Over the years, I have taken note that you occasionally mentioned South Florida. There are a few of us around.

[genxlib]

4. South Florida

Immediate - Stronger and more frequent Hurricanes

Longer term - Sea Level Rise because most of the region is below 10' of elevation.

[Trailrider1951]

6. Western Washington here

Unprecedented wildfires after a very hot dry summer. Evacuation zone 1.5 miles from my house. Breathing smokey air for a week with my asthma = terrible sore throat and cough.

I used to live in Houston, TX until 2005. Hurricanes, tropical storms and terrible flooding. It all sux. We need climate action!

[rurallib]

7. Used to be just tornados in Iowa but now we can add derechos plus the winter snow and blizzards

[Tom Rinaldo]

9. Mostly minimal in the Catskills (upstate NY)

There are localized areas where flooding occurs in low lying areas near streams during especially heavy rain events. When downgraded Hurricane Irene made its way through this region, some blocks in some towns were hard hit. That's about it. An occasional heavy thunderstorm knocks down trees, and there can be rare tornadoes that do not do extensive damage. All in all, relatively benign stuff. Some major snow storms, but almost never of epic proportions.

[genxlib]

11. Your danger is getting too many refugees

From all the other area that become uninhabitable.

[Tom Rinaldo]

13. You nailed it.

Temperatures here remain in the relative moderate zone compared to the extremes happening elsewhere. No threat from major hurricanes, tornadoes or earthquakes. Year round precipitation, and our occasional droughts are mild (just reduced rainfall levels) so wildfire threats are not severe either.

Right now housing costs are rising in my town and houses are being snapped up, but I suspect things could get a whole lot less stable around here in coming decades if the global climate deteriorates to the point where there is mass social dislocation.

[soothsayer]

12. Arlington va. Want us to buy flood insurance

So far our floods have been due to McMansions built around us cutting down lovely large trees (which suck up a ton of water) and disrupting the drainage we’ve had for lo so many years, including a French drain with boulders my dad and the neighbor put in long ago.

But climate change I’m sure is not helping.

[Leith]

14. Southern Nevada

Heat: The "forgotten" cause

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

15. Focus on extreme rainfall. This area is also under high risk of hurricanes

I could see the rain. We seem to get everyone else's rain, which seems like a better problem to have than no rain. It is still quite green here for a dry summer. I don't know about hurricanes... never had a hurricane here in my lifetime so far. Sure, that could change, but I don't think it would be anything like they get in the South right now, plus I live an hour inland from the coast. We'll see I guess.