Month: September 2023

Drought across the Mississippi watershed has lowered water levels in the river enough to allow salt water intrusion from the Gulf of Mexico, threatening drinking water supplies, aquifers, and infrastructure.
Federal emergency declares as the Corp of Engineers ships in water on barges.
This will be happening more often in the future.

Axios:

Saltwater intrusion in southeast Louisiana is officially a federal emergency.

Why it matters: President Biden signed a declaration Wednesday unlocking additional federal support as local officials look to thwart the threat of salt entering the drinking water supply in metro New Orleans.

Catch up quick: Because of the drought across the Mississippi River Valley, salt water is creeping upriver, where many communities, including New Orleans, draw their drinking water.

• The salt water on Wednesday was just south of Belle Chasse, according to Col. Cullen Jones of Army Corps of Engineers.
• The latest forecast calls for it to reach New Orleans around Oct. 22. The water in Orleans and Jefferson parishes is safe to drink until then.
• Once the salt is here, it is expected to stick around for weeks to months, depending on rainfall.

Threat level: People and animals can’t drink water with high salt levels.

• Salt water also is corrosive and can damage pipes.

The big picture: The current mitigation efforts – barging in fresh water and using reverse osmosis desalination systems – will not be enough to keep salt out of drinking water in Orleans and Jefferson parishes, leaders said Wednesday.

• They said they’re looking for permanent solutions with regional benefits.
• Those solutions will come at a cost, with a federal ask between $100 million and $250 million or more. But securing funding shouldn’t be a problem, says Collin Arnold, the director of the New Orleans Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.

The Hill:

The Mississippi River’s flow has declined due to drought that is impacting the river and the water that flows into it from the Ohio River. As a result, saltwater from the Gulf of Mexico is able to push its way toward Louisianans.

Louisiana state climatologist Barry Keim said this happens because saltwater is denser than freshwater, so the salt creeps up because “the flow in the river isn’t strong enough to … hold it at bay.”

“That saltwater basically works its way … up the channel where eventually it starts to reach the intake for some of the water supply,” said Keim, who is also a professor at Louisiana State University. 
–
Some parts of southern Louisiana are already facing saltwater contamination in their water supplies due to its intrusion in the river, including Plaquemines Parish. Residents there have been under a drinking water advisory, though the parish, Louisiana’s equivalent of a county, has ordered reverse osmosis filters to help treat the water.

Continue reading “Louisiana Saltwater Intrusion Declared Emergency”

Just in time for an out-of-the-blue Perfect Rainstorm over New York City, FEMA names communities across the country, including the New York/New Jersey area, as “Resilience Zones” eligible for special assistance.

Insurance Journal:

Rikers Island in the Bronx, New York, made the list due to its extreme vulnerability to flooding. Lincoln, Wyoming, was selected because of its high avalanche risk. And the danger of both earthquakes and drought propelled part of Alameda, California, to federal attention.

The three places are among 483 census tracts nationwide that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) designated Wednesday as Community Disaster Resilience Zones, giving them prioritized access to federal funding to strengthen their defenses against climate impacts and other hazards. In all, the designated tracts cover about 2 million people living in rural, urban and suburban areas.

“These designations will help ensure that the most at-risk communities are able to build resilience against natural hazards and extreme weather events, which are becoming increasingly intense and frequent due to climate change,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said in a written statement.

Each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia has at least one community in the initial set of designations, made available in advance exclusively to Bloomberg Green. Unsurprisingly, California, Texas and Florida — large states that regularly experience hurricanes and wildfires — have the highest number of zones per state, with 51, 35 and 32, respectively.

Harris County, Texas, whose county seat is Houston, has the most resilience zones of any single US county at 14. Houston was devastated by flooding from Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Roughly 16% of people in the county live below the poverty line, according to the US Census.

Reinsurance News:

In a groundbreaking move this week, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) unveiled the designation of Community Disaster Resilience Zones (CDRZ), a strategic initiative set to catalyse a transformative shift in resilience funding.

hese zones are aimed at addressing the long-neglected and underserved communities that face the most significant risks from climate change and extreme weather events.

The initiative aims to proactively reduce vulnerability to a spectrum of natural hazards, including floods, hurricanes, droughts, wildfires, and extreme heat.

Frank Nutter, President of the Reinsurance Association of America (RAA), expressed enthusiastic support for FEMA’s decision to establish these resilience zones.

Nutter emphasised that reinsurers have long advocated for enhanced resilience in communities nationwide, but the urgent need for resilience is most pronounced in communities at the intersection of high risk and substantial need.

Failing to address these vulnerabilities could result in communities becoming uninsurable, forcing them to rely extensively on federal disaster assistance, which, until now, has often proven insufficient to support full recovery.

Continue reading “FEMA Designates High Climate Risk “Resilience Zones””

New York Times:

At first, it looked as if New York would simply be grazed by light rain on Friday.

David Stark, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said that earlier this week he was tracking what looked to be typical offshore weather. But on Wednesday night, a storm, which was supposed to stay south of the city and over the ocean, started to edge north, he said. And that changed everything.

The storm ended up joining forces with another low-pressure weather system coming in from the west. “Where they converged is where the heavy rain occurred,” he said. That just happened to be right over New York City. And “that is the nature of science sometimes,” he added.

It has been raining a lot in New York, which hasn’t seen a September this wet in over a century. Climate change is very likely stoking more ominous and lengthy downpours because as the atmosphere heats up, it can hold more moisture, said Andrew J. Kruczkiewicz, a senior researcher who specializes in flash floods at Columbia Climate School at Columbia University.

This simple fact is the most probable explanation for why the Northeast has been so soggy, said Greg Carbin, chief of forecast operations at the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center. “Low-pressure systems like nor’easters now have greater amounts of water vapor available to them,” he said. “And with a warmer Atlantic Ocean combining with warmer air, the atmosphere is primed to produce more rainfall.”

Continue reading “With Climate Change, “Unremarkable” Storms Become Monsters”

Local news report above from KSN TV, Wichita, Kansas.

Below, rain patterns from today’s “100 year storm” in New York City area.
This summer’s epic rains in the US Northeast have me asking, how long can insurers continue to operate in some of these vulnerable areas?

Flatwater Free Press (Nebraska):

When Jenn Burruss got home from work last Wednesday, she started cooking dinner and opening mail. She saw her annual homeowners insurance renewal notice and shuffled it to the bottom of the pile.

When she finally opened the notice, it laid bare a painful question: Could she, a single woman raising three kids, afford to keep her house?

Last year, the premium to insure her home in Hickman, a city of 2,600 people south of Lincoln, was just over $1,400. Now, it would be almost $2,900. 

“I am terrified,” she told the Flatwater Free Press, noting her property taxes also are increasing. “I don’t know how long I will be able to stay there.”

Steep increases in homeowners insurance premiums have become common in Nebraska. 

On average, Nebraska homeowners paid nearly twice as much to insure their homes in 2020 as they did in 2007, a sharper increase than most other states, according to data provided by the Insurance Information Institute. 

A recent analysis from PolicyGenius found the average premium in Nebraska this year for $300,000 in dwelling coverage is about $3,500, double the national average and the second-most expensive in the country.

“Much of the increase (since the pandemic) can be attributed to supply-chain issues and labor shortages, which are driving up the cost of home repairs and replacement,” said Scott Holeman of the Institute. “But longer-term trends also affect rates.”

The key long-term culprit in Nebraska, according to industry experts and local agents, has been more severe weather events – a byproduct of climate change. 

“Instead of just replacing a roof or some broken windows, they are now having to rebuild entire communities from the ground up,” said Jane Egan, who has sold insurance primarily in Lancaster County for four decades. Those events have left companies with no choice but to raise rates, she added.

Continue reading “Not Just in Florida: Insurers Under Increased Climate Pressure”

Aljazeera:

Researchers in Japan have confirmed that microplastics are present in clouds, where they are likely affecting the climate in ways that are not yet fully understood.

In a study published in the journal Environmental Chemistry Letters, Japanese scientists climbed Mount Fuji and Mount Oyama in order to collect water from the mists that shroud the peaks, then applied advanced imaging techniques to the samples to determine their physical and chemical properties.

The team identified nine different types of polymers and one type of rubber in the airborne microplastics, which ranged in size from 7.1 to 94.6 micrometres.

Each litre (0.26 gallon) of cloud water tested contained between 6.7 to 13.9 pieces of the plastics.

“If the issue of ‘plastic air pollution’ is not addressed proactively, climate change and ecological risks may become a reality, causing irreversible and serious environmental damage in the future,” lead author of the research, Hiroshi Okochi of Waseda University, warned in a statement on Wednesday.

When microplastics reach the upper atmosphere and are exposed to ultraviolet radiation from sunlight, they degrade, contributing to greenhouse gasses, Okochi said.

Waseda University (Japan):

To investigate the role of these tiny plastic particles in the troposphere and the atmospheric boundary layer, the team collected cloud water from the summit of Mount (Mt.) Fuji, south-eastern foothills of Mt. Fuji (Tarobo), and the summit of Mt. Oyama – regions at altitudes ranging between 1300-3776 meters. Using advanced imaging techniques like attenuated total reflection imaging and micro-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (µFTIR ATR imaging), the researchers determined the presence of microplastics in the cloud water, and examined their physical and chemical properties.

Continue reading “Our New Paradigm: The Earth Plus Plastic”

Former Vice President of the United States Al Gore sits down at The New York Times Climate Forward event to discuss what’s standing in the way of progress. This interview was with David Gelles of The New York Times.

We like to feel that if we just explain facts to people, they’ll understand, because, after all, we still love the same things, we all want a livable world for our children, and everybody likes clean air, clean water, and trees. Right?

No, some people are sick monsters, and just have to be stopped, whether they are polite, well educated men in suits and plush offices, or a drunk 16 year old with a chain saw.

New York Times:

A 16-year-old boy was arrested Thursday on suspicion of criminal damage after one of Britain’s most famous trees, a sycamore that stood in a dip in Hadrian’s Wall, was cut down overnight in what the authorities described as “an act of vandalism.”

“We have reason to believe it has been deliberately felled,” Northumberland National Park said of the beloved tree, known as the Sycamore Gap tree, in a statement that was issued before the arrest.

The teenager was in custody and was assisting with the investigation, the Northumbria Police said on Thursday.

Voted Tree of the Year in 2016 in the Woodland Trust awards, the Sycamore Gap tree, located about 100 miles southeast of Edinburgh, was several hundred years old and was featured in the 1991 film “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” starring Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman.

Reuters:

Milton da Costa Junior nosed his pickup through a remote stretch of the western Brazilian Amazon to check on his babies. The nonprofit organization he works for, Rioterra, has planted millions of young trees in the rainforest as part of an effort to reforest woodland decimated by illegal logging and ranching in the area.

As the Toyota lumbered towards a ramshackle wooden bridge on the way back to the town of Machadinho d’Oeste in Rondônia state, Da Costa said two masked men on motorcycles sped past him, then blocked his way.

One of the men drew a revolver, Da Costa said, and delivered a message: Stop planting trees.

Local authorities said the September 2021 incident, which Da Costa outlined in a police report that was reviewed by Reuters, is being investigated. No suspects have been identified.

Continue reading “If A Tree Falls in a Global Catastrophe, Will Anyone Hear It?”

Roads dangerous to impassable.
6 inches in some areas, with 6 more on the way, potentially.

Transit Official interviewed below, with insight into how much water removal capacity has been designed into the NYC subway system. Big props to those old-timey engineers, but today’s conditions are beyond what they might have imagined.

Yes we have no bananas. Or onions. Or Olive Oil, or rice.
If we had ham we could have ham and eggs. If we had eggs.

Climate driven food shortages don’t mean suddenly there’s no food on the shelves. It’s just an incremental price creep that, ,at first, only the poor will notice….
And El Nino has not really hit yet..

Associated Press:

How do you cook a meal when a staple ingredient is unaffordable?

This question is playing out in households around the world as they face shortages of essential foods like rice, cooking oil and onions. That is because countries have imposed restrictions on the food they export to protect their own supplies from the combined effect of the war in Ukraine, El Nino’s threat to food production and increasing damage from climate change. 

For Caroline Kyalo, a 28-year-old who works in a salon in Kenya’s capital of Nairobi, it was a question of trying to figure out how to cook for her two children without onions. Restrictions on the export of the vegetable by neighboring Tanzania has led prices to triple.

Kyalo initially tried to use spring onions instead, but those also got too expensive. As did the prices of other necessities, like cooking oil and corn flour.

“I just decided to be cooking once a day,” she said.

Despite the East African country’s fertile lands and large workforce, the high cost of growing and transporting produce and the worst drought in decades led to a drop in local production. Plus, people preferred red onions from Tanzania because they were cheaper and lasted longer. By 2014, Kenya was getting half of its onions from its neighbor, according to a U.N. Food Agriculture Organization report.

At Nairobi’s major food market, Wakulima, the prices for onions from Tanzania were the highest in seven years, seller Timothy Kinyua said.

Associated Press:

Prices for rice grown in Kenya soared a while ago because of higher fertilizer prices and a yearslong drought in the Horn of Africa that has reduced production. Cheap rice imported from India had filled the gap, feeding many of the hundreds of thousands of residents in Nairobi’s Kibera slum who survive on less than $2 a day.

But that is changing. The price of a 25-kilogram (55-pound) bag of rice has risen by about a fifth since June, going from the equivalent of about $14 to $18. Wholesalers are yet to receive new stocks since India, the world’s largest exporter of rice by far, said last month that it would ban some rice shipments.

Continue reading “Creeping Climate Food Shortages as Countries Limit Exports”