August 23, 2024 5:37 pm
• Last Updated: August 23, 2024 5:37 pm
The U.S. is on pace this year to break the record for the number of billion-dollar weather and climate disasters, with Connecticut’s weekend flooding likely to add one more to the list.
The record of 28 events was set in 2023, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information. Together these billion-dollar storms incurred at least $92.9 billion in damage costs.
The U.S. endured four new billion-dollar disasters in July to help bring the total so far to 19, just about one below the average for an entire year (20.4) for the most recent five years.
Hurricane Debby’s damage from Florida northward through New England, where her remnants caused flash flooding, should be the 20th billion-dollar disaster of the year. The weekend flooding in Connecticut will most likely make it 21 billion-dollar weather disasters through the middle of this month, with plenty of 2024 still to go.
July’s events include a severe weather outbreak that affected several states. High winds, hail and tornadoes impacted Nebraska and Iowa before moving into the Northeast, where strong storms impacted Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. This was a noteworthy event in New England because Rhode Island had its first reported June tornado since records began in 1950.
The numerous costly events this year through July coincided with the country’s second-warmest year to date on record, according to the NCEI. Last year’s record number of events happened during the fifth warmest year on record. Is there a link between our warming world and a record-breaking number of billion-dollar weather and climate disasters?
Attribution science, or extreme event attribution, is an emerging field of study dedicated to understanding the impact of climate change versus natural weather patterns and climate variability. It can help give a clearer picture of the link between climate change and extreme weather events.
Attribution scientists are more confident about climate change’s role in events like heat waves and drought but less confident about tornadoes. The flooding last weekend in Connecticut is considered to be the type of event that occurs once in a thousand years.
Oxford and Sandy Hook had over a foot of rain, while Newtown, Shelton and Middlebury saw nearly 10 inches, according to the National Weather Service. Some parts of the state received almost four times the amount of rainfall seen in an average month in just one day.
Scientists routinely assess climate change’s impact on record-breaking rainfall like what fell on the western half of Connecticut.
The nonprofit Climate Central analyzed extreme precipitation days in the U.S. from 1958 to 2021. They concluded that “climate change is supercharging the water cycle, bringing heavier precipitation extremes — and related flood risks — across the U.S.”
They found that the most extreme precipitation days have intensified in all regions of the country, but the biggest surge was found in the Northeast. There was a 60 percent rise in total precipitation (rain and snow) falling on the heaviest 1 percent of days in the Northeast.
Climate Central noted that the air can hold an extra 4 percent of moisture for every 1 degree of warming in our world. More atmospheric moisture translates into more fuel for showers and thunderstorms, which can then produce heavier downpours.
Climate Central says over one-third of inland flood damage is due to climate change. A study featured in the Fifth National Climate Assessment found that northern New England and communities along the Atlantic coast have a disproportionate burden of future flooding.
For Connecticut, the study projects an increase of 18 percent in losses by 2050 compared to the state’s estimated losses of $469 million in 2020.
As attribution scientists study this week’s event, new findings showing climate change’s influence on Connecticut’s flooding should be released in the coming weeks.
In the middle of April, a deluge in the United Arab Emirates released more than a year’s worth of rain in some cities in just a couple of days, causing flash flooding in the region. Within a few weeks of the event, a team of more than 20 scientists from the World Weather Attribution concluded that climate change “altered the likelihood and intensity of the weather conditions at the time of the most impactful floods.”
More specifically, their study found that “based on the observations, the event was 10-40 percent more intense than it would have been had it occurred in an El Niño year in a 1.2°C cooler climate.”
Researchers from several countries, including the United States, Canada, France, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Sweden and the United Kingdom, collaborated on the study.
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Publish date : 2024-08-23 10:41:00
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