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High-tide flooding in Miami, FL, a state that could lose more than 10 percent of its residential properties to chronic flooding by 2100. B137 / CC BY-SA 4.0

Sea Level Rise Could Put 2.4 MIllion U.S. Coastal Homes at Risk

More than 300,000 U.S. coastal homes could be uninhabitable due to sea level rise by 2045 if no meaningful action is taken to combat climate change, a Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) study published Monday found.

The study, Underwater: Rising Seas, Chronic Floods and the Implications for U.S. Coastal Real Estate, set out to calculate how many coastal properties in the lower 48 states would suffer from "chronic inundation," non-storm flooding that occurs 26 times a year or more, under different climate change scenarios.

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Flooding in the haor of Bangladesh in 2010. Balaram Mahalder / CC BY-SA 3.0

Growing Number of Bangladeshis Flee Rising Waters

By Kieran Cooke

As another monsoon season begins, huge numbers of homeless Bangladeshis are once again bracing themselves against the onslaught of floods and the sight of large chunks of land being devoured by rising water levels.

Bangladesh, on the Bay of Bengal, is low-lying and crisscrossed by a web of rivers: two thirds of the country's land area is less than five meters (approximately 16 feet) above sea level. With 166 million people, it's one of the poorest and most densely populated countries on Earth—and one of the most threatened by climate change.

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Flooding in Port Arthur, Texas on Aug. 31, 2017. U.S. Air National Guard photo by Staff Sgt. Daniel J. Martinez

2017 Broke Records for Number of Flooded Days on U.S. Coasts

Due to the combined impacts of climate change and upcoming El Niño conditions, coastal high tide flooding in the U.S. will be up to 60 percent more frequent in 2018 than it was 20 years ago, the most recent high tide flooding report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), announced Wednesday, projected.

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China's Xiangjiang river nears its record level in 2017. Huangdan2060 / Wikimedia Commons

Climate Change Damage in China Could Harm U.S. Economy, Study Finds

By Tim Radford

German scientists have shown once again that climate change remains a global problem, with China's climate impact, for instance, hurting the economy of the U.S. Disastrous flooding—likely to increase as the world warms, and ever more water enters the atmosphere—in one country could reverberate in ways that could harm another nation's economy.

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The Copernicus Sentinel-3A satellite saw the temperature at the top of Hurricane Harvey on August 25, 2017. European Space Agency / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Record Heat Means Hurricanes Gain Ferocity Faster

By Tim Radford

Hurricanes are becoming more violent, more rapidly, than they did 30 years ago. The cause may be entirely natural, scientists say.

But Hurricane Harvey, which in 2017 assaulted the Gulf of Mexico and dumped unprecedented quantities of rain to cause devastating floods in Texas, happened because the waters of the Gulf were warmer than at any time on record. And they were warmer because of human-driven climate change, according to a second study.

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Irma Omerhodzic

New Pew Survey: Americans Are Noticing the Effects of Climate Change and They Want Action

Significant majorities of Americans are seeing the impacts of climate change on their communities and don't think that the U.S. government is doing enough to combat it, according to the results of the latest survey by the Pew Research Center, reported Monday.

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California floods, March 2017. Kelly M. Grow / California Dept. of Water Resources / Wikimedia Commons

California Faces a Future of Extreme Weather

By Tim Radford

Life is about to become uncomfortable for 40 million people in turbulent California. The citizens of the golden state face a future of extremes, according to new research. The number and severity of floods will grow. But so will the number of extended and severe droughts.

The backcloth to California's climate—the overall annual precipitation–may not change greatly as the world, and the U.S. with it, warms as a consequence of greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion on a global scale.

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Water overflowing the Oroville dam spillover in 2017. William Croyle, California Department of Water Resources

Climate Change Could Increase 'Whiplash' Between Wet and Dry Years in California, Leading to More Disasters

California has had a rough eight years. From 2010 to 2016, it endured the worst drought in its recorded history. Then, massive rainfall in 2016 and 2017 forced 18,000 Californians to evacuate their homes as the emergency spillway of the Oroville Dam was threatened due to erosion. Summer 2017 also saw the worst wildfire in the state's history.

But research published in Nature Climate Change Monday found that, if humans don't act to halt climate change, California's recent sequence of catastrophes could become the new normal.

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Americans Increasingly Certain About Climate Change, But Uncertain It Will Be Stopped

Americans are more certain climate change is happening than at any point since 2008, but they are pessimistic that anything will be done about it.

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