A Coast Guard flight surveys the aftermath of Tropical Depression Imelda near Houston on Sept. 20. U.S. Coast Guard courtesy asset
Authorities confirmed a fifth death this weekend linked to devastating rainfall from Tropical Storm Imelda as the Houston area struggles to recover from last week's intense flooding.
<p>Around 60 residents were rescued by boat Friday after the storm dropped as much as 43 inches of rain in some areas. Cleanup crews are still surveying damages in the area to determine if the county is eligible for FEMA funds to mitigate the impacts. Extreme rainfall is a classic signature of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-change">climate change</a>: the number of record-breaking rainfall events globally has significantly increased in recent decades, and the fingerprint of global warming is documented in this pattern. </p>
<p>As reported by the <a href="https://www.apnews.com/5a1271ab361a4bf3864340739662ae89" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Associated Press</a>:</p><blockquote>The National Weather Service said preliminary estimates suggested Jefferson County was hit with more than 40 inches (102 centimeters) of rain in a span of just 72 hours, which would make it the seventh-wettest tropical cyclone to hit the continental U.S.</blockquote><blockquote>"The issue is that you can't get 40 inches of rain in a 72-hour period and be fully prepared for that," Jefferson County spokeswoman Allison Getz told the Associated Press on Friday. "At this point we haven't been able to fully assess what's happened."</blockquote><blockquote>Getz said dozens of people have traveled to the county with boats in tow from Louisiana and other parts of Texas to assist with rescue efforts, an outpouring of support reminiscent of volunteer efforts during <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/hurricane-harvey">Harvey</a>.</blockquote><blockquote>In nearby Chambers County, preliminary estimates indicate about 800 homes and businesses sustained some level of damage from floodwaters, county spokesman Ryan Holzaepfel said. Emergency personnel rescued about 400 people during the deluge, mostly from homes, he said.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Tropical Storm Imelda brought extreme flooding to Houston, where 1,000 people had to be rescued and more than 40 inches of rain fell in 72 hours. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/YEARSproject?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#YEARSproject</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WeDontHaveTime?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WeDontHaveTime</a> <a href="https://t.co/epAaUyI0e2">https://t.co/epAaUyI0e2</a></p>— We Don't Have Time (@WeDontHaveTime0) <a href="https://twitter.com/WeDontHaveTime0/status/1175832559827193857?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 22, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<p><strong>For a deeper dive:</strong></p><p><a href="https://www.apnews.com/5a1271ab361a4bf3864340739662ae89" target="_blank">AP</a>, <a href="https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Officials-seek-donations-for-Imelda-fund-urge-14462011.php" target="_blank">Houston Chronicle</a>, <a href="https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-09-21/florida-mans-death-is-5th-linked-to-imeldas-aftermath" target="_blank">LA Times</a>, <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2019/09/23/tropical-storm-imelda-leaves-texans-wondering-if-theyll-get-fema-money/" target="_blank">Texas Tribune</a>, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/us/fifth-death-linked-tropical-depression-imelda-houston" target="_blank">Fox News</a>. Background: <a href="https://www.climatesignals.org/climate-signals/extreme-precipitation-increase" target="_blank">Climate Signals</a></p><p> <em>For more </em><a href="http://ecowatch.com/climate-change-news/" target="_blank"><em>climate change</em></a><em> and </em><a href="http://ecowatch.com/business/renewables/" target="_blank"><em>clean energy</em></a><em> news, you can follow Climate Nexus on </em><a href="https://twitter.com/ClimateNexus" target="_blank"><em>Twitter</em></a><em> and </em><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ClimateNexus/" target="_blank"><em>Facebook</em></a><em>, and sign up for daily </em><a href="http://climatenexus.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=d1f5797e59060083034310930&id=7c84c08aaa" target="_blank"><em>Hot News</em></a><em>.</em></p>
Read More
Show Less
'We Shouldn't Be Used to This’: Houston Swamped by Second Major Flood Event in Two Years
20 September 2019
Climate
Imelda flooded highway 69 North in Houston Thursday. Thomas B. Shea / Getty Images
Two have died and at least 1,000 had to be rescued as Tropical Storm Imelda brought extreme flooding to the Houston area Thursday, only two years after the devastation of Hurricane Harvey, the Associated Press reported Friday.
<p>In Jefferson County, Texas Imelda dumped more than 40 inches of rain in 72 hours, according to preliminary estimates by the National Weather Service. If the figures hold, they would make Imelda the seventh wettest tropical cyclone in U.S. history.</p><p>"This happened very quickly," Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner told <a href="https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Heavy-rainfall-continues-for-parts-of-Houston-as-14451875.php" target="_blank">The Houston Chronicle</a>. "But it's just demonstrating that in this day and time, <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" target="_self">climate change</a> is real. And we no longer have to be concerned just with a hurricane. We have to be concerned with almost any sort of weather system that can quickly evolve into a major storm and produce a great deal of rain."</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">And now, <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Imelda?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Imelda</a>.<br><br>With rainfall totals already surpassing 40 inches in 3 days, the current Houston-area floods are already among the worst in American history.<br><br>No other urban area in America has flooded as much as Houston in the last 40 years. And we are making it worse.</p>— Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) <a href="https://twitter.com/EricHolthaus/status/1174757541613637632?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 19, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<p>The climate crisis <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-crisis-hurricanes-wetter-2639175731.html" target="_self">makes extreme rainfall events more likely</a> because warmer air holds more moisture. Hurricane Harvey's rainfall, which caused the worst freshwater flood in U.S. history, was made at least <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change-hurricane-harvey-rain-2517167957.html" target="_self">three times more likely</a> by climate change. Both Imelda and Harvey were 1-in-1,000 year flood events, <a href="https://twitter.com/EricHolthaus/status/1174715558606069762" target="_blank">meteorologist Eric Holthaus tweeted</a>.</p><p>Tragically, Imelda's flooding claimed two lives. One 19-year-old was drowned and electrocuted while trying to move his horse to safety during a thunderstorm. Another man in his 40s or 50s died when trying to drive through eight feet of water near Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport, the Associated Press reported.</p><p>Thursday's flooding delayed or canceled more than 900 flights. It also flooded some Houston highways, stranding drivers, hundreds of whom were forced to abandon their vehicles. Tow truck drivers removed 200 cars from Houston freeways late Thursday as waters receded, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/19/us/imelda-rain-forecast-thursday-wxc/index.html" target="_blank">CNN reported</a>. Hundreds more remain.</p><p>One family said the freeway near the North Street overpass looked the same way it did during Harvey.</p><p>"We shouldn't be used to this," father Alejandro De Almaida told The Houston Chronicle. "Harvey was the 500-year flood, so we weren't expecting this after two years."</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">“GOTTA MAKE THE BEST OF IT”: Guy using a pool noodle to float down the 59S feeder road<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/floods?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#floods</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Texas?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Texas</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/abc13?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#abc13</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/imelda?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#imelda</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/houstonweather?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#houstonweather</a> <a href="https://t.co/UD7dvMlA5A">https://t.co/UD7dvMlA5A</a> <a href="https://t.co/ttwoNBSrvY">pic.twitter.com/ttwoNBSrvY</a></p>— Katherine Marchand (@KatherineMABC13) <a href="https://twitter.com/KatherineMABC13/status/1174745836535930882?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 19, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<p>In some parts of Texas, officials said the flooding was even worse than during Harvey. A hospital in the town of Winnie, 60 miles east of Houston, had to be evacuated, and homes and businesses in the town of around 3,200 flooded as well.</p><p>"What I'm sitting in right now makes Harvey look like a little thunderstorm," Chambers County Sheriff Brian Hawthorne told Houston TV station KTRK as <a href="https://eu.tennessean.com/story/weather/2019/09/19/houston-flooding-imelda-weather-prompts-texas-emergency-declarations/2374574001/" target="_blank">the Associated Press reported Thursday</a>.</p><p>Beaumont, in Jefferson County, was especially hard hit, CNN reported. The Texas Game Wardens posted a dramatic video on Facebook as they conducted water rescues in the area.</p>
<p><a target="_blank"><br></a><span></span></p><iframe title="fb:video Facebook Social Plugin" src="https://www.facebook.com/v2.10/plugins/video.php?allowfullscreen=true&app_id=221153651603389&channel=https%3A%2F%2Fstaticxx.facebook.com%2Fconnect%2Fxd_arbiter.php%3Fversion%3D44%23cb%3Df3c2ae516fca7f8%26domain%3Dwww.ecowatch.com%26origin%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.ecowatch.com%252Ffd43f3da380ea8%26relation%3Dparent.parent&container_width=300&href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fvideo.php%3Fv%3D929241344112343&locale=en_US&sdk=joey" style="border-width: initial; border-style: none; visibility: visible; width: 300px; height: 536px;"></iframe>
<p>"The situation here is turning worse by the minute," Michael Stephens, a resident of the nearby city of Vidor, told CNN from an apartment where he was trapped by flood waters Thursday. "People have snakes in their apartments from the creek. ... (We) also have elderly disabled people stuck in their apartments."<br></p><p>Stephens also said the flooding was worse than what he remembered from Harvey.</p>Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared a state of disaster for 13 counties Thursday. Abbott, a Republican, has said it is "impossible" for him to say whether he believes anthropogenic climate change is responsible for the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/extreme-weather" target="_self">extreme weather</a> events that are increasingly impacting his state, the Associated Press reported Friday. Still, he approved billions of dollars in flood prevention and coastal defenses earlier this year.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Record rainfall and flooding in southeastern Spain killed six people as of Saturday, <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/spain?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#spain</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/climatecrisis?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#climatecrisis</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/EnvDefenseFund?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@envdefensefund</a> <br> <a href="https://twitter.com/TIME?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@time</a> <br> <a href="https://t.co/j1LKH9GcwS">https://t.co/j1LKH9GcwS</a></p>— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch) <a href="https://twitter.com/EcoWatch/status/1173586149387972609?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 16, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Related Articles Around the Web
Read More
Show Less
EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
By Allegra Kirkland, Jeremy Deaton, Molly Taft, Mina Lee and Josh Landis
Climate change is already here. It's not something that can simply be ignored by cable news or dismissed by sitting U.S. senators in a Twitter joke. Nor is it a fantastical scenario like The Day After Tomorrow or 2012 that starts with a single crack in the Arctic ice shelf or earthquake tearing through Los Angeles, and results, a few weeks or years later, in the end of life on Earth as we know it.
<p>Instead, we are seeing its creeping effects now — with hurricanes like Maria and Harvey that caused <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/29/us/puerto-rico-growing-death-toll/index.html" target="_blank">hundreds of deaths</a> and <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/puerto-rico-lost-43-billion-after-hurricane-maria-according-govt-n943441" target="_blank">billions of dollars</a> in economic damage; with the Mississippi River and its tributaries <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/10/us/flooding-river-shipping.html" target="_blank">overflowing their banks</a> this spring, leaving huge swaths of the Midwestern plains under water. Climate change is, at this very moment, <a href="https://www.teenvogue.com/story/climate-change-explained-global-warming" target="_blank">taking a real toll on wildlife, ecosystems</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/23/climate/us-climate-report.html" target="_blank">economies</a>, and <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/climate-change-and-disasters.html" target="_blank">human beings</a>, particularly in the global south, which <a href="https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/scpibackground/" target="_blank">experts expect</a> will be hit first and hardest. We know from the increasingly <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/08/global-warming-must-not-exceed-15c-warns-landmark-un-report" target="_blank">apocalyptic warnings</a> being issued by the United Nations that it will only get worse.</p>
<p><em><em><em><em>Note: This story is based on <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/rcp-85-the-climate-change-disaster-scenario/579700/" target="_blank">RCP 8.5</a>, the so-called "business-as-usual" emissions scenario that assumes that Earth will continue to heavily rely on fossil fuels as the global economy grows. Per Nexus Media, "As we are currently doing virtually nothing to stop climate change, RCP 8.5 is a pretty good predictor of what's going to happen over the next couple of decades. Part of that is because it will take a while for the climate to reach a new equilibrium, so even if we stopped polluting now, the planet would continue to warm for decades." It looks at a sea level rise of six feet, on average, globally, based on the findings of this <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2014EF000239" target="_blank">widely-cited 2014 study</a>.</em></em></em></em></p><p><em><em><em>This story originally appeared in <a href="https://www.teenvogue.com/story/climate-change-timeline-st-louis-san-francisco-houston" target="_blank">Teen Vogue</a> in partnership with <a href="https://nexusmedianews.com/" target="_blank">Nexus Media</a></em>. <em>It is republished here as part of</em> <em>EcoWatch's partnership with Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story.</em></em></em></p>
<p>But these early omens of our unstable, hot, wet future can be difficult to wrap our heads around. So <em>Teen Vogue</em> partnered with the team at the nonprofit news service <a href="https://nexusmedianews.com/" target="_blank">Nexus Media</a>, who developed a timeline predicting how climate change could affect three major U.S. cities over the course of the 21st century. Climate change will look different in different places across the world, but we chose three places with distinct geographic concerns and climate vulnerabilities — to ground all the ominous statistics and headlines in a real sense of place. These are cities you may have visited, or where you may have family, or where you may even live.</p><p>According to the research Nexus compiled, St. Louis will see flooding, extreme heat, severe rainfall, and drought in the surrounding farmland. In Houston, on the Gulf of Mexico, hurricanes will grow more destructive and temperatures will soar. San Francisco will witness rising sea levels, fierce wildfires, and extreme drought.</p><p>This timeline is based on interviews with a dozen climate experts and a review of several dozen scientific studies. The projections assume an average <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2014EF000239" target="_blank">sea level rise of six feet by 2100</a> — a little more in some places, and less in others — and the business-as-usual <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/rcp-85-the-climate-change-disaster-scenario/579700/" target="_blank">emissions scenario</a>, which assumes that we will continue to pollute and use fossil fuels at our current rate.</p><p>Rather than a scientific assessment, it is a rigorously researched prediction of what our future could bring unless we come together as a country and as a global community — fast— to address climate change as the crisis it is.</p><p>As Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, put it: "The future is not set in stone. Some amount of change is inevitable. It's as if we've been smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for decades, but we don't have lung cancer yet."</p><p>"The amount of change that we're going to see — whether it's serious, whether it's dangerous, whether it's devastating, whether it's civilization-threatening — the amount of change we're going to see is up to us," she continued. "It depends on our choices today and in the next few years."</p>
2020
<h4>Houston<br></h4><p>It's starting to get hot. It's now about one degree <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201648" target="_blank">Fahrenheit</a> warmer in Houston than it was in the second half of the 20th century. Houstonians can expect especially balmy falls this decade, as autumns are <a href="https://www.climatecentral.org/outreach/alert-archive/2018/2018SeasonalWarming-English-Dropdown-ARCHIVE.html?market=stlouis" target="_blank">warming faster</a> than other seasons in Texas.</p><p>Houston knows how much it stands to lose from climate change. In 2017, Hurricane Harvey devastated the city, which was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/13/climate/hurricane-harvey-climate-change.html" target="_blank">supercharged</a> by warm waters in the Gulf. But Houston is also helping to drive the rise in temperature. <a href="https://gov.texas.gov/uploads/files/organization/eco-dev/Texas_Largest_Companies.pdf" target="_blank">Several major oil companies</a> and a vast network of oil refineries and petrochemical plants call the city home.</p><h4>St. Louis</h4><p>This decade, St. Louis is expected to be more than <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201648" target="_blank">two degrees Fahrenheit warmer</a> than it was, on average, during the latter half of the 20th century. While locals have endured more sweltering summer days, they have felt the change the most during the cold months. Missouri winters are <a href="https://www.climatecentral.org/outreach/alert-archive/2018/2018SeasonalWarming-English-Dropdown-ARCHIVE.html?market=stlouis" target="_blank">warming faster</a> than summers, springs, and falls.</p><p>Warmer air holds more water, which can lead to <a href="https://www.climatecentral.org/news/report-pouring-it-on-climate-change-intensifies-heavy-rain-events" target="_blank">more severe rainfall</a>. In recent years, rainstorms have pummeled the Midwest and led to widespread flooding across the region. In 2019 in St. Louis, rivers reached <a href="https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/state-and-regional/as-second-highest-river-crest-reaches-st-louis-low-lying/article_08e5f1d1-5306-5795-81d9-349696462899.html" target="_blank">near-historic levels</a>, and floodwaters <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-goZZPlM9M" target="_blank">inundated the area</a> around the city's iconic Gateway Arch.</p><p>This storm wasn't a blip on the radar, but rather a sign of what's to come. As the planet heats up, St. Louis can expect <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/2013EF000185" target="_blank">more extreme rainstorms</a> — and more <a href="https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/apartment-buildings-evacuated-in-st-louis-county-along-flooding-river/article_e888e663-c8fa-5aae-a183-67d57eb3d0bc.html" target="_blank">orders to evacuate</a> low-lying neighborhoods.</p><h4>San Francisco</h4><p>For San Franciscans, the beginning of the decade will feel only a little different from past years. In 2020, it's expected to be less than <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201648" target="_blank">one degree Fahrenheit warmer</a> in San Francisco than it was, on average, between 1950 and 2000. The change is small, but locals can sometimes feel it in the spring, which is <a href="http://ccimgs-2018.s3.amazonaws.com/2018SeasonalWarming/2018SeasonalWarming_CA_en_title_lg.jpg" target="_blank">warming faster</a> than the other seasons, or on <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/09/01/san-francisco-smashes-all-time-record-high-temperature-hits-106-degrees/" target="_blank">especially hot days</a>.</p><p>But there are new worries for the city. Rising temperatures have fueled <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d3xxzk/get-ready-for-more-california-droughts-thanks-to-climate-change" target="_blank">ongoing drought</a> in recent years, which has, in turn, led to more wildfires. Fires now burn <a href="http://www.climateassessment.ca.gov/techreports/docs/20180827-Projections_CCCA4-CEC-2018-014.pdf" target="_blank">more regularly</a> across the Sierra Nevada as well as coastal mountain ranges. The flames may <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2018/08/08/yosemite-closed-indefinitely-as-california-fires-grow-to-largest-in-history-map-and-update/#6d89ea4a3ef2" target="_blank">ruin plans</a> for weekend getaways to Yosemite or deliver noxious smoke to the Bay Area. And locals may start to reach for air masks as dangerously smoky days become more common.</p><p>"We get a lot of the smoke that comes from the wildfires that happen in inland California, and that makes it really hard to breathe the air," said Kristy Dahl, a climate scientist at the <a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/" target="_blank">Union of Concerned Scientists</a>, who is based in San Francisco. "Last year when there was a massive wildfire hundreds of miles away, San Francisco for a day [ranked among] the worst air quality in the entire world."</p>2030
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMTExODMzNy9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTU5ODYxODM1Mn0.xgR3gyPWt0ycd4gqcJ_orGihTxQ0CG1aUHV7_-mPNF8/img.png?width=980" id="bee21" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="3dc110479cc2fec787aa87d2d280a579" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />NEXUS MEDIA
<h4>Houston</h4><p>By 2030, temperatures are expected to have warmed almost <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201648" target="_blank">two degrees Fahrenheit</a> in Houston. Seas are expected to have risen a little more than a foot, enough to occasionally flood some low-lying areas outside the city. Warmer waters in the Gulf of Mexico will <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-09/documents/climate-change-tx.pdf" target="_blank">raise the speed limit</a> for winds during hurricanes and ramp up rainfall during storms.</p><p>"Hurricanes are not getting more frequent, but they are getting stronger and bigger and slower," said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at <a href="https://www.ttu.edu/" target="_blank">Texas Tech University</a>. "They're intensifying faster and they have a lot more rain associated with them today than they would have had a hundred years ago."</p><h4>St. Louis</h4><p>By 2030, temperatures are expected to have warmed around three degrees Fahrenheit in St. Louis. The kind of rainstorm that currently strikes the Midwest around once every five years will hit around once <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/2013EF000185" target="_blank">every three years</a> this decade.</p><p>"We've seen these record-breaking, devastating floods in the Midwest," said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at <a href="https://www.ttu.edu/" target="_blank">Texas Tech University</a>. "It's not like they've never had floods before, but the floods are just getting a lot worse and a lot more frequent."</p><p>This could mean trouble for local infrastructure. Rivers swell after heavy rains, and the rush of water can <a href="https://www.epa.gov/cira/climate-action-benefits-bridges" target="_blank">weaken bridges</a> by carrying away sediment from around their foundations. This could be a big problem in Missouri, which is home to hundreds of <a href="https://www.modot.org/Bridges" target="_blank">aging</a> bridges, many of which have been <a href="https://artbabridgereport.org/state/ranking" target="_blank">deemed deficient</a>. Climate change could mean even more heavy <a href="https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/chapter/21/" target="_blank">repair costs</a> for taxpayers.</p><h4>San Francisco</h4><p>This decade, the rise in temperature is expected to pass two degrees <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201648" target="_blank">Fahrenheit</a> in San Francisco. That may not feel like a lot in the city. But warmer weather is taking a serious toll.</p><p>California's drought will get <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-historic-megadroughts-in-the-western-us-tell-us-about-our-climate-future-37615" target="_blank">progressively worse</a> this decade, the product of warmer temperatures drying out soil and meager rainfall failing to replace the water lost. Rising temperatures will also yield <a href="https://www.kqed.org/science/1936797/why-we-cant-stop-talking-about-californias-sierra-snowpack" target="_blank">less snowfall</a>. The snow that does come down will melt in the spring and early summer, depriving the state of a critical source of water in the late summer, when, historically, melting snow has fed streams and rivers.</p><p>The snow drought will strain farmers in the Central Valley, while putting pressure on cities to use less water. The <a href="https://www.vcstar.com/story/news/2018/05/31/permanent-california-water-restrictions-approved-gov-jerry-brown/662456002/" target="_blank">water restrictions</a> the state put in place in 2018 will have grown much more severe in the past 12 years. Officials could urge Californians across the state to take shorter showers and stop watering their lawns to cope with the worsening drought.</p>2040
<h4>Houston</h4><p>This decade, sea level rise around Houston is projected to reach two feet, enough to inundate much of nearby Freeport and Jamaica Beach. That extra water will mean that hurricanes, when they strike, will deliver <a href="https://scied.ucar.edu/hurricanes-and-climate-change" target="_blank">more powerful floods</a> to coastal areas.</p><p>"A small and steady rise of the water level elevates a platform for flooding that we've had throughout history," said Maya Buchanan, a sea level rise scientist at <a href="https://www.climatecentral.org/" target="_blank">Climate Central</a>. "That means larger storm surges."</p><p>That's bad news for people who live near the shore. Around <a href="https://weather.com/safety/hurricane/news/hurricanes-tropical-storms-us-deaths-surge-flooding" target="_blank">half of deaths</a> caused by hurricanes are the result of coastal flooding, and waters <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/houston-harvey-environmental-justice_n_59a41c90e4b06d67e3390993" target="_blank">tend to inundate</a> poor neighborhoods and neighborhoods of color, which are more likely to lie in flood-prone areas.</p><h4>St. Louis</h4><p>In 2040, St. Louis is expected to be four degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it was at the end of the last century. While that may sound like a small number, it means big problems for the city. A small uptick in the average temperature could lead to milder winters, stifling summers and changing rainfall.</p><p>St. Louis will tend to see wetter springs and drier summers. That means the region will withstand heavier downpours, but it will also endure long stretches without a drop of rain. Despite the growing peril of major flooding, extended dry spells and rising temperatures will dry out the land. Drought will <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-historic-megadroughts-in-the-western-us-tell-us-about-our-climate-future-37615" target="_blank">set in</a> in Missouri, endangering farms.</p><p>And just remember — it will never be this cool again.</p><h4>San Francisco</h4><p>By 2040, sea levels are predicted to rise around one foot, enough to encroach the beaches on the west side of the city and Candlestick Point on the east, popular recreation areas. Parts of San Francisco Airport and Oakland Airport will flood regularly, making air travel in and out of the city more difficult.</p><p>Drought will have grown <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-historic-megadroughts-in-the-western-us-tell-us-about-our-climate-future-37615" target="_blank">increasingly severe.</a> Forests will dry out, and become vulnerable to <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-the-bark-beetle-fueled-californias-wildfires/" target="_blank">bark beetles</a>, which burrow into trees to lay their eggs. Healthy trees can ward off the bugs by covering them in resin — but already struggling trees have no way to protect themselves.</p><p>Large parts of forests will die, and the dead trees will become tinder for wildfire. In 2040, fires are expected to burn around twice as much big sections of the Sierra Nevada as they do today. Areas south of San Francisco will also grow more vulnerable to erupting in flames.</p>2050
<h4>Houston</h4><p>By midcentury, temperatures are expected to have warmed more than three degrees <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201648" target="_blank">Fahrenheit</a> in Houston. Waters in the Gulf of Mexico will have also warmed, fueling more dangerous storms.</p><p>In the decades to come, the Gulf will see more category-four and -five hurricanes, like <a href="https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/AL092017_Harvey.pdf" target="_blank">Hurricane Harvey</a> and <a href="https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/AL122005_Katrina.pdf" target="_blank">Hurricane Katrina</a>, according to Suzana Camargo, a climate scientist at <a href="https://www.columbia.edu/" target="_blank">Columbia University</a>. Warm water is like ammunition for cyclones, arming them with more powerful winds and heavier rains. People might want to think twice before they purchase a home in Houston.</p><p>"I think people have to think very carefully how they are going to plan when they want to buy a house," Camargo said, explaining that in the future, cyclones will deliver more flooding to seaside cities and towns.</p><h4>St. Louis</h4><p>St. Louis is expected to have heated up by more than five degrees Fahrenheit on average by the middle of the century. Hot weather will dry out soil. Past 2050, the Central Plains, including much of Missouri, can look forward to <a href="https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/1/e1400082?utm_source=charybd.com&utm_medium=link&utm_compaign=article" target="_blank">decades-long drought</a>.</p><p>This drought will be especially disastrous for Missouri farmers. Growers will have to take more water out of underground aquifers to feed their crops, drawing down a limited supply of groundwater, often at great cost. This, in turn, could drive up the price of food.</p><h4>San Francisco</h4><p>By 2050, temperatures in San Francisco are expected to have risen more than three degrees <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201648" target="_blank">Fahrenheit</a>. In the second half of this century, changing weather patterns will yield lasting dry spells, leaving much of California to endure long stretches without rain. Around the time someone graduating high school today turns 50, they <a href="https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/1/e1400082?utm_source=charybd.com&utm_medium=link&utm_compaign=article" target="_blank">can expect</a> California to enter a decades-long drought — with disastrous consequences.</p><p>Farmers in California will have to draw more and more water from underground. Eventually, they may not be able to grow fruits and vegetables in parts of the state. This will drive up the cost of many foods, such as strawberries, almonds, and lemons.</p><p>Snow will also start to disappear from the Sierra Nevada. By 2050, projections say, there will be <a href="https://www.energy.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2019-07/Statewide%20Reports-%20SUM-CCCA4-2018-013%20Statewide%20Summary%20Report.pdf" target="_blank">a third less snow</a> than we see today. San Francisco <a href="https://www.sfgate.com/weather/article/California-Bay-Area-drought-reservoir-snowpack-SF-13591499.php" target="_blank">depends</a> on that snow for its water, and a dry Sierra Nevada could mean a looming water crisis for the city.</p><p>The drought will also leave California's forests all the more vulnerable to wildfire — fires that could cover San Francisco in smoke, making it <a href="https://www.popsci.com/fires-california-air-quality-cigarettes/" target="_blank">dangerous</a> to go outside.</p>2060
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMTExODM1Ny9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0MjIwNjc2NX0.-XekcQCqYuel5NqFwuK0XTp3VnFoZzJHhMpx0QNvhmY/img.png?width=980" id="46fe3" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="371e7c8ce7857c4bfb38ed9cd20aff44" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />Where San Francisco residents are expected to move when they're displaced by rising seas..
NEXUS MEDIA
<h4>Houston</h4><p>By 2060, temperatures are expected to have warmed by more than four degrees <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201648" target="_blank">Fahrenheit</a>. The city could see up to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/20/sunday-review/climate-change-hot-future.html?auth=login-smartlock" target="_blank">25 days a year</a> with temperatures over 100 degrees <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201648" target="_blank">Fahrenheit</a>.</p><p>Local sea level rise, meanwhile, is expected reach three feet during this decade. This will raise the level of Buffalo Bayou, the waterway that stretches through the middle of Houston. The Scholes International Airport in nearby Galveston will sink into the sea, and at high tide, water will flood much of the San Jacinto Battleground, site of the 1836 clash where Sam Houston, the city's <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sam-Houston" target="_blank">namesake</a>, <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/mexico/battle-of-san-jacinto" target="_blank">overcame</a> the Mexican Army.</p><h4>St. Louis</h4><p>St. Louis is expected hit a six-degrees-Fahrenheit increase in its average temperature this decade. While this might be bad news for humans, it's good for many insects, who love warm weather. Rising temperatures will bring <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/climate-change-widen-range-disease-carrying-mosquitoes-says-study" target="_blank">disease-carrying mosquitoes</a> to St. Louis's doorstep. Missourians will have to be more vigilant about their health as the bugs could spread tropical viruses like <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/zika/index.html" target="_blank">Zika</a>, <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/dengue/index.html" target="_blank">dengue</a>, and <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/yellowfever/index.html" target="_blank">yellow fever</a> around the warming Midwest.</p><p>Climate change will also bring more <a href="https://www.climatecentral.org/gallery/maps/projections-in-deer-tick-habitat" target="_blank">deer ticks</a> to St. Louis. Because warmer air can hold more water, as temperatures rise, so does humidity — and deer ticks thrive in humid weather. While ticks are little seen in Missouri today, later this century they will fan out across the state, potentially spreading <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/index.html" target="_blank">Lyme disease</a>. Those afflicted will endure fever, headache, and fatigue. They may see their joints swell or feel their face droop.</p><h4>San Francisco</h4><p>By 2060, temperatures in San Francisco are expected to have risen by more than four degrees <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201648" target="_blank">Fahrenheit</a>.</p><p>Wildfires will burn roughly three times as much of broad swaths of the Sierra Nevada as they do today, laying waste to large stretches of California's pristine forests.</p><p>This decade, sea level rise is projected hit two feet. Water will begin to spill over the edges of the Mission Creek Channel, while threatening routine floods around San Francisco's iconic Fisherman's Wharf. Waters will have flooded much of nearby San Rafael, north of San Francisco. To the south, Foster City will be underwater, displacing thousands of residents — many of whom currently work in the tech industry.</p>2070
<h4>Houston</h4><p>By 2070, Houston is projected to be more than five degrees <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201648" target="_blank">Fahrenheit</a> hotter than at the end of the 20th century. This warming is part of a larger trend that is heating up the planet and melting ice in Greenland and Antarctica, raising the sea level near the city.</p><p>"As flooding events get more severe, that can impact property values, and that could impact where people decide to live," Buchanan said, explaining that rising seas will drive down the value of homes in low-lying areas.</p><p>By this time, waters will have already subsumed much of the coastline from Freeport, south of Houston, all the way to New Orleans. Rising seas will make much of the Gulf coast unrecognizable as the ocean swallows up most of southern Louisiana. Later this decade, sea levels are expected to have risen by four feet.</p><h4>St. Louis</h4><p>In 2070, St. Louis is projected to be more than seven degrees Fahrenheit hotter than it was at the end of the last century. Before the decade is through, the city is expected to see eight degrees Fahrenheit of warming. Rising temperatures will have utterly transformed the weather in Missouri, making it virtually unrecognizable to current residents. The city will see around <a href="https://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report/regions/midwest" target="_blank">20 fewer days</a> of frost each year than it does today, as well as around <a href="https://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report/regions/midwest" target="_blank">20 extra days</a> with temperatures over 95 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat will be felt <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/09/climate/city-heat-islands.html" target="_blank">most acutely</a> in neighborhoods short on trees and parks.</p><p>Outside the city, severe heat will <a href="https://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report/regions/midwest" target="_blank">cripple the growth</a> of corn and soybeans at nearby farms. So will drought, which experts say will <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-historic-megadroughts-in-the-western-us-tell-us-about-our-climate-future-37615" target="_blank">be worse</a> than at any time in living memory. The state will endure <a href="https://nca2014.globalchange.gov/report/regions/midwest" target="_blank">more consecutive days</a> without rain. When it does rain, however, it will pour. Warmer temperatures will produce more extreme rainfall.</p><h4>San Francisco</h4><p>By 2070, San Francisco's average temperature is expected to have warmed by more than five degrees <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201648" target="_blank">Fahrenheit</a>. Drought will be <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-historic-megadroughts-in-the-western-us-tell-us-about-our-climate-future-37615" target="_blank">more severe</a> than at any time in living memory. Rising temperatures and diminished rainfall will <a href="https://ww2.energy.ca.gov/2012publications/CEC-500-2012-037/CEC-500-2012-037.pdf" target="_blank">take a toll</a> on trees around the San Francisco Bay. More and more evergreen forests will die off and grasslands will spring up in their place, fundamentally changing the landscape around the city.</p>2080
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMTExODM2OC9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzMzQ5NzQ5MH0.ZVi9RPYLaWvmHeo01PPYBolegntrVAmrmOh9FMyqpzs/img.png?width=980" id="c4054" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="76b0c2f9b54a42a535a5f3e5581177d2" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />This is what Houston, St. Louis, and San Francisco will feel like in 2080.
NEXUS MEDIA
<h4>Houston</h4><p>By 2080, temperatures are projected to have warmed around six degrees <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201648" target="_blank">Fahrenheit</a> on average, a dizzying change in the weather that means Houston won't feel like Houston anymore.</p><p>The city will grow warmer and wetter. Around 2080, Houston <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08540-3" target="_blank">will feel</a> something like Ciudad Mante in Mexico does today, with its warmer, drier winter.</p><p>As the climate changes, Houston's native wildlife could start to head north. At the same time, plants and animals that currently make their home south of Houston may start to work their way toward the city.</p><h4>St. Louis</h4><p>St. Louis is expected to be nearly nine degrees Fahrenheit warmer by 2080. The temperature will have changed so drastically that St. Louis no longer feels like the same city.</p><p>Around 2080, St. Louis <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08540-3" target="_blank">will start to feel</a> like Prosper, Texas, does today. This new St. Louis will be hotter and drier. Summer weather will go from balmy to sweltering, and the city will see much less rain during the warm months.</p><p>It's not just that St. Louis will feel more like Prosper. It might start to look like it too. Animals that currently live around Prosper could head northward as the climate changes, searching for a new home that feels like their old one. At the same time, the shrubs and grasslands that stretch across north Texas could start to edge their way toward Missouri.</p><h4>San Francisco</h4><p>By 2080, the average temperature is expected to have risen by more than six degrees <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201648" target="_blank">Fahrenheit</a> in San Francisco. The city will <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08540-3" target="_blank">start to feel</a> a lot like present-day Los Angeles. The weather will be warmer and drier, much like the current climate in Palos Verdes Estates, a coastal city in the L.A. area.</p><p>With less rainfall, many of the trees that make their home in San Francisco will die. At the same time, the smaller, scrubbier plants that make their home in L.A. could migrate toward the city. It's not just that San Francisco will start to feel like L.A., scientists say. It might start to look like it too.</p>2090
<h4>Houston</h4><p>By now, temperatures are projected to have warmed close to seven degrees <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201648" target="_blank">Fahrenheit</a>, while sea levels will have risen five feet, subsuming the coastline. Much of nearby Galveston is underwater.</p><p>It's not just hot days that threaten Houston. Rising temperatures will allow the air to hold more water, increasing humidity — which could be a big problem for public health.</p><p>"As humidity rises, it becomes harder and harder for the sweat to evaporate off our skin — and it's that evaporation of sweat that cools our bodies," said Kristy Dahl, a climate scientist at the <a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/" target="_blank">Union of Concerned Scientists</a>. "So it might only be a temperature reading of 90 degrees, but if you have 60% humidity, it's going to feel hotter than 90 degrees."</p><p>Dahl said that Houston will heat up so much that it will be hard to quantify how hot it will feel.</p><p>"By the end of the century, Houston would see about three weeks of what we call off-the-charts heat conditions, which are when the combination of temperature and humidity falls above the national weather services heat index scale," she said. "What that means is that we can't even calculate a heat index to reliably warn people about how dangerous it is."</p><h4>St. Louis</h4><p>St. Louis is expected to have warmed by almost 10 degrees Fahrenheit, a transformational change in the climate of the city. Rising temperatures could provoke a spike in <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6345/1362.full?ijkey=x3wZ8kcgtomUM&keytype=ref&siteid=sci" target="_blank">violent crime</a> — when people are hot, research shows, they tend to feel <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/07/16/two-new-studies-warn-that-hotter-world-will-be-more-violent-one/" target="_blank">more aggressive</a>.</p><p>By the end of the century, St. Louis will endure around 80 days per year where the heat index is above 100 degrees — compared to just 11 days at the end of the 20th century, according to Kristy Dahl, a climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.</p><p>"It's really striking because historically those off-the-charts conditions have only occurred in the Sonoran desert region of the U.S., the California-Arizona border," Dahl said.</p><p>In addition to extreme heat, the city will also endure <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-historic-megadroughts-in-the-western-us-tell-us-about-our-climate-future-37615" target="_blank">severe drought</a>, punctuated by the occasional supercharged rainstorm. The kind of downpour that currently strikes the Midwest around once every five years will hit around once <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/2013EF000185" target="_blank">every year or two</a>. The most severe storms — the kind that currently show up once every 20 years — now arrive once <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/clean-power-plan-states-MO.pdf" target="_blank">every six or seven years</a>.</p><p>Heavy rainfall will lead to flooding, and floodwaters will mix with raw sewage, <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/clean-power-plan-states-MO.pdf" target="_blank">helping to spread</a> bacteria. Rains will also swamp homes and businesses, offering a place for mold to grow.</p><h4>San Francisco</h4><p>By now, San Francisco is projected to have heated up more than seven degrees <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201648" target="_blank">Fahrenheit</a> on average. The extra heat will mean many people will be spending <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/07/16/two-new-studies-warn-that-hotter-world-will-be-more-violent-one/" target="_blank">more time outdoors</a>, potentially leading to a spike in <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6345/1362.full?ijkey=x3wZ8kcgtomUM&keytype=ref&siteid=sci" target="_blank">violent crime</a>.</p><p>The state will be mired in <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-historic-megadroughts-in-the-western-us-tell-us-about-our-climate-future-37615" target="_blank">lasting drought</a>. Wildfires could consume around four times as much of huge sections of the Sierra Nevada as they do today, as well as forests closer to San Francisco, endangering locals.</p><p>The Bay Area is expected to have seen more than three feet of sea level rise. The San Francisco and Oakland Airports will be completely underwater. Across the bay, coastal flooding will inundate parts of Alameda. Low-lying areas on the south end of the San Francisco Bay will also be flooded, including some of San Jose.</p>2010
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMTExODM5Ni9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTU5NTYxNDEzN30.j63H6BUXMn9IwhQXcSu9LcyiQnzH9w8dacmqe4S6GrY/img.png?width=980" id="ede79" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="1a2fd2e87f4339580f7f09d97fc69952" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />NEXUS MEDIA
<h4>Houston</h4><p>By the end of this century, temperatures are expected to have warmed close to eight degrees <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201648" target="_blank">Fahrenheit</a> in Houston. In the summer, Houston will <a href="https://www.climatecentral.org/wgts/global-shifting-cities/index.html" target="_blank">feel something like</a> Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, does today. High temperatures will average over 100 degrees Fahrenheit during the warmest months.</p><p>By making life harder for workers, severe hotter weather will shrink the economy of the greater Houston area by <a href="http://www.impactlab.org/" target="_blank">6%</a>. Extreme heat will also kill hundreds more people each year. Poorer neighborhoods tend to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/09/climate/city-heat-islands.html" target="_blank">be warmer</a>, in part because they tend to have <a href="https://mashable.com/2012/07/18/google-maps-income-inequality/" target="_blank">fewer trees</a>. People who live in those neighborhoods are also less likely to have air conditioners, which will put them at greater risk.</p><p>On top of the heat, Houston is expected to have seen close to six feet of sea level rise by 2100. Waters encroach on the east side of town near the water, where oil refineries and chemical plants could continue to service our catastrophic addiction to oil and gas. Routine flooding of these facilities may cause <a href="https://www.apnews.com/748cd58a4feb4785b9ea1cdf68f0ef1f" target="_blank">dangerous explosions</a> and potentially release toxic chemicals into the air.</p><p>Much of the city, however, will stay safe from the encroaching sea. That means the Houston could absorb <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3271.epdf?author_access_token=Hvxidg4gL1Q0zWEvyEXiLtRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0NFv3_2_MZIRrCavou7VputY0Z0x-UWFD09j5eSgqBhP56-FYSZJPA8_HdSRdIl79npShOcx0Gd16aq4FimtdoF" target="_blank">hundreds of thousands</a> of new residents by 2100 — people who were driven from Miami and New Orleans by ever-worsening coastal floods.</p><h4>St. Louis</h4><p>By the end of this century, St. Louis is expected to have warmed by roughly 11 degrees Fahrenheit. Winter will scarcely look like winter. Summers will have gone from hot to unbearable.</p><p>During the hottest months, it will be <a href="https://www.climatecentral.org/gallery/maps/days-above-100f-projections" target="_blank">so scorching</a> that it will be dangerous to go outside for much of the day. People will depend more on air conditioners to stay cool, leading to <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6345/1362.full?ijkey=x3wZ8kcgtomUM&keytype=ref&siteid=sci" target="_blank">bigger electric bills</a>. Elderly people, particularly those who can't afford to run an air conditioner, will face the risk of <a href="https://www.climatecentral.org/news/searing-temps-have-literally-been-lethal-for-seniors/" target="_blank">heat stroke and death</a>.</p><p>The intense heat will take an immense toll on the local economy. Farms in Missouri and southern Illinois could see yields <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/356/6345/1362.full?ijkey=x3wZ8kcgtomUM&keytype=ref&siteid=sci" target="_blank">cut in half</a>, ruining livelihoods.</p><p>In St. Louis itself, experts project that heat will stifle productivity by making it too hot to work. This could help cut the city's economic output by around <a href="http://www.impactlab.org/research/estimating-economic-damage-from-climate-change-in-the-united-states/" target="_blank">8%</a>.</p><h4>San Francisco</h4><p>By 2100, San Francisco is expected to have heated up by more than eight degrees <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201648" target="_blank">Fahrenheit</a> on average. It will be hot and dry. Snow will be hard to find in the Sierra Nevada. By 2100, the mountain range will see <a href="https://www.energy.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2019-07/Statewide%20Reports-%20SUM-CCCA4-2018-013%20Statewide%20Summary%20Report.pdf" target="_blank">two thirds less snow</a> than we see today, depriving San Francisco of a much-needed water source.</p><p>Seas will have risen four feet, projections say. Large parts of Alameda will be underwater. Hunters Point will have flooded, as well as much of Mission Bay. And flooding won't be limited to San Francisco.</p><p>Sea level rise could flood the homes of <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3271.epdf?author_access_token=Hvxidg4gL1Q0zWEvyEXiLtRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0NFv3_2_MZIRrCavou7VputY0Z0x-UWFD09j5eSgqBhP56-FYSZJPA8_HdSRdIl79npShOcx0Gd16aq4FimtdoF" target="_blank">13 million Americans</a> by the end of the century, leading to a massive exodus from many coastal areas. By one estimate, rising seas in places like Oakland, Alameda, and San Mateo could spur close to <a href="https://johnsorib.github.io/slr/index.html" target="_blank">300,000 residents</a> to move to inland cities in Arizona, Texas, and New Jersey. It is the poorest neighborhoods that will be the <a href="https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/oaklands-poorest-neighborhoods-will-the-most-susceptible-to-flooding-due-to-climate-change-and-sea-level-rise/Content?oid=6401808" target="_blank">most vulnerable</a> to floods.</p>From Your Site Articles
- 8 World Cities That Could Be Underwater as Oceans Rise - EcoWatch ›
- Will the U.S. Be a Dystopian Hellscape in 2100 if Emissions Keep ... ›
Related Articles Around the Web
Read More
Show Less
Pixabay
By Molly Taft
It was long predicted that Houston was unprepared for a hurricane like Harvey, yet the storm caught the city off-guard when it landed a year and a half ago.
<p><br/></p>
<p>Harvey dawdled over the region for a week after making landfall, dumping up to five feet of rain on some areas. One <a href="https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/12/climate-change-study-hurricane-harvey-flood/" target="_blank">study</a> estimates that <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-change" target="_self">climate change</a> increased rainfall by as much as <a href="https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/12/climate-change-study-hurricane-harvey-flood/" target="_blank">38 percent</a>, and the city's flood barriers did little to mitigate the catastrophic damage. Beyond the <a href="https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/news/UpdatedCostliest.pdf" target="_blank">$125 billion</a> in physical damage the storm caused to the region, it also bogged down the city's criminal justice system, making the city's courts and jails more inefficient, and with serious consequences.</p><p>The Harris County Criminal Justice Center, which sits a block away from the Buffalo Bayou, acts as a central nervous system for criminal justice proceedings in the country's third-largest county. Harvey hit the courthouse with a one-two punch, as four feet of <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/flooding" target="_self">floodwater</a> damaged the lower levels and increased water pressure burst pipes on higher floors.</p><p>When a courthouse that <a href="http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-counties/" target="_blank">serves 4.5 million people</a> is damaged, an already backed-up legal system gets even more inefficient. The city was forced to close the building after water damage <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2017/10/06/after-harvey-jury-trials-stalled-harris-county/" target="_blank">knocked out</a> 40 courtrooms on the center's 20 floors. Jury trials were delayed as the district scrambled to find spaces to hold court. Most hearings in subsequent months took place in the crowded jail basement, where prosecutors, defenders and their clients <a href="https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Temporary-courtrooms-generate-Harvey-Deals-in-12348272.php#photo-14528231" target="_blank">were forced</a> into close quarters in the limited space available.</p><p>"There's two old classrooms down there that they turned into courtrooms," defense attorney Nathan Hennigan said. "I mean, it didn't serve as a court. Basically, all you can do is enter pleas and things like that. Obviously, you can't have a trial or anything down there."</p><p>"Harvey kind of highlighted some of the problems" with the city's jails, said Eric Davis, a trial chief at Houston's Public Defender Office. The sudden slowdown in court cases from the storm hit a city that was already struggling with its jail population and practices. The Harris County Jail had faced <a href="https://www.houstonpress.com/news/why-the-harris-county-jail-is-overcrowded-with-legally-innocent-people-7555627" target="_blank">chronic overcrowding</a> for years, while judges in the Houston courts had long been accused of using the county's cash bail system to trap poor defendants accused of misdemeanors and minor crimes unfairly behind bars.</p>
<p>In 2016, inmates in the jail filed suit against the county alleging unconstitutional bail practices. Months before the storm in 2017, a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/29/us/judge-strikes-down-harris-county-bail-system.html?mcubz=0&_r=0" target="_blank">federal judge sided with the inmates</a>. "Harris County's policy is to detain indigent misdemeanor defendants before trial, violating equal protection rights against wealth-based discrimination and violating due process protections against pretrial detention," the judge wrote in her decision.</p><p>When Harvey blew in and limited court space, it collided with Houston's slow reform process, impacting hundreds of cases. "I've got defendants who have been in jail five, six years waiting on trial. I saw a case where a guy has 1800 days [served]," Davis said. "He had been in jail a long time before Harvey hit. Then Harvey hit and delayed [his trial] even more."</p><p>In April, the <a href="https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Long-wait-for-justice-Hurricane-Harvey-limited-13727618.php" target="_blank">Houston Chronicle</a> profiled some of the county's 25 longest-jailed inmates awaiting trial, who have collectively served 107 years in jail. Keith Allen Smith, who was accused in 2015 of murder, couldn't afford the $90,000 bail set in his case and was only acquitted this year after serving nearly four years in the Harris County Jail. His lawyer cited damage from Hurricane Harvey as one of the "key reasons" Smith's trial date kept being postponed.</p><p>The jail basement served as the main courtroom for more than a year, Hennigan said, causing significant lags in the system. "There wasn't anywhere to try cases," he said. "If cases aren't getting tried, then people are sitting in jail longer pretrial. People who really shouldn't be in jail have to stay there longer. People who should be in jail and get sent to prison, they're not getting sent to prison. Cases are getting reset. Trials are taking place years after an event, which makes it harder for everyone."</p><p>A reasonable timeline on a criminal trial is crucial for the justice system to function, according to Will Snowden, director of the <a href="https://www.vera.org/" target="_blank">Vera Institute for Justice</a>'s New Orleans office. Snowden, a former public defender, said that with repeatedly delayed trials, eyewitnesses' memories can fade, crucial evidence can be lost or misplaced and experts and other witnesses can relocate.</p><p>"People's desire to go to trial diminishes over time," he said, explaining that those who have been wrongly imprisoned lose patience with lengthy trials. "Sometimes prosecutors would use the fact that this person has been in jail for a year and a half already, and they want to get out." Defendants exhausted by waiting for trial would often choose to take "sweetheart deals" offered by prosecutors, regardless of their innocence.</p><p>Harris County attempted to alleviate some of the pressure by reopening some floors in the criminal justice center in June of last year, but space was still at a premium. For nearly a full year, family and misdemeanor court hearings were held in the old Harris County Family Law Center building across the street, which was scheduled to be torn down before the hurricane. The Family Law Center failed its fire inspection in 2018, so the city <a href="https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/In-Harvey-s-wake-full-time-fire-watch-keeps-13836809.php#photo-17400093" target="_blank">hired fire marshals</a> to patrol the hallways daily so that the space could be used. In late May of this year, the courthouse finally fully reopened and dockets resumed on all floors — nearly 20 months after the storm first hit in 2017.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMDUyMzEyMy9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwMjk5NjQ3Nn0.5lfNPOBYvAonq8deDCZLuUSeoE-jfhggus6VeURyW6A/img.jpg?width=980" id="c3c08" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="a2f90ee791a24ace48d9290358a2ea5f" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Harvey's rainfall caused massive flooding, as seen here in Port Arthur, Texas on August 31, 2017 .
Staff Sgt. Daniel J. Martinez / U.S. Air National Guard
<p>"We are on top of each other," Judge Maria Jackson told the <a href="https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Long-wait-for-justice-Hurricane-Harvey-limited-13727618.php" target="_blank">Houston Chronicle</a> in April. "Harvey has had a major impact on the Harris County judiciary — the entire system — and continues to be a problem as long as we double up and work in makeshift areas in several buildings … If we had a courthouse we could occupy full-time, with enough space, that would help to return to some normalcy."</p><p>The courthouse flooding didn't just slow the speed of trials — it also made things hard for the accused. Floodwaters <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2017/10/06/after-harvey-jury-trials-stalled-harris-county/" target="_blank">destroyed</a> holding cells for 900 inmates in the main complex, forcing the county to find a new place for pretrial detainees to live. According to figures provided by the Harris County Sheriff's Office, 2,763 people awaiting trial were <a href="https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Defense-lawyers-urge-Harris-County-to-stop-13197552.php" target="_blank">shipped</a> over state lines to a private prison nearly 300 miles away in Louisiana between March and November of 2018.</p><p>One of Hennigan's clients was sent over the state border. "We're preparing for trial and he'd be gone in Louisiana," he said. "Then they bring him back, like, two days before trial. You have a hard time communicating with your client because of that." Hennigan said some attorneys were forced to make the 10-hour round-trip drive to the prison simply to confer with their clients face-to-face.</p><p>Houston's isn't the only criminal justice system to crumble under <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/extreme-weather" target="_self">extreme weather</a>. As Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters rose in New Orleans, sheriff deputies <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5gjdxn/hurricane-katrina-was-a-nightmare-for-inmates-in-new-orleans-829" target="_blank">abandoned</a> the Orleans Parish Prison, which was filled with defendants awaiting trial for minor offenses. A damning <a href="https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-report-details-horrors-suffered-orleans-parish-prisoners-wake-hurricane-katrina?redirect=news/aclu-report-details-horrors-suffered-orleans-parish-prisoners-wake-hurricane-katrina" target="_blank">ACLU report</a> published the year after the storm found that inmates — including juveniles moved from other facilities — were left standing in chest-high sewage-contaminated water for days. After the city belatedly sent rescue boats to evacuate the jail, <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/09/12/caged-storm-hurricane-florence-bears-down" target="_blank">photographs spread</a> of inmates huddled on highways — some of the only surfaces in parts of the city above water — for days in temperatures upwards of 90 degrees F. (Similarly, after Harvey, the state Department of Criminal Justice failed to evacuate several prisons near Houston, leading to <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/after-harvey-texas-inmates-were-left-in-flooded-prisons-without-adequate-water-or-food/" target="_blank">horrific conditions</a> for thousands of inmates.)</p><p>Problems didn't stop after the floodwaters subsided. "Inmates got shipped all over the country [before the storm], and there wasn't an organized mechanism on how to track these folks down after things kind of cleared," Snowden said. "There really wasn't a policy in place on how to safely transport some of those individuals before the storm actually hit."</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMDUyMzEyNC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1NTc3ODQxOX0.H8pdsdSw4QioysWAmGObqr3tzQ_Phft4cqRSU8j5KTM/img.jpg?width=980" id="a10f5" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="2dc548920473644b41de5e8a962fda30" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Fallen water tower in Buras, Louisiana, where Katrina made landfall on August 29, 2005.
EPA
<p>Snowden said that Katrina was the "impetus" for New Orleans to reckon with its flawed criminal justice system. City officials called in outside organizations, including the Vera Institute for Justice, to help. Since the storm, the nonprofit has worked with the city to substantially reduce its jail population. While the city's jails held roughly 6,500 before Katrina, the population now hovers close to 1,100, after Vera <a href="https://psmag.com/social-justice/how-a-hurricane-changed-criminal-justice-policy" target="_blank">worked with policymakers</a> to implement effective pretrial services. Advocates also successfully pushed to have the jail rebuilt much smaller after the storm, with less than 2,000 beds — putting an automatic cap on the population and committing the city to keeping its numbers down.</p><p>Some city officials are continuing to push to <a href="https://www.nola.com/news/courts/article_e103ece3-6a03-530b-8684-18c643948cd6.html" target="_blank">build more beds</a>. But a <a href="https://www.nola.com/news/courts/article_329ea2d1-c065-5f8a-9c20-8c75beaf68c8.html" target="_blank">smaller jail population</a> post-Katrina has actually corresponded with a <a href="https://wgno.com/2019/01/02/new-orleans-homicide-rate-down-for-third-year-in-a-row/" target="_blank">dip in crime rates</a> — helping to "challenge the notion that locking people up keeps us safer," Snowden said.</p><p>"Louisiana has been in prison capital world for many, many decades," he explained. "If locking people up actually worked, we'd be the safest state in the country. In fact, we [now] have a model where there's been fewer people in jail and there's been less crime on the street."</p><p>Even with reforms, Louisiana is still reckoning with the impact of <a href="https://www.climatecentral.org/news/katrina-was-climate-change-to-blame-19377" target="_blank">climate change</a> on its criminal justice system. The Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women, the state's sole prison for women, sits south of Baton Rouge. It flooded during catastrophic rainfall in 2016, which <a href="https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/environment/article_62d3d3aa-f4c1-11e8-b922-1b3817b06f0d.html" target="_blank">research has shown</a> was directly influenced by a warmer climate. Nearly three years later, roughly 1,000 inmates are <a href="https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/crime_police/article_0fcebfb8-5d6b-11e9-bac5-f7b4ee1d77f0.html" target="_blank">still living</a> in overcrowded, "temporary" relocation facilities. Many have no access to basic resources that they'd had in the old prison, like the ability to work a job or eat food in a cafeteria. There's no sign of when they'll be able to return to the communities they had built at the old facility.</p><p>"If you don't consider the fact that the past climate is no longer a guide for the future, you risk making investments that are not going to pay back," said Richard Moss, a climate scientist at the University of Maryland and one of the lead authors of the recent <a href="https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/" target="_blank">National Climate Assessment</a>. "At worst, you risk making investments that could put people's health and safety at risk."</p><p>If Texas is to learn any lessons from Harvey, it will be without any guidance from the governor's office. A commission convened by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott released a 200-page report in December suggesting the state needs to "future-proof" itself due to "changing environmental and human conditions." The report made no direct mention of climate change, curbing emissions or moving to renewable energy.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMDUyMzEyNy9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYxOTM3ODU2M30.D_VSez_pLR4DXdZFEAr2EeN2vytUXAPjF48NAynatmQ/img.jpg?width=980" id="6bec9" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="2c3c45afbb85287b725f77fd8facc418" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Houston's damage in Harvey's aftermath on Sept. 3, 2017.
Tech. Sgt. Larry E. Reid Jr. / U.S. Air Force
<p>"I'm not a scientist," Abbott told reporters at the report's rollout when asked whether he thought climate change was behind Harvey and projected future disasters. "Impossible for me to answer that question." In May, bills meant to mandate studies of how climate change will impact Texas <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2019/05/10/climate-change-bills-do-not-get-hearings-this-session-in-texas/" target="_blank">died in the state Legislature</a>.</p><p>"Climate change is an obvious factor in a lot of these extreme events," said Moss, who now leads the <a href="https://www.climateassessment.org/" target="_blank">Science for Climate Action Network</a>, which provides climate science resources to local governments. "Whether it's explicit or implicit in terms of adaptation, communities are going to need to use climate science."</p><p>This refusal to acknowledge climate impacts will come at the expense of those caught in the criminal justice system in Texas. The county has had experience with a weather-damaged courthouse: Tropical Storm Allison flooded the Criminal Justice Center in 2001, closing it for nearly a year. After Allison, the Houston Chronicle followed the fallout from the lack of space as the courthouse was repaired. In November of 2001, five months after the storm, the <a href="https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Flood-forcing-speed-up-of-plea-bargains-2014205.php" target="_blank">Chronicle</a> reported that "prosecutors are cut off from their computers and offices and are juggling witnesses," while "judges and their staffs are trying to keep up with scheduling and the cases before them."</p><p>It took $16 million to repair the courthouse after Allison, but the recovery from Harvey looks to be a longer slog. Last December, following more than a year of back-and-forth on how to repair Harvey's damage, the district attorney successfully <a href="https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/At-Ogg-s-urging-Harris-County-delays-13476041.php" target="_blank">convinced the city</a> to delay a decision on whether to authorize some repairs to the existing center or rebuild it entirely. Just $4.9 million of an estimated <a href="https://abc13.com/3817534/" target="_blank">$86 million</a> in repairs have been approved this year. County engineers say a new structure could cost $430 million and take four years to build.</p><p>Even if Houston moves the facility to a less flood-prone area, the city — and others around the country — will still have to contend with other ways that climate change threatens the criminal justice system. Some <a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/51a0/f75e1a128201824d7d947ea0d3fab41edb5b.pdf" target="_blank">preliminary research</a> projects that climate change and warming temperatures could help increase crime rates, providing more fodder for an already-clogged courthouse like Harris County's.</p><p>Moss is wary of trying to predict how rising temperatures will affect crime rates, but he said that climate change could interact with other forces to have a "nuanced and complicated" impact on crime.</p><p>"The question is, what's the specific pathway through which climate change alters the existing situation?" Moss said. "If you find that people's access to basic necessities are being interrupted by climate change, and it's a question between do they rob a store, or not do so and not feed their family, you're going to see changes."</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">UN Expert Warns of 'Climate Apartheid' <a href="https://t.co/GMG6WAwPUC">https://t.co/GMG6WAwPUC</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ClmateEmergency?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ClmateEmergency</a></p>— John Lundin 🌊 (@johnlundin) <a href="https://twitter.com/johnlundin/status/1143887045816963074?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 26, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://nexusmedianews.com/criminal-justice-in-the-age-of-climate-change-a12faccfc203" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Nexus Media</a>.</em><br/></p>From Your Site Articles
Related Articles Around the Web
Read More
Show Less
Houston’s Tall Buildings and Concrete Sprawl Made Harvey’s Rain and Flooding Worse
16 November 2018
Popular
Downtown Houston surrounded by flooding and mist after Hurricane Harvey. Prairie Pictures / The Image Bank / Getty Images
The science is clear that in order to prevent more extreme weather events like hurricanes, we need to stop burning fossil fuels. Thursday, EcoWatch reported on a study that found major hurricanes in the past decade were made five to 10 percent wetter because of global warming, and another study last year calculated that the record rainfall that flooded Texas during Hurricane Harvey was made three times more likely due to climate change.
<p>Now, a second study focusing on Hurricane Harvey that was published in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0676-z" target="_blank">Nature Wednesday</a> pointed to another thing we can do to reduce the impact of these devastating storms: change the way we build cities. </p><p>Researchers at the University of Princeton and the University of Iowa used computer models and historical data to determine that urbanization in Houston made both the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/flooding" target="_self">flooding</a> and the record rainfall worse than it would have been in a rural area, a <a href="https://www.princeton.edu/news/2018/11/15/houstons-urban-sprawl-increased-rainfall-flooding-during-hurricane-harvey" target="_blank">Princeton press release explained</a>. </p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-twitter_embed">
</p><div id="28260" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="P9NCEB1576663312"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1062790893537804288" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">New article published in the journal Nature by IIHR researchers and colleagues from@PrincetonU linking urban sprawl… https://t.co/nTHNnBT6ij</div> — IIHR (@IIHR)<a href="https://twitter.com/IIHRUIowa/statuses/1062790893537804288">1542224069.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p></p><p>While this can help Houston make changes going forward, it also has major implications for other Southeast and Gulf cities facing the threat of wetter storms.</p><p>"Hurricane Harvey's impacts on Houston highlight hazards to coastal cities along the Gulf Coast and Eastern Seaboard of the United States," co-author and Princeton civil and environmental engineering professor James Smith said in the press release. "An unfortunate repeat performance from Hurricane Florence this year underscores the problems of extreme tropical cyclone rainfall in urban settings."</p><p>Houston has both grown up and out in recent years, and both of those had an impact on rainfall and flood risk. But how does that work exactly?</p><h2>Flooding</h2><p>Urbanization's impact on flooding is pretty common sense. More concrete streets and sidewalks means less water can be absorbed into the ground, leaving it to flood those streets instead. </p><p>Researchers compared yearly flood peaks with population growth, and also compared the contemporary results with flood peaks from the 1950s, when Houston was much less built up. Sure enough, as development increased, so did flood risk.</p><p>"Urbanization is generally associated with a significant reduction in storm-water infiltration," Director of Iowa's Hydroscience and Engineering research center (IIHR) Gabriele Villarini explained in the press release. "Houston has experienced one of the most impressive urban-development booms in U.S. history, and with growth comes an increase in impervious surfaces. This increase in urbanization, combined with the region's flat clay terrain, represents a very problematic mix, even with flood-mitigation measures in place."</p><h2>Rainfall</h2><p>The reason that urbanization increases rainfall is a little more complicated. Basically, the increased number and height of buildings creates something called "surface roughness" that increases friction and, therefore, rainfall when the storm winds blow over it. </p><p>"When Hurricane Harvey blew into Houston, it literally got snagged on the city's tall skyscrapers and towers," Villarini said. "The friction caused by high winds buffeting tall buildings created a drag effect that influenced air and heat movement and resulted in optimal conditions for precipitation."</p><p>Researchers used computer models to run the same storm over the same geographic area with Houston's current infrastructure and with open fields. They found that less rain fell and that rainfall patterns changed in the imaginary rural Houston, as this graphic shows.</p><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xODg0Mjk1NS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzMTA3MDQwOX0.yODm80UEjNTOD8svDfFp4ZQS6ZvxWE_20bADDVt9xPc/img.jpg?width=980" id="92a4e" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="3a11f739088ed202b497ed2796de278a" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">Rainfall from Harvey in urban v. rural Houston</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit..."><a href="https://twitter.com/3rdrockhome" target="_blank">@3rdrockhome</a></small></p><p>Now that the researchers have shown the impact current urban design has on storms, they hope that urban planners will use that information to reduce risk.<br></p><p>"For every new roadway poured and for every new high-rise erected, there is an increased risk for more adverse rainfall and flooding, and that's certainly something that city officials and residents should consider when they contemplate future growth," Villarini concluded. </p>
Read More
Show Less
Flooding in Houston's energy corridor following Hurricane Harvey on Sept. 4, 2017. Revolution Messaging / Public domain
The burning of fossil fuels is the driving force behind climate change, and now the companies responsible want the government to help pay to protect them from the consequences.
Texas is seeking at least $12 billion to build a network of seawalls, levees, gates and earthen structures that would protect a stretch of the Gulf Coast from Louisiana to the area south of Houston that houses 30 percent of U.S. oil refining capacity, The Associated Press reported Wednesday.
<p style="">The Army Corps of Engineers approved $3.9 billion for smaller projects that would protect oil facilities in Port Arthur and Freeport in July, The Associated Press and <a href="https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Feds-OK-4B-for-Ike-Dike-as-July-4th-storm-13052915.php#photo-15828817" target="_blank">The Houston Chronicle reported</a>. </p><p style="">"The oil and gas industry is getting a free ride," <a href="https://www.sierraclub.org/" target="_blank">Sierra Club</a> Houston executive committee member Brandt Mannchen told The Associated Press. "You don't hear the industry making a peep about paying for any of this and why should they? There's all this push like, 'Please Senator Cornyn, Please Senator Cruz, we need money for this and that.'"</p><p style="">Texas Republican politicians like Senators John Cormyn and Ted Cruz, who <a href="https://www.inhofe.senate.gov/download/?id=E1E34574-5655-42AA-92E8-0D23DC8C33BA&download=1" target="_blank">signed a letter</a> urging President <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/donald-trump" target="_blank">Donald Trump</a> to withdraw from the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/paris-agreement" target="_blank">Paris agreement</a> and are generally hostile to public spending, support federal funding for the project. Many see it as a priority after <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/hurricane-harvey" target="_self">Hurricane Harvey</a> flooded Houston and took out 25 percent of the area's refining capacity for a time.</p><p style="">"Our overall economy, not only in Texas but in the entire country, is so much at risk from a high storm surge," Gulf Coast-area Republican Judge Matt Sebesta told The Associated Press.</p><p style="">The idea for the "Ike Dike," as the 60-mile network of barriers is called, took off after Hurricane Ike battered Texas in 2008 and caused half-a-million gallons of crude oil to be released into Texas waters, <a href="https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2017/12/21/houston-ike-dike-hurricane-harvey/" target="_blank">Climate Liability News reported</a>. </p><p style="">Most local environmental groups supported the general need to protect the coast from storm surges, and prevent storm-caused <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/oil-spill" target="_self">oil spills</a>, but were worried a plan would be rushed through after Harvey that would bypass environmental reviews assessing its potential impact on <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/wildlife" target="_self">wildlife</a> and the salinity of Galveston Bay. </p><p style="">"You may prevent the bay from being ruined by a release of petrochemicals, but you may ruin it by changing the hydrology," <a href="https://galvbay.org/" target="_blank">Galveston Bay Foundation</a> spokesperson Scott Jones told Climate Liability News.</p><p style="">Some of those concerns were mitigated when the federal government approved insufficient funding to fast track the project last year.</p><p style="">In July, the Army Corps of Engineers approved $1.9 million to study the best design for the Ike Dike, and the study draft and environmental impact statement should be released in September, The Houston Chronicle reported.</p><p style="">The limited project that has been approved is the Sabine Pass-to-Galveston Bay Coastal Storm Risk Management and Ecosystem Restoration. The initial funding proposal protected larger parts of the coast, but as the project has been refined it has focused more specifically on refineries, The Associated Press reported. </p><p style="">Part of the project will raise dirt levees and build or expand flood walls around Port Arthur, where refineries owned by Saudi-owned Motiva, Valero Energy Corp. and Total S.A. are located.</p><p style="">"You're looking at a lot of people, a lot of homes, but really a lot of industry," Army Corps of Engineers resident engineer in Port Arthur Steve Sherrill told The Associated Press.</p>Another part of the project will build 25 miles of new seawalls and levees in Orange County, where facilities belonging to <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/chevron" target="_self">Chevron</a> and DuPont are located. A third will increase and heighten seawalls protecting Freeport, as well as a Phillips 66 export terminal for <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/natural-gas" target="_self">natural gas</a> and many chemical plants.<p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-twitter_embed">
</p><div id="3e109" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="FQEBTA1576662660"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1031616958821744640" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">'#HothouseEarth' Co-Author Says 'People Will Look Back on 2018 as the Year When #Climate Reality Hit'… https://t.co/QB5XslWDJO</div> — EcoWatch (@EcoWatch)<a href="https://twitter.com/EcoWatch/statuses/1031616958821744640">1534791624.0</a></blockquote></div>
<p></p>
From Your Site Articles
Related Articles Around the Web
Read More
Show Less
"While roads around our plant are impassable, our ride-out crew has two boats that could be used to carry the crew out of the site," said a spokesperson for Arkema on Aug. 29, 2017 after Hurricane Harvey. EPA
A Houston chemical plant company did not properly prepare for hurricane season, resulting in a toxic accident during Hurricane Harvey last year, federal regulators have found.
The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board on Thursday released an extensive investigation into the flooding-induced chemical fires at the Arkema plant in Crosby, Texas, finding that while the company's insurers flagged the high potential for flooding a year before Harvey, plant employees were unaware of the risk.
<p>The investigation also found that plant officials based flooding preparation plans on memories of long-term employees rather than more sophisticated estimates, faulted "limited industry guidance" on flooding, and concluded that other plants in the area may be similarly ill-prepared. "Considering that <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/extreme-weather">extreme weather</a> events are likely to increase in number and severity, the chemical industry must be prepared for worst case scenarios at their facilities," CSB Chairperson Vanessa Allen Sutherland said in a statement.</p><p>As reported by the <a href="https://www.chron.com/news/science-environment/article/Arkema-officials-were-warned-of-flood-risks-a-12937654.php" target="_blank">Houston Chronicle</a>:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"Arkema had multiple freezer buildings, six backup generators, and, as a last resort, refrigerated trucks. But the company didn't consider flooding a "credible risk," the report states, confirming previous reporting by the Chronicle.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">Officials thought this despite a 2016 report from its insurer, Factory Mutual Insurance Co. (FM Global), stating that the facility was at risk for flooding and parts of it sat in both the 100-year and 500-year flood plains, the report states. FM Global was not Arkema's insurer during Hurricane Harvey.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">The board found that Arkema was relying on longtime employee memory of flooding levels. The company's Crosby facility has a 40-year history of flooding, but employees could not remember a time when the plant received more than two-feet of water.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">'A lot of people there had been there for 20, 30, 40 years and seen predictive rainfalls of similar amounts and they thought, with what was predicted, they'd be fine,' said Mark Wingard, the board's lead investigator.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">That method, he added, is insufficient."</p>
<p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-proxy-image">
<a href="https://www.chron.com/news/science-environment/article/Arkema-officials-were-warned-of-flood-risks-a-12937654.php" target="_blank"><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vbWVkaWEucmJsLm1zL2ltYWdlP3U9JTJGcGhvdG9zJTJGNzMlMkY0MiUyRjMzJTJGMTU2MDc1MDUlMkYzJTJGOTIweDkyMC5qcGcmaG89aHR0cHMlM0ElMkYlMkZzLmhkbnV4LmNvbSZzPTI5NyZoPTU1YzQ2NjYyZGJmMTY1MzA3MGYwYTRhNDAyNjE2MmVkM2NiM2M3ZjJjY2Q4ZjBhMDE3YWVjZTRiMzAwNmQzMDMmc2l6ZT05ODB4JmM9MzAxMTYxNDU1NCIsImV4cGlyZXNfYXQiOjE2NDkzNTEyMTZ9.7tN9xpRBTbcWjLqSCCe3LmzzirapmOrVGB7Fx-auWac/img.jpg" id="333ad" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="e514f67c236597144d2f18dc60407e93"></a>
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption...">U.S. Chemical Safety Board video about the 2017 fire at the Arkema chemical plant in Crosby, Texas, following Hurricane Harvey</small>
<small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">
<a href="https://www.chron.com/news/science-environment/article/Arkema-officials-were-warned-of-flood-risks-a-12937654.php" target="_blank">www.chron.com</a>
</small>
</p>
<p><strong>For a deeper dive:</strong><br></p><p><a href="https://www.chron.com/news/science-environment/article/Arkema-officials-were-warned-of-flood-risks-a-12937654.php" target="_blank">Houston Chronicle</a>, <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2018/05/24/arkema-chemical-fires-industry-flood-prevention-hurricane-harvey/" target="_blank">Texas Tribune</a>, <a href="http://abc13.com/grand-jury-will-decide-if-arkema-officials-to-face-criminal-charges/3516510/" target="_blank">ABC13</a>, <a href="https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2018/05/24/report-arkema-crosby-plant-warned-of-flood-risk.html" target="_blank">Houston Business Journal</a>, <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/389268-investigation-finds-safety-standards-too-weak-at-chemical-plant" target="_blank">The Hill</a></p><p> <em>For more </em><a href="http://ecowatch.com/climate-change-news/" target="_blank"><em>climate change</em></a><em> and </em><a href="http://ecowatch.com/business/renewables/" target="_blank"><em>clean energy</em></a><em> news, you can follow Climate Nexus on </em><a href="https://twitter.com/ClimateNexus" target="_blank"><em>Twitter</em></a><em> and </em><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ClimateNexus/" target="_blank"><em>Facebook</em></a><em>, and sign up for daily </em><a href="http://climatenexus.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=d1f5797e59060083034310930&id=7c84c08aaa" target="_blank"><em>Hot News</em></a><em>.</em></p>
From Your Site Articles
Related Articles Around the Web
Read More
Show Less
Most EPA Pollution Estimates Are Unreliable, So Why Is Everyone Still Using Them?
29 January 2018
Climate
Smoggy downtown Houston. Kyle Jones / Flickr
By Rachel Leven
Engineer Jim Southerland was hired by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1971 to join the nascent war on air pollution. He came to relish the task, investigating orange clouds from an ammunition plant in Tennessee and taking air samples from strip mines in Wyoming. Among his proudest accomplishments: helping the agency develop a set of numbers called emission factors—values that enable regulators to estimate atmospheric discharges from power plants, oil refineries, chemical plants and other industrial operations.
<p>By the time Southerland left the EPA in 1996, he was "frustrated and ticked off," he said, because the numbers he had helped develop were being misused. The original aim had been to paint a broad-brush picture of pollution. Instead, the numbers—meant to represent average emissions from industrial activities—were incorporated into permits stipulating how much pollution individual facilities could release. This happened despite EPA warnings that about half of these sites would discharge more than the models predicted. "These factors were not intended for permits," said Southerland, now retired and living in Cary, North Carolina.</p><p>The number of <a href="http://bit.ly/2ATCqLW" target="_blank">emission factors</a> used by the EPA since Southerland's time has proliferated and stands at 22,693. The agency itself admits most are unreliable: It rates about 62 percent as "below average" or "poor." Nearly 22 percent aren't rated at all. About 17 percent earned grades of "average" or better, and only one in six has ever been updated. There is a slew of common problems, such as poor accounting for emissions from aging equipment.</p>
<p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNzEyOTUzMy9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzODM1NTk4M30.dFlvERwd5hY5oH2PJttEk1vfrwYWfjjTd_Y9OiXifo4/img.png?width=980" id="daf15" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="777c4d8fd6d893a3eb1686bc5cd8bb34" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
</p>
<p>The upshot: in some cases, major polluters are using flawed numbers to calculate emissions of substances such as benzene, a carcinogen, and <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/methane">methane</a>, a powerful greenhouse gas. Regulators at times are flying blind. The factors color everything we know about air quality and many of the decisions the EPA and state environmental agencies make, from risk assessment to rulemaking.<br></p><p>In an email, an EPA spokeswoman told the <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org" target="_blank">Center for Public Integrity</a> that the agency has been working on the problem for a decade. "EPA believes it is important to develop emissions factors that are of high quality and reliable," she wrote.</p><p>Some experts, however, say the agency hasn't done enough. The unreliability of the numbers has been flagged over a period of decades by the EPA's own internal watchdog and other government auditors. "This is what tells you what's being put in the air and what you're breathing," said Eric Schaeffer, former head of civil enforcement at the EPA and now executive director of the <a href="http://www.environmentalintegrity.org" target="_blank">Environmental Integrity Project</a>, an advocacy group. "You don't want those numbers to be wrong."</p><p><strong>Accuracy Questions</strong><br></p><p>Emission factors are based on company and EPA measurements as well as external studies. They are plugged into equations to estimate total emissions from industrial activities, such as the burning of <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/coal">coal</a> in boilers.</p><p>As early as the 1950s, regulators in places like Los Angeles were using emission factors to try to pinpoint the origins of dangerous smog episodes. The numbers allowed them to avoid "time-consuming, expensive testing programs and extensive surveys of individual sources," according to a 1960 <a href="http://bit.ly/2DoXwVq" target="_blank">paper</a> by the Los Angeles County Air Pollution Control District.</p><p>In 1965, the U.S. Public Health Service—which regulated air pollution at the time—released its first comprehensive list of factors, a document the agency would label "AP-42" in a 1968 update. The EPA, created two years later, kept <a href="https://www.epa.gov/air-emissions-factors-and-quantification/ap-42-compilation-air-emission-factors" target="_blank">revising the estimates</a> as they became more widely used in emission inventories depicting pollution levels and sources around the country.</p><p>The EPA knew early on there were problems with the numbers. In 1989, for example, the Office of Technology Assessment—a now-defunct, nonpartisan science adviser to Congress—reported many U.S. metropolitan areas had not met their goals for controlling smog-forming ozone in part because of inaccurate emission inventories. In 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act, Congress gave the agency six months to make sure all emissions contributing to ozone formation were assigned up-to-date, accurate factors, and directed the EPA to review the numbers every three years thereafter.</p><p>The EPA missed both deadlines. It has failed to do at least some of the three-year reviews. It claims to have created all the necessary ozone-related factors, but questions about their accuracy remain. </p><p>For decades, government watchdogs, including the EPA's Office of Inspector General, have pointed out deficiencies in the factors, which drive actions ranging from enforcement cases to the drafting of regulations. "We believe the status of emission factor development … is a significant weakness that impedes achievement of major air program goals," the IG wrote in a 1996 report. The EPA's dependence on industry studies because of funding constraints could result in factors that minimized pollution, it warned. The U.S. General Accounting Office—now the Government Accountability Office—<a href="https://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0146.pdf" target="_blank">reported</a> in 2001 that polluters rely on the estimates even though "facilities' actual emissions can, and do, vary substantially from the published factors." The EPA's IG came back with a targeted reproach in 2014, questioning the validity of factors used to estimate methane emissions from some <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/pipelines">pipelines</a>.</p><p>Still, there was little movement. Whereas emission factors are recognized as crucial tools in understanding air quality and underpinning inventories, they tend to be forgotten. "That foundation is buried to such an extent that it's not often appreciated," said David Mobley, who worked on emission factors in the 1990s. "The urgency is rarely there."</p>
<p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-rebelmouse-image">
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNzEyOTU0NC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1MjQxNTkwNX0.2ZuCuQ9lar5Tdu5gdT2NXrjir7zfNqqhUurp98V_YGs/img.jpg?width=980" id="5c46a" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="4a60e5573734aff910848d518646ca4e" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image">
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="add caption..."><a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2018/01/29/21492/most-epas-pollution-estimates-are-unreliable-so-why-everyone-still-using-them" target="_blank"></a>Vehicles travel along Highway 225 near Shell Oil Company's refinery and petrochemical facility in Deer Park, Texas.</small><small class="image-media media-photo-credit" placeholder="add photo credit...">texasfreeway.com</small></p>
<p><strong>Test Case in Houston</strong></p><p>Accurate pollution data matters. Consider what happened in the ozone-plagued city of Houston, a hub of oil refining and <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/chemicals">chemical</a> manufacturing.</p><p>The city had been using emission inventories to guide its ozone-control strategy. Air monitoring by researchers in 2000 found levels of volatile organic compounds—highly reactive ozone precursors, such as benzene, known as VOCs—were 10 to 100 times higher than what had previously been estimated. The study—conducted by what was then the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission, the EPA and more than 40 other public, private and academic institutions—singled out as culprits VOCs such as ethylene, a flammable gas used mainly in the production of <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/plastics">plastics</a>.</p><p>Houston, it turned out, had focused on controlling the wrong emissions from the wrong sources to lower its ozone levels, said Daniel Cohan, an associate professor of environmental engineering at Rice University. The city changed course, expanding VOC monitoring and developing rules to reduce emissions. Ozone production rates dropped by up to 50 percent in six years, Cohan and his colleagues found in a follow-up <a href="https://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/14/2777/2014/acp-14-2777-2014.pdf" target="_blank">study</a>. The study showed that reliance on emission factors alone is a bad idea, Cohan said. "We need scientists to measure these pollutants in the air to find out how much is really being emitted," he said.</p><p>The underestimation problem surfaced at individual facilities as well, including Shell's 1,500-acre petrochemical complex in the Houston suburb of Deer Park. A <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10962247.2015.1058304?needAccess=true" target="_blank">study</a> begun by the City of Houston and the EPA in 2010 showed levels of benzene wafting from one Shell tank were 448 times higher than what the relevant emission factor had predicted. The discrepancy led to an EPA enforcement action; in a <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2014-07/documents/sdp-cd.pdf" target="_blank">consent decree</a>, Shell agreed to pay a $2.6 million fine and spend $115 million to control pollution from flaring—the burning of gas for economic or safety reasons—and other activities. Shell did not respond to requests for comment, but a spokeswoman told the <a href="http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/article/Shell-agrees-to-cut-emissions-at-Deer-Park-complex-4657913.php" target="_blank">Houston Chronicle</a> in 2013 "the provisions of the settlement are consistent with Shell Deer Park's objectives and ongoing activities to reduce emissions at the site and upgrade our flaring infrastructure."</p><p>Despite the findings of these studies and others, the EPA didn't <a href="https://www3.epa.gov/ttn/chief/consentdecree/index_consent_decree.html" target="_blank">update</a> emission factors for the U.S. refinery and petrochemical sector until 2015, seven years after Houston had petitioned the agency to do so and two years after it was sued by environmental justice groups.</p><p><strong>Unreliable Methane Estimates</strong></p><p>The low-balling of pollution isn't limited to <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/toxics">toxic</a> chemicals. Many emission factors used to estimate releases of methane—a potent greenhouse gas associated with oil and natural-gas development—are "far too low," said Robert Howarth, an ecology and environmental biology professor at Cornell University. Identifying how much methane these operations discharge can help scientists calculate the impact of natural gas—which in 2016 displaced coal as the nation's biggest source of electric power generation—on global warming. This is crucial to preventing "runaway <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/">climate change</a>," Howarth said.</p><p>Much remains unknown. A 2015 <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/112/51/15597.full?tab=author-info" target="_blank">study</a> sponsored by the <a href="https://www.edf.org" target="_blank">Environmental Defense Fund</a> found methane releases from oil and gas production and processing in the Barnett Shale Formation in northern Texas were 90 percent higher than what the EPA's Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions had estimated.</p><p>About a third of the factors used to estimate pipeline leaks and other natural-gas emissions in the most recent inventory, for 2015, are based on a <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-08/documents/8_equipmentleaks.pdf" target="_blank">1996</a> study by the EPA and an industry group<strong> </strong>then known as the Gas Research Institute. The EPA's IG <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-09/documents/20140725-14-p-0324_0.pdf" target="_blank">found</a> in 2014 "there was significant uncertainty in the study data," meaning the EPA's assumptions on the amount of methane that spews from pipelines "may not be valid."</p><p>The harm caused by faulty estimates extends beyond oil and gas. An emission factor designed to estimate ammonia releases from poultry farms, for example, "is probably far too low<strong>" </strong>according to a <a href="http://www.environmentalintegrity.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Ammonia-Emissions.pdf" target="_blank">report</a> by the Environmental Integrity Project. These emissions contribute to problems like <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/algae">algae</a> blooms, which can spread rapidly and kill <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/marine-life">marine life</a> in waterways like the Chesapeake Bay.</p><p><strong>'Pandora's Box of Problems'</strong></p><p>The EPA, according to its spokeswoman, has begun executing a plan to improve the <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/science/">science</a> that underlies emission factors and review the estimates more frequently. Among the changes: some companies now must report pollution data electronically to the agency.</p><p>The <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-watch/">Trump</a> administration proposed slashing the EPA's budget by 31 percent for fiscal year 2018, although Congress has so far extended existing funding levels through a series of short-term resolutions. Progress on emission factors will hinge on "available resources," the EPA spokeswoman wrote in an email, declining to specify a deadline for the project.</p><p>The agency said it does not intend to limit the use of emission factors to the purpose for which they were originally intended—to inform pollution inventories. That means, for example, that the numbers will still be used in permits.</p><p>Many in industry are fine with that. When the EPA asked in a 2009 Federal Register <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2009/10/14/E9-24684/emissions-factors-program-improvements" target="_blank">notice</a> for suggestions on how to improve the system, companies from electric power generators to auto manufacturers argued for the status quo, saying emission factors were sometimes their only data option. Trade groups like the American Petroleum Institute and the American Chemistry Council argued their members should not be penalized if the EPA discovered a deficient factor had caused a permit to underestimate pollution. API said it worried that additional industry data supplied to the EPA to help it improve the numbers "could be misused for enforcement or other purposes." Neither group responded to requests for comment.</p><p>Public health advocates, on the other hand, want more. Some companies game the system to avoid EPA permitting fees and civil penalties, said Neil Carman, clean air director for the Lone Star Chapter of the <a href="http://www.sierraclub.org">Sierra Club</a> in Austin. "We don't know what the emissions really are," he said. "It's a real Pandora's box of problems."</p><p>Carman and other advocates say they understand emission factors will have to be used in some circumstances, and that some types of pollution can be estimated with reasonable accuracy. They also maintain, however, that air monitoring should be more widely deployed. "Where you can do direct monitoring of emissions, that should be required," said Schaeffer, of the Environmental Integrity Project.</p><p>Schaeffer faults the EPA for giving some companies an out. It allows operators of power plants, for example, to choose between using continuous monitoring to measure fine particles, or a combination of quarterly testing and emission factors. Some of these plants already have monitoring systems installed, Schaeffer said, but "it's easier to mask noncompliance using emission factors."</p><p><strong>Shining a 'Bright Light' on Pollution</strong></p><p>California's Bay Area Air Quality Management District changed its approach after studies showed leaks from oil refineries in the area—known as fugitive emissions—were likely underrepresented in emission factors. "We decided, based on that information, that we needed additional ways to better identify fugitive emissions and to shine a bright light on those fugitive emissions," said Eric Stevenson, the district's director of meteorology, measurement and rules.</p><p>In 2016, the district urged refineries to install "open path" monitoring systems—which use beams of light to detect the presence of gases like benzene—and make the data available to the public in real time. Chevron installed such a <a href="http://fenceline.org/" target="_blank">system</a> on the perimeter of its refinery in Richmond, California, in 2013.</p><p>The company didn't respond to specific questions about the monitoring but said its focus "on running the refinery efficiently and investing in new technologies" has significantly reduced air pollution since the 1970s. Denny Larson, executive director of the <a href="http://www.communityscience.org" target="_blank">Community Science Institute</a> - CSI for Health and Justice, an environmental group that helps the public test for pollution, said the system in Richmond shows levels of chemicals in the air at a given moment and can alert residents to emission spikes that can trigger asthma attacks and other serious health problems.</p><p>"It's showing lots of pollution has been flying under the radar that's extremely toxic and problematic," Larson said. "We can prove what we've always known."</p><p><em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://www.publicintegrity.org/2018/01/29/21492/most-epas-pollution-estimates-are-unreliable-so-why-everyone-still-using-them" target="_blank">The Center for Public Integrity</a>.</em></p>
From Your Site Articles
Related Articles Around the Web
Read More
Show Less
Trending
By Tim Radford
The probability that some city in the U.S. state of Texas will be hit again by Harvey-sized hurricanes, rainstorms that will dump half a meter of water in a short space of time, has increased sixfold in this century and will have increased 18-fold by 2100, thanks to climate change driven by global warming.
In the late summer of 2017, Hurricane Harvey dropped 65 cms of water on the city of Houston in Texas. It was the start of the largest natural disaster in the U.S. since Hurricane Katrina pounded New Orleans in 2005. Harvey claimed an estimated 70 lives, and created more than $150 billion in damage.
<p style=""><a href="https://emanuel.mit.edu/" target="_blank">Kerry Emanuel, a meteorologist and professor of atmospheric science</a> at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, asked a simple question: How likely is it that hurricane-induced flooding of such magnitude could happen again?</p><p style="">He reported in the <a href="http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1716222114" target="_blank">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</a> that he looked again at the probabilities. Since 1899, only 11 U.S. hurricanes have brought with them rainfalls that measured more than 65 cms. Until Harvey, the most recent had been a hurricane called Patricia which dumped more than 50 cms in some parts of Texas.</p><p style="">For Texas alone, from 1981 to 2000, the chance of an event on the scale of Harvey or Patricia was 1 percent: that is, one chance in a hundred during any one year, with a high likelihood of such an event once every 100 years.</p><p style="">Harvey would once have counted as the storm of the century, and the chance of it hitting Houston made it an even more improbable event. Statistically, such a thing should happen once in 2,000 years.</p><p style="">But the past, Prof. Emanuel argues, is no longer a good guide to the future.</p><p>"When you take a very, very rare, extreme rainfall event like Hurricane Harvey, and you shift the distribution of rain toward heavier amounts because of climate change, you get really big changes in the probability of those rare events," he said. "People have to understand that damage is usually caused by extreme events."</p><p style="">He is not the only researcher to have looked at the statistics with alarm. More than one study has found that the Atlantic coast of the U.S. could face <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/americas-atlantic-coast-set-to-take-a-worse-battering/" target="_blank">harder and more frequent battering</a> as global temperatures creep up in response to ever-increasing use of fossil fuels that leave ever-growing ratios of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.</p><p style="">One group has warned that coastal storms and floods could create new millions of <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/us-faces-floods-of-climate-refugees/" target="_blank">U.S. climate refugees</a>. The problem is not uniquely an American one: by the century's end, coastal flooding could be <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/coastal-flooding-may-cost-100000-bn-a-year-by-2100/" target="_blank">costing the nations of the world $100 trillion a year</a>, as sea levels rise and extreme events such as tropical cyclones and storm surges become more intense, and more frequent.</p><p style=""><strong>Odds on Calamity</strong></p><p>Some studies have concentrated on conditions for particular coastal cities such as <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/22423-2/" target="_blank">Charleston</a> or Seattle, where the once-in-500-year floods could in the next century happen 273 times more often.</p><p style="">Studies like these may sound alarmist: in fact, they have a simple, practical purpose. City authorities need to know if the odds of calamity are on the increase.</p><p style="">"Suppose you're the mayor of Houston, and you've just had a terrible disaster that cost you an unbelievable fortune, and you're going to try over the next few years to put things back in order in your city. Should you be putting in a more advanced storm-sewer system that may cost billions of dollars, or not.</p><p style="">"The answer to that question depends upon whether you think Harvey was a one-off—very unlikely to happen any time in the next 100 years—or whether it may be more common than you thought," Prof. Emanuel said.</p><p style="">"We are seeing for Texas an event whose annual probability was 1 percent at the end of last century, and it might be 18 percent by the end of this century. That's a huge increase in the probability of that event. So, people had better plan for that." </p><p style=""><em>Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="http://climatenewsnetwork.net/23453-2/">Climate News Network</a>.</em></p>
Read More
Show Less
EPA/ Staff Sgt. Daniel Martinez
The toxic aftereffects of Hurricane Harvey continue to plague Houston as the city rebuilds three weeks after the devastating storm. Testing conducted by the New York Times earlier this week found instances of E. coli contamination 135 times the legal limit in standing floodwaters around the city.
<p style="">ProPublica and the Texas Tribune reported Thursday that a private firm hired by environmental groups found "concerning" levels of benzene in neighborhoods near a Valero refinery. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said it conducted air monitoring tests after Harvey, but it did not release any specifics. </p><p style="">The <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-watch/">Trump administration's</a> proposed budget cuts are coming under new scrutiny as the agency's Houston lab, which was marked for closure, becomes a key player in post-Harvey cleanup.</p><p style=""><strong>For a deeper dive:</strong></p><p style=""><strong>E.coli:</strong> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/11/health/houston-flood-contamination.html" target="_blank">New York Times</a></p><p style=""><a href="http://climatenexus.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=d1f5797e59060083034310930&id=fe75723b02&e=992ed4d5cc" target="_blank"></a><strong>Benzene:</strong> <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2017/09/14/epa-wont-release-benzene-levels-collected-after-harvey-private-monitor/?utm_campaign=trib-social-buttons&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social" target="_blank">Texas Tribune</a>, <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/09/14/550472740/air-pollution-from-industry-plagues-houston-in-harveys-wake" target="_blank">NPR</a></p><p style=""><a href="http://climatenexus.us4.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=d1f5797e59060083034310930&id=e5a1e4d3ca&e=992ed4d5cc" target="_blank"></a><strong>Houston lab: </strong><a href="http://www.expressnews.com/news/local/article/Houston-EPA-lab-set-to-close-12195927.php" target="_blank">San Antonio Express-News</a></p><p style=""><em>For more </em><a href="http://ecowatch.com/climate-change-news/" target="_blank"><em>climate change</em></a><em> and </em><a href="http://ecowatch.com/business/renewables/" target="_blank"><em>clean energy</em></a><em> news, you can follow Climate Nexus on </em><a href="https://twitter.com/ClimateNexus" target="_blank"><em>Twitter</em></a><em> and </em><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ClimateNexus/" target="_blank"><em>Facebook</em></a><em>, and sign up for daily </em><a href="http://climatenexus.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=d1f5797e59060083034310930&id=7c84c08aaa" target="_blank"><em>Hot News</em></a><em>.</em></p>
Read More
Show Less
CBS Evening News
Toxic waste and pollution are emerging as a top concern as cleanup continued in Houston over the long weekend.
Owners of the Arkema chemical plant in Crosby, which suffered multiple explosions and fires last week, announced Sunday it would conduct controlled burns of the rest of the chemicals stored at the damaged facility as a "proactive measure."
<p style="">According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (<a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/epa">EPA</a>), at least 13 Superfund sites in the Houston area have been damaged by <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/flooding">flooding</a>. Runoff from chemical plants and oil and gas facilities has also mixed with the city's overflowing sewage system to create a toxic soup in the remaining floodwaters, causing concerns around <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/drinking-water">drinking water</a> systems. And filings accumulated by the <a href="http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/" target="_blank">Center for Biological Diversity</a> estimate that over one million pounds of toxic pollutants from damaged oil and gas and chemical facilities, including several types of carcinogens, have been released into the air since the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/hurricane-harvey">hurricane</a> made landfall.</p><p style="">"We've never seen precipitation to this level at any Superfund site," Jennifer Horney, an associate professor of epidemiology at Texas A&M University told <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/nidhisubbaraman/harvey-texas-superfund-spat?utm_term=.mayLXp8ZGQ#.chLxjoy0X3" target="_blank">BuzzFeed</a>. "The main problem is that we don't know what to expect."</p><p style="">"We don't have any precedent to figuring out what the cumulative affect is going to be on someone's health," Horney added. "They're not going to get <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/cancer">cancer</a> tomorrow—they may get asthma in three months."</p><p style=""><strong>For a deeper dive:</strong></p><p style="">General pollution: <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/e3b8d15a-9144-11e7-a9e6-11d2f0ebb7f0" target="_blank">FT</a>, <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/surveying-toxic-waste-sites-flooded-harvey/" target="_blank">PBS NewsHour</a>. Superfund: <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/nidhisubbaraman/harvey-texas-superfund-spat?utm_term=.mayLXp8ZGQ#.chLxjoy0X3" target="_blank">Buzzfeed</a>, <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/349012-epa-says-13-superfund-sites-possibly-damaged-after-harvey" target="_blank">The Hill</a>. Arkema: <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/arkema-to-ignite-additional-unstable-chemicals-at-crosby-texas-plant-1504477793" target="_blank">WSJ</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/energy-environment/city-struggles-to-restore-water-service-in-harvey-aftermath/2017/09/02/bf88a372-903c-11e7-9c53-6a169beb0953_story.html?utm_term=.6554c164bd96" target="_blank">AP</a>. Floodwaters: <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/energy-environment/harveys-floodwaters-mix-a-foul-brew-of-sewage-chemicals/2017/09/04/b17b4fa6-9126-11e7-8482-8dc9a7af29f9_story.html?utm_term=.a8b1c1663ccc" target="_blank">AP</a>. Air pollutants: <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/09/04/chemical-companies-have-already-released-1-million-pounds-of-extra-air-pollutants-thanks-to-harvey/?utm_term=.d07c5f838b69" target="_blank">Washington Post</a><br></p><p style=""><em>For more </em><a href="http://ecowatch.com/climate-change-news/" target="_blank"><em>climate change</em></a><em> and </em><a href="http://ecowatch.com/business/renewables/" target="_blank"><em>clean energy</em></a><em> news, you can follow Climate Nexus on </em><a href="https://twitter.com/ClimateNexus" target="_blank"><em>Twitter</em></a><em> and </em><a href="https://www.facebook.com/ClimateNexus/" target="_blank"><em>Facebook</em></a><em>, and sign up for daily </em><a href="http://climatenexus.us4.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=d1f5797e59060083034310930&id=7c84c08aaa" target="_blank"><em>Hot News</em></a><em>.</em><br></p>
Read More
Show Less