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US counts the cost of nine months of unprecedented weather extremes
John Vidal, The Guardian
As deadly fires continue to burn across bone-dry Texas and eight inches of rain from tropical storm Lee falls on New Orleans, the US is beginning to count the cost of nine months of unprecedented weather extremes.
Ever since a massive blizzard causing $2bn of damage paralysed cities from Chicago to the north-east in January, nearly every month has been marked by a $1b+-weather catastrophe. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric administration (Noaa), there have been 10 major disasters already this year, leaving more than 700 people dead and property damage of over $35bn (£22bn).
In the past 31 years the mainland states have suffered 99 weather-related disasters where overall damages and economic costs were over $1bn. This year has seen three times as many than as usual.
Noaa will release its August data next week but Summer 2011 is expected to be the warmest on record. Chris Burt, author and leading weather historian, has complied a list of more than 40 cities and towns that have experienced record temperatures this year…
(5 September 2011 2011)
Insurance Companies Admit to Being Unprepared for Climate Change
Gloria Gonzalez, Environmental Finance
The vast majority of insurers are unprepared to handle climate risks even though they acknowledge the impact of climate change on extreme weather events, according to a report by investor coalition Ceres.
In 2009, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) approved a mandatory climate risk disclosure standard for insurers, but it was later weakened in some states, which made participation voluntary and non public. Using data submitted by 88 insurers to regulators in six states, Boston-based Ceres, a coalition of investors and environmental groups, gauged the extent to which insurers see climate change as a key risk factor in their businesses.
Major insurers such as Allianz, Munich Re and Swiss Re have been warning about the potential consequences of climate change for years. But the insurance sector has generally failed to address the climate risks that pose a significant threat to its financial health and disclosure of climate-related impacts across the industry has been lacking, the report found.
(2 September 2011)
Climate cycles drive civil war
Quirin Schiermeier, Nature Journal
Natural climate cycles seem to have a striking influence on war and peace around the equator. Tropical countries face double the risk of armed conflict and civil war breaking out during warm, dry El Niño years than during the cooler La Niña phase of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), according to an analysis published today in Nature.
The study throws light on the hotly contested issue of whether climate change has any notable effect on violence and societal stability, particularly in poor countries. The authors of several popular books have previously proposed a link, but there are disagreements within the scientific literature over whether a robust climate signal can be detected in conflict statistics.
Previous studies have focused on the question of how anthropogenic climate change might increase conflict risk. A 2009 study2 by economist Marshall Burke at the University of California, Berkeley, and his co-workers found that the probability of armed conflict in sub-Saharan Africa was about 50% higher than normal in some unusually warm years since 1981. But critics point to statistical problems — for instance when linking possibly random local temperature and rainfall variations with outbreaks of civil war — that may have resulted in a false appearance of causality.
To overcome this problem, Solomon Hsiang, an economist currently at Princeton University in New Jersey, and his colleagues opted to look at how historical changes in the global, rather than local, climate affect conflict risk…
(24 August 2011)
The mighty Missouri River: the flooding and the damage done
David Bailey and David Hendee, Reuters
Shortly before Memorial Day, a summer of unprecedented flooding from Montana to Missouri along the Missouri River started washing away interstate highway lanes and swamping rail lines as it routed thousands of people from their homes.
Flooding continues this Labor Day weekend and is expected not to end for several more weeks. As the water recedes, the extent of damage from three months of flooding is showing up…
“We are just now, as the river is going back, really seeing what the damage is,” Pierre Mayor Laurie Gill said.
Along the riverbanks, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimates the cost of repairing its levees and patching up its dams from Montana to Nebraska could top $1 billion…
Iowa road officials don’t expect floodwater to recede enough to assess damage along all of I-29 until mid October.
Floodwater flowed across Iowa Highway 2 between I-29 and Nebraska City, Nebraska, all summer. Engineers expect to find nothing but concrete debris when the water goes down.
The cost of I-29 repairs alone could be tens of millions of dollars, according to the Iowa Department of Transportation, but they hope to open the route by the end of the year…
(3 September, 2011)
Texas wildfires destroy at least 500 homes
Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times
A massive central Texas wildfire roared through ranchland and suburbs Monday, destroying nearly 500 homes — a state record for a single fire — as Gov. Rick Perry appealed for federal assistance to fight at least 63 blazes throughout the drought-dried state.
The pine forests of central and eastern Texas, the northern panhandle and the southern Houston suburbs have been hit by scores of fires that have destroyed 1,091 homes and consumed 3.6 million acres, roughly the size of Connecticut, since the fire season began in November. As the fires worsened this weekend, a woman and her 18-month-old died Sunday in a burning mobile home in Gregg County in eastern Texas.
On Monday, wind gusts generated by Tropical Storm Lee — which flooded some areas along the Gulf Coast — turned devilish in several parts of Texas and fanned the state’s largest and most destructive fire in Bastrop County, about 30 miles east of Austin…
(6 September, 2011)
