With Tropical Storm Debby unleashing a weeklong deluge along parts of the Eastern Seaboard, I’ve been thinking about an area of the country that isn’t always top of mind when it comes to the most severe effects of climate change.
Sure, the West has droughts and fires. Yes, the Midwest has floods and violent winds. And it’s true, the Northeast is experiencing intensifying humidity and sea level rise.
But the 11 Southeastern states are uniquely susceptible to much of that and more.
This week has laid bare the region’s vulnerability. Debby exploded from a whisper of a tropical disturbance into a soaking, slow-moving hurricane in a matter of days. The result has been neighborhoods underwater in Sarasota, Fla., tornadoes in North Carolina and extensive floods in areas from the Florida Panhandle to central Virginia.
“When you look at, like, the variety of different stressors that climate change brings, the Southeast experiences each and every one of them,” said Jeremy Hoffman, the director of climate justice at Groundwork USA, a nonprofit organization that works to fortify low-income areas. “And most of the time, it’s the most intense version of the expected change.”
The fastest rate of sea level rise in the United States is happening in the Southeast. Norfolk, Va., is experiencing the most rapidly rising seas on the East Coast, a phenomenon that threatens not only the city’s residents and businesses, but also the Navy’s vast operations in the area.
Hoffman called sea level rise a “background stressor” that exacerbated the other damaging effects of climate change. Rising seas make it that much easier for floods to occur, and they contribute to erosion that is threatening some seaside communities. The overpumping of groundwater is making things worse, as land along the East Coast slumps into the ocean.
The Southeast is also particularly humid. As we wrote earlier this summer, “sticky” heat, which involves both high temperatures and high humidity, is exceptionally dangerous. Humidity makes it harder for the human body to sweat, which in turn makes it harder for the body to cool down. “All heat is dangerous,” Hoffman said. “But humidity in the Southeast adds a layer that doesn’t exist anywhere else.”
Hoffman was the lead author of the chapter on the Southeast in the U.S. government’s most recent National Climate Assessment. He notes in the report that wet-bulb globe temperature — a measure of heat, humidity, wind and sunlight — has already increased in the Southeast because of human-caused climate change, and it is expected to keep rising in the decades ahead.
By 2050, much of the region may experience temperatures of 95 degrees Fahrenheit or higher on an additional 20 to 50 days, and possibly more, each year.
Then there is nontropical extreme precipitation. While hurricanes and other tropical storms may pose the most extreme threats, the Southeast is also getting battered by weather fronts that move across the country and unleash torrential rains in the region.
A study in 2019 by professors at Columbia University found that the Southeast experienced a 40 percent increase in precipitation during the fall over the last 124 years. “This could have serious implications for flood risk down the road, particularly because the Southeast contains many areas susceptible to extreme flooding,” Daniel Bishop, a bioclimatologist and a lead author of the study, said at the time.
Sprawl and population growth are making matters worse. The Southeast is growing faster than the United States overall, with states like Florida, Georgia and South Carolina experiencing major influxes of new residents.
That means more people vulnerable to extreme heat, more property at risk of being damaged, more costly disasters and more development near the coast, where the seas are rising. All of that growth also means more pavement: This reduces the amount of permeable ground, which can lead to more floods.
Some communities are starting to adapt. Miami-Dade County has hired a chief heat officer, who is looking into ways to better prepare a county of 2.6 million people for the extreme heat that is becoming a fixture in southern Florida.
Princeville, N.C., one of the oldest towns in the U.S. that was chartered by freed slaves, is relocating to higher ground with the assistance of federal funds after a series of hurricanes.
In Palm Beach County, Fla., officials constructed a new 60,000-acre-foot reservoir to capture and temporarily store peak storm-water flow. And in Richmond, Va., the city has installed additional shade structures at public bus stops.
But the challenges across the Southeast remain daunting. A legacy of racist housing policies has left some neighborhoods vulnerable to the worst effects of climate change.
“Black communities and communities of color in the Southeast are disproportionately exposed to climate stressors,” Hoffman said. “Our cities are not created by accident. They have been shaped by decisions and things like redlining.”
And with climate change an active front in today’s culture wars, some Republican politicians are working against efforts to promote renewable energy and prepare for extreme weather. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis recently signed a law that prohibited the construction of offshore wind turbines in state waters and would repeal state grant programs that encourage energy conservation and renewable energy.
As Debby continues its slow-motion crawl up the Atlantic coast, the receding floodwaters should serve as one more reminder that the Southeast in particular needs to prepare for the effects of climate change. “Regardless of who you vote for,” Hoffman said, “the water is here.”
Warnings about the Great Barrier Reef
This generation will probably see the demise of the Great Barrier Reef unless humanity acts with far more urgency to rein in climate change, according to scientists in Australia who released new research on heat in the ocean surrounding the reef.
The Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral reef system in the world and is often called the largest living structure on Earth. The study, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, found that recent extreme temperatures in the Coral Sea were the highest in at least 400 years, as far back as the researchers’ analysis could reach.
It included modeling that showed what had been driving those extremes: Greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans burning fossil fuels and destroying natural places that store carbon, like forests. Read more. — Catrin Einhorn
3 more things to know
Texas companies are paying buyers to take their natural gas. The fuel is so abundant that it has traded below zero for much of the year in West Texas, home to the country’s largest oil field. Negative prices are becoming more common in electricity markets, highlighting a big challenge in the transition to cleaner forms of energy meant to address climate change.
A third of carbon credits fail a key test. Companies buy carbon credits tied to renewable energy projects to compensate for their own pollution, but the market that trades these credits has long faced a credibility crisis. This week, according to Reuters, the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market announced that around one-third of the credits it evaluated did not meet its new standards.
E.V.s and hybrids are set to exceed half of all car sales in China for the first time, Bloomberg reported. Car companies sold 879,000 electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids, most likely 50.8 percent of total car sales, to Chinese consumers last month, according to preliminary figures released by the China Passenger Car Association. Chinese automakers have been increasingly pushing into markets around the world, including in Europe.
