America's Whipsaw Weather Future

How extreme weather is becoming extremely extreme.

Shows how small shifts in global temperature can have a big impact on our weather. We are firmly in the New Climate side of the curve.

A hotter climate = extremely extreme weather.

This year’s U.S. hurricane season causes over $500 billion in damages and economic losses.

Exceptional 1-in-500-years rainfall events have become a regular occurrence. Extreme rainfall events with up to 14 inches of rain falling in 24 hours have increased by 60%. This has led to many catastrophic flooding events. For example, the Great Vermont Flood of 2023 caused 12 deaths and $2.2 billion in damages.

Need-to-Know: There is no safe place from the impacts of our ever-increasing carbon pollution.

Today’s extreme weather has no parallel in the past 1,000 years based on detailed analysis of five different data sets, according to a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters.

America and most of the world will lurch from unprecedented drought to record flooding, wildfires, powerful storms, and heatwaves over the next two decades.

Our key result is really how quickly damaging weather conditions are changing around the world.

Carly Iles, Senior Researcher at the CICERO Center for International Climate Research in Oslo, Norway:

Measurements of heat waves over the past 50 years.

Most of the tropics and subtropics will see temperature and precipitation increases exceeding two standard deviations in the near term. These increases will happen rapidly, faster than at any time in human history, making it difficult to prepare or adapt.

Total economic costs have been averaging more than $400 billion a year globally, according to a 2022 estimate by Verisk, a global risk-analysis firm. It’s already more than that and is going higher.

Need-to-Know: Our societies were built for a climate that’s long gone.

Costs of extreme weather are soaring because our cities and towns, roads, bridges, sewers, food production, and other vital infrastructure were built around a climate that no longer exists.

Need-to-Know: Our values determine our culture and economic system

The underlying reason we’re in this mess has to do with our values. to survive and possibly thrive in the coming decades requires living by values long ignored or considered irrelevant in the wider modern world:

• Wonder

• Gratitude

• Respect

• Cooperation

• Equity

• Reciprocity

• Spirituality

These are not our culture's dominant values, which is why we’re in this mess.

Until next time, be well.

Stephen

For more, see:

No Safe Place: We're paying a heavy price for our collective carbon pollution

Extreme Rain = Extreme Flooding: Measurements show rainfall is increasingly torrential