* The Antarctic ice sheet has been strongly decreasing since 2016.
* If left unchecked, the complete melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet would cause a global sea level increase of 3.3 metres in the future, says an expert.
* At present, the world is heading towards a warming of 2.8C by the end of this century.
* The Antarctic ice sheet will therefore continue to melt and contribute to sea level rise, which will test the adaptive capacity of humanity.
The consequences of the collapsing ice sheet
The sustained melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet could indicate that an unstable retreat (which reinforces itself) is underway or imminent. However, there is high uncertainty about this phenomenon.
The mechanism that would explain this unstable retreat is known as Marine Ice Sheet Instability.
If the bed, where the ice sheet lies, slopes down towards the interior, it destabilizes the position of the grounding line — zone where this ice sheet starts to float. The thinning of the ice shelf causes this grounding line to retreat, which leads to an influx of ice from the ice sheet to the sea. This, subsequently, causes the thinning of the ice shelf and so on and so forth.
The bottom line is that the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet contributes to and will continue to contribute to sea level rise for a long time, which will test the adaptive capacity of humanity.
The sea level increase by 2100 will particularly affect the tropical countries. And so, what happens in the Antarctic will definitely not stay in the Antarctic.
February 2023 – temperature highlights:
* February 2023 was the fifth warmest globally
* Most of Europe had above-average air temperatures, particularly northern Norway and Sweden, and the Svalbard region
* Above-average temperatures occurred in the eastern United States, northern Russia, and in Pakistan and India
* Below-average temperatures were experienced across the Iberian Peninsula, Türkiye, the western United States, * Canada, northeast Russia, and northern Australia
February 2023 – Sea ice highlights:
* Antarctic sea ice reached its lowest monthly extent in the satellite data record, at 34% below the average for February, breaking the previous record of February 2017.
* Antarctic daily sea ice extent also reached an all-time minimum, surpassing the previous record set in February 2022.
* Sea ice concentrations were much below-average in all sectors of the Southern Ocean.
* Arctic sea ice extent was 4% below average, ranking 2nd lowest for February in the satellite data record, jointly with February 2016 and 2017.
* Arctic sea ice concentrations were most below-average in the Barents Sea and Svalbard region.
Sea-level Rise: Greenland and the Collapse of the Antarctic Ice Sheet
by Daniel Brouse and Sidd Mukherjee
February 26, 2023
Climate change poses many risks to real estate values. In general, as energy is added to a system, the fluctuations in the system increase. So, we expect more storms, more droughts, more wildfires, more floods, more fluctuations of all kinds. What we are saying is that weather conditions will become more volatile due to the impact of humans. For the most part, weather events will become more extreme. Even the momentum of rain will cause a harder rain to fall damaging roofs, sidewalks, and driveways.
Climate change impacts threaten the stability of the US housing market. In response to growing concerns that increasing costs of flooding are not fully captured in property values, we quantify the magnitude of unpriced flood risk in the housing market by comparing the empirical and economically efficient prices for properties at risk. We find that residential properties exposed to flood risk are overvalued by US$121–US$237 billion, depending on the discount rate. In general, highly overvalued properties are concentrated in counties along the coast with no flood risk disclosure laws and where there is less concern about climate change. Low-income households are at greater risk of losing home equity from price deflation, and municipalities that are heavily reliant on property taxes for revenue are vulnerable to budgetary shortfalls.
Sidd Mukherjee said, “Pay close attention to Figure 4 in the main paper (top left map, zoom in to max.) The red boundaries are where properties are seriously overvalued and where tax revenues will collapse after flooding.
High Flood Risk Real Estate (The darker the color the higher the risk)
For years climate scientists have been trying to develop models for the real estate market impacted by rising sea levels. Florida is proving to be a microcosm of coastal real estate.
“Everybody thinks this is a God-given sea level,” Harold Wanless, who heads the University of Miami’s geology department told the Miami Herald. “There’s nothing special about where the sea level is right now.”
In fact, almost all scientists agree there is going to be significant sea level rise within the next century. Miami-Dade County has developed extremely detailed elevation maps because the county is only about 6 feet above sea level with the highest elevations under 25 feet. So far, sea levels have risen about 6 inches in Miami-Dade. The rate of rise is increasing at an exponential rate. The Southeast Florida Regional Climate Compact expects sea levels to rise 3 to 8 feet over the next century. NOAA’s extreme worst-case climate projections show sea levels rising by 14 feet in Southern Florida. Leading climate scientists expect sea levels to rise even higher and faster. “Once we have destabilized these ice sheets, there will be no stable coastline for centuries. I repeat: There will be no stable coastline for centuries. I apologize to the children,” said Sidd Mukherjee in his paper Longthaw.
It is certain that much of the coastline will not have to wait decades to see extreme sea level rise. In 2022, the West Coast of Florida saw a sudden sea level rise of up to 20 feet that destroyed 5,000 houses and damaged 35,000 additional homes. Insured damages were between $50 billion and 65 billion after Hurricane Ian made landfall with extreme winds, torrential rain, and storm surge. Uninsured damages were estimated at an additional $50 billion.
As sea levels rise, it is unclear if real estate built on higher ground will be able to retain any value. Florida real estate located at the higher elevations is still dependent on low-lying infrastructure. “You’re not going to have roads to get around on. You’re not going to have sewage treatment facilities. You won’t have garbage pickup. You won’t have a source of fresh water,” said Wanless. “All those things are the unfortunate reality of the future, and it won’t wait until sea levels have risen 20 feet.”
The inability to obtain flood insurance will likely be a leading driver in climate displacement out of Florida. If residents wait too long, they will likely become indigent climate refugees fleeing after letting their property values plunge to zero. Standard flood insurance only covers up to $250,000 of property damage, nothing below the first floor, and cumulative to the life of the property. (That is to say, if a previous homeowner made a claim of $100,000, the new homeowner is only covered for $150,000.) In the event a homeowner is able to obtain a flood insurance policy, the cost of the insurance has been increasing yearly. In 2022, FEMA announced its new pricing policy: “FEMA is updating the National Flood Insurance Program’s (NFIP) risk rating methodology through the implementation of a new pricing methodology called Risk Rating 2.0. The methodology leverages industry best practices and cutting-edge technology to enable FEMA to deliver rates that are actuarily sound, equitable, easier to understand and better reflect a property’s flood risk.” Flood insurance rates have quadrupled in Miami-Dade County.
FEMA also has the 50% rule — the 50% Rule is a regulation of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) that prohibits improvements to a structure exceeding 50% of its market value unless the entire structure is brought into full compliance with current flood regulations. Many existing structures cannot be rebuilt to their previous size, or for structures like trailers they cannot be rebuilt at all.
Quite a few private insurance companies have pulled out of Florida altogether. Five Florida insurance companies have already pulled out of the state. In addition, these private insurers are in liquidation:
AMERICAN CAPITAL ASSURANCE CORPORATION
AVATAR PROPERTY AND CASUALTY INSURANCE COMPANY
FEDNAT INSURANCE COMPANY
FLORIDA SPECIALTY INSURANCE COMPANY
GUARANTEE INSURANCE COMPANY
GULFSTREAM PROPERTY AND CASUALTY INSURANCE COMPANY
PHYSICIANS UNITED PLAN, INC.
SOUTHERN FIDELITY INSURANCE COMPANY
ST. JOHNS INSURANCE COMPANY, INC.
SUNSHINE STATE INSURANCE COMPANY
UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE INSURANCE COMPANY, INC.
UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE, INC.
WESTON PROPERTY & CASUALTY INSURANCE COMPANY
WINDHAVEN INSURANCE COMPANY
Most mortgages require homeowner’s insurance in addition to flood insurance for properties located in a flood zone. Washington, D.C. is finally addressing the concept of some areas being too vulnerable to insure and addressing a “Managed Retreat”.
Some Florida residents have already glimpsed the future and are moving out now. The Insider reports:
The Faasts had lived the kind of life you can only live in the Keys: Connie worked on commercial fishing boats and in a local aquarium, while Glenn owned a boat maintenance company and raced Jet Skis in his spare time. They had stuck it out in the Keys through several major storms, including 2005’s Hurricane Wilma, which brought five feet of water to their little island and totaled three of their cars; Connie still shudders when she remembers the image of her husband wading through the water around their house with snakes climbing all over him, clinging to him for shelter from the flood. The Faasts had second thoughts after that storm, but the Keys were paradise, and besides, they didn’t know where else they would go.
When Irma came 12 years later, though, the choice was much easier. During the evacuation, it took the Faasts a week to find a decaying hotel in Orlando where they could wait out the storm. As the hurricane passed over the center of the state, it knocked out their power, leaving them and their pets to spend the night in 100-degree heat without air conditioning. “That was it for us,” she said. They had to get out — not just out of the Keys, but out of Florida altogether.
In conclusion:
Do not buy real estate on or near floodplain. You can avoid being a climate refuge due to economic climate displacement. Make sure your property has land ingress and egress from the closest 1,000-year-floodplain. Do not invest in any property located near a coast. Do not invest in a property that is below sea level. Do not invest in real estate located in Florida.
“Mostly stay away from the coasts because of both wind and rain issues from weather systems spinning inland. Even if you are not in a floodplain, a couple feet of rain in a day will cut off roads and overwhelm your sump pumps. Not to speak of wind taking power and telecom down.” — Sidd Mukerhjee (February 5, 2018)
“The fact that official Washington is finally addressing the concept of some areas being too vulnerable to insure is noteworthy….”
“For decades, lawmakers and federal agencies in Washington, D.C., have resisted taking harsh action to pull federal insurance funding from especially vulnerable areas, even as climate change made a mockery of 100-year projections…. Now, in the wake of disasters including the deadly Kentucky floods and Hurricane Ian, official Washington is openly wrestling with what to do about the hundreds of thousands of people who are living in areas that climate change is making too risky to inhabit.”
“If large numbers of communities are rendered undesirable because of their climate, local and regional real estate markets could tank. Expensive public infrastructure like water treatment systems and roads could be abandoned or become obsolete as people relocate. Heavy taxpayer spending is likely. Yet many experts say that proactively steering people away from places climate change is making nonviable will seem a bargain compared with the costs of rebuilding in the shadow of past and future disasters, floods and droughts.”
“… as climate change makes disasters more frequent and severe, a once-taboo strategy known as “managed retreat” is getting more serious consideration in Congress and the federal government.”
“Human beings are terrible at assessing risk,” Kralicek (the emergency manager for Tulsa and Tulsa County) said. “We’re awful at it. Which is why things like casinos do so well.”
Recent federal policy changes might help to limit those losses. But until there’s a wholesale rethink of how — and where — cities, towns and counties develop, there will be more hardship.
“The piper is gonna come call, and at some point you got to pay,” Kralicek added. “And you just got to figure out who’s paying.”
Making people pay
One way to push people to make rational decisions is to force them to pay more if they don’t.
In October 2021, FEMA rolled out its long-awaited revamp to the federal flood insurance program, known as Risk Rating 2.0. The effort aims to align insurance premium pricing with the actual flood risk homes face. FEMA hopes doing so will limit losses to the chronically indebted, taxpayer-funded federal flood insurance program and also signal to would-be homeowners that some places face significant danger.
“There is no greater risk-communication tool than a pricing signal. When we distort the price, we distort their understanding of risk,” said Wright, the former FEMA flood insurance chief.
FEMA is updating the National Flood Insurance Program’s (NFIP) risk rating methodology through the implementation of a new pricing methodology called Risk Rating 2.0.
FEMA is committed to building a culture of preparedness across the nation. Purchasing flood insurance is the first line of defense against flood damage and a step toward a quicker recovery following a flood.
Since the 1970s, rates have been predominantly based on relatively static measurements, emphasizing a property’s elevation within a zone on a Flood Insurance Rate Map (FIRM).
This approach does not incorporate as many flooding variables as Risk Rating 2.0. Risk Rating 2.0 is not just a minor improvement, but a transformational leap forward. Risk Rating 2.0 enables FEMA to set rates that are fairer and ensures rate increases and decreases are both equitable.
FEMA is building on years of investment in flood hazard information by incorporating private sector data sets, catastrophe models and evolving actuarial science.
With Risk Rating 2.0, FEMA now has the capability and tools to address rating disparities by incorporating more flood risk variables. These include flood frequency, multiple flood types—river overflow, storm surge, coastal erosion and heavy rainfall—and distance to a water source along with property characteristics such as elevation and the cost to rebuild.
Currently, policyholders with lower-valued homes are paying more than their share of the risk while policyholders with higher-valued homes are paying less than their share of the risk. Because Risk Rating 2.0 considers rebuilding costs, FEMA can equitably distribute premiums across all policyholders based on home value and a property’s unique flood risk.
The report says if emissions aren’t brought down, the world will use up its 1.5-degree-Celsius carbon budget — the amount of CO2 we can emit and stay within 1.5C — within nine years. After go beyond 1.5C the amount of tipping points crossed will bring on irreversible and exponential increasing rates of catastrophic damage.
Global fossil CO2 emissions (including cement carbonation) further increased in 2022, being now slightly above their pre-COVID-19 pandemic 2019 level. The 2021 emission increase was 0.46 GtC yr−1 (1.7 GtCO2 yr−1), bringing 2021 emissions to 9.9 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1 (36.3 ± 1.8 GtCO2 yr−1), same as the 2019 emissions level. Preliminary estimates based on data available suggest fossil CO2 emissions continued to increase by 1.0 % in 2022 relative to 2021 (0.1 % to 1.9 %), bringing emissions of 10.0 GtC yr−1 (36.6 GtCO2 yr−1), slightly above the 2019 level.
Emissions from coal, oil, and gas in 2022 are expected to be above their 2021 levels (by 1.0 %, 2.2 % and −0.2 % respectively). Regionally, emissions in 2022 are expected to have decreased by 0.9 % in China (3.1 GtC, 11.4 GtCO2) and 0.8 % in the European Union (0.8 GtC, 2.8 GtCO2) but increased by 1.5 % in the United States (1.4 GtC, 5.1 GtCO2), 6 % in India (0.8 GtC, 2.9 GtCO2), and 1.7 % in the rest of the world (4.2 GtC, 15.4 GtCO2).
The United Nations says, “New UNESCO data highlight the accelerated melting of glaciers in World Heritage sites, with glaciers in a third of sites set to disappear by 2050. But it is still possible to save the other two thirds, if the rise in global temperatures does not exceed 1.5°C compared to the pre-industrial period.”
Glaciers across the globe – including the last ones in Africa – will be unavoidably lost by 2050 due to climate change.
Glaciers in a third of UN World Heritage sites will melt within three decades.
Mount Kilimanjaro’s last glaciers will vanish as will glaciers in the Alps and Yosemite National Park in the US.
They will melt regardless of the world’s actions to combat climate change.
50 UNESCO World Heritage sites are home to glaciers (A total of 18,600 glaciers have been identified in these 50 sites, covering around 66,000 km2), representing almost 10% of the Earth’s total glacierized area. They include the highest (next to Mt. Everest), the longest (in Alaska), and the last remaining glaciers in Africa, amongst others, giving a representative overview of the general situation of glaciers in the world.
But a new study by UNESCO, in partnership with IUCN, shows these glaciers have been retreating at an accelerated rate since 2000 due to CO2 emissions, which are warming temperatures. They are currently losing 58 billion tons of ice every year – equivalent to the combined annual water use of France and Spain– and are responsible for nearly 5% of observed global sea-level rise.
Only one effective solution: quickly reduce CO2 emissions
The report concludes that glaciers in a third of the 50 World Heritage sites are condemned to disappear by 2050, regardless of efforts to limit temperature increases. But it is still possible to save the glaciers in the remaining two thirds of sites if the rise in temperatures does not exceed 1.5°C compared to the pre-industrial period.
“We hope we might be wrong, but this is the hard science,” said UNESCO project officer Tales Carvalho Resende, one of the authors. “Glaciers are one of the valuable indicators of climate change, because they’re visible. This is something we can really see happening.”
The remaining glaciers in the other two thirds of UN World Heritage sites could be saved, but only if the world limits global warming to 1.5C, the authors say. Another UN report last week found that the world currently had “no credible pathway” to achieve that.
“What is quite unprecedented in the historical record is how quickly this is happening,” said Beata Csatho, a glaciologist from the University of Buffalo.
“In the middle of the 1900s, glaciers were quite stable,” she said. “Then there is this incredibly fast retreat.”
“This is really a call to take action at every level – not only at the political level, but at our level as human beings,” said Carvalho Resende.
“As Scambos and Wild gazed down from their Twin Otter plane this past January, they spotted several new tears in the shelf—three kilometers long and several hundred meters wide—where it lifts off the seafloor. Ragged cliffs of ice tilted 50 meters up into the air, exposing deep layers that had not seen daylight for thousands of years. “I think it’s losing contact with everything that used to be bracing it,” Scambos says. Not only is the ice shelf separating from its pinning point. As it speeds up, it is also stretching and tearing away from the glacier upstream.
The team was so alarmed that Pettit and Wild decided they will return this December to install a new instrument station: “BOB,” short for Breakup Observer. They hope BOB will survive long enough to record the final throes of the ice shelf as it fractures into shards. It might not take long.”
Greenland Rainfall and Albedo Feedback
The WMO (World Meteorological Organization) released the report State of the Climate in Europe 2021. “Temperatures in Europe have increased at more than twice the global average over the past 30 years — the highest of any continent in the world. As the warming trend continues, exceptional heat, wildfires, floods and other climate change impacts will affect society, economies and ecosystems, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).”
“Temperatures over Europe have warmed significantly over the 1991-2021 period, at an average rate of about +0.5℃ per decade. As a result, Alpine glaciers lost 30 meters in ice thickness from 1997 to 2021. The Greenland ice sheet is melting and contributing to accelerating sea level rise. In summer 2021, Greenland saw a melt event and the first-ever recorded rainfall at its highest point, Summit station.”
Does the rainfall have a significant impact? Yes; however, it is the Albedo Feedback that is of the most concern.
“It turns out that the rain itself wasn’t the most important factor”, says Prof. Jason Box from GEUS and lead author of the paper Greenland Ice Sheet Rainfall, Heat and Albedo Feedback Impacts From the Mid-August 2021 Atmospheric River reporting their results in Geophysical Research Letters.
“There is an irony. It’s not really the rain that did the damage to the snow and ice, it’s the darkening effect of the meltwater and how the heat from the event erased snow that had overlaid darker ice across the lower third of the ice sheet.”
“Unusually warm atmospheric rivers swept along Greenland in the late summer months, bringing potent melt conditions when the melt season was drawing to a close.”
“The researchers found that, between 19 and 20 August 2021, this melt caused the altitude of the ice sheet’s snowline near Kangerlussuaq to retreat in elevation by a whopping 788 metres, the snowline retreated, exposing a wide area of dark bare ice. Under normal circumstances, snow would cover and insulate this ice, but the snow melted suddenly and exposed the ice to heat, causing even more melting.”
“The authors conclude that the heatwave causing the rain event serves as an excellent example of ‘melt-albedo feedback that amplifies the melt impact of the initial melt perturbation'”.
The study explains how the Antarctic ice sheet has a river running under it. The headline “longer than the Thames” isn’t the thrust of the problem. Yes, it is adding a small amount to the rise in sea level. More importantly is not it’s length but rather its width that is critical to our survival. A very wide and thin layer of water is separating the ice sheet from the surface… accelerating the expected time for the collapse of the East Antarctic ice sheet. The surface temperature and tenths of a degree crossed over time is fairly irrelevant when compared to the collapse of the ice sheet. Before we reach +2C, the Antarctic ice sheet will collapse. When the ice sheet collapses, life as we know it will change. In many ways it will be similar to a meteor hitting the ocean. Dr. William Colgan said, “A collapse of the colossal east Antarctic ice sheet, would lead to a 52-metre rise in sea levels…” Besides the instant wiping out of all coast lines, there would likely be tsunamis and other impacts including an acceleration in global warming as the surface is turned from reflective ice to heat absorbing dark surfaces.
The study finds:
An unexpected river under the Antarctic ice sheet affects the flow and melting of ice, potentially accelerating ice loss as the climate warms.
The 460km-long river is revealed in a new study, which details how it collects water at the base of the Antarctic ice sheet from an area the size of Germany and France combined. Its discovery shows the base of the ice sheet has more active water flow than previously thought, which could make it more susceptible to changes in climate.
The discovery was made by researchers at Imperial College London, the University of Waterloo, Canada, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, and Newcastle University, with the details published today in Nature Geoscience.
Co-author Professor Martin Siegert, from the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London, said: “When we first discovered lakes beneath the Antarctic ice a couple of decades ago, we thought they were isolated from each other. Now we are starting to understand there are whole systems down there, interconnected by vast river networks, just as they might be if there weren’t thousands of metres of ice on top of them.
“The region where this study is based holds enough ice to raise the sea level globally by 4.3m. How much of this ice melts, and how quickly, is linked to how slippery the base of the ice is. The newly discovered river system could strongly influence this process.”
Water sources
Water can appear beneath ice sheets in two main ways: from surface meltwater running down through deep crevasses, or by melting at the base, caused by the natural heat of the Earth and friction as the ice moves over land.
However, the ice sheets around the north and south poles have different characteristics. In Greenland, the surface experiences strong melting over the summer months, where immense amounts of water channel down through deep crevasses called moulins.
The situations in the Greenland summer (left) and the new system found in Antarctica
In Antarctica, however, the surface doesn’t melt in sufficient quantities to create moulins, as the summers are still too cold. It was thought this meant that there was relatively little water at the base of the Antarctic ice sheets.
The new discovery turns this idea on its head, showing there is sufficient water from basal melt alone to create huge river systems under kilometres-thick ice.
Improving predictions
The discovery was made through a combination of airborne radar surveys that allow researchers to look beneath the ice and modelling of the ice sheet hydrology. The team focussed on a largely inaccessible and understudied area that includes ice from both the East and West Antarctic Ice Sheets and reaches the Weddell Sea.
That such a large system could be undiscovered until now is testament to how much we still need to learn about the continent, says lead researcher Dr Christine Dow from the University of Waterloo.
She said: “From satellite measurements we know which regions of Antarctica are losing ice, and how much, but we don’t necessarily know why. This discovery could be a missing link in our models. We could be hugely underestimating how quickly the system will melt by not accounting for the influence of these river systems.
“Only by knowing why ice is being lost can we make models and predictions of how the ice will react in the future under further global heating, and how much this could raise global sea levels.”
For example, the newly discovered river emerges into the sea beneath a floating ice shelf – where a glacier extending out from the land is buoyant enough to begin floating on the ocean water. The freshwater from the river however churns up warmer water towards the bottom of the ice shelf, melting it from below.
Co-author Dr Neil Ross, from the University of Newcastle, said: “Previous studies have looked at the interaction between the edges of ice sheets and ocean water to determine what melting looks like. However, the discovery of a river that reaches hundreds of kilometres inland driving some of these processes shows that we cannot understand the ice melt fully without considering the whole system: ice sheet, ocean, and freshwater.”
A changing Antarctica
The existence of large under-ice rivers also needs to be taken into account when predicting the possible consequences of climate change in the region. For example, if summers warm enough to cause enough surface melt that the water reaches the base of the ice sheet, it could have large effects on the river systems, potentially tipping Antarctica to a Greenland-like state, where ice loss is much faster.
There are also potential feedback loops that would accelerate ice loss. For example, if the ice starts to flow faster as water accumulated at the base, then this will increase friction where the ice runs over dry land, which could increase the amount of basal melting and water produced.
The team are now looking to gather more data about all these mechanisms from surveys to apply their models to other regions and provide a better understanding of how a changing Antarctica could change the planet.
The side effects of climate change are far reaching. Lee County, Florida is where hurricane Ian made landfall. Storm surges and subsequent flooding led to a spike in the potentially deadly infections caused by Vibrio vulnificus. The flesh eating species of bacteria is found in warm, brackish water.
One species, Vibrio vulnificus, can cause life-threatening wound infections. Many people with Vibrio vulnificus infection require intensive care or limb amputations, and about 1 in 5 people with this infection die, sometimes within a day or two of becoming ill.
Some Vibrio vulnificus infections lead to necrotizing fasciitis, a severe infection in which the flesh around an open wound dies. Some media reports call this kind of infection “flesh-eating bacteria,” said the CDC.
At least 29 cases and four deaths have been confirmed in Lee County this year as a result of such infections.
“The Florida Department of Health in Lee County is observing an abnormal increase in cases of Vibrio vulnificus infections as a result of exposure to the flood waters and standing waters following Hurricane Ian,” a spokesperson at the county health department said in a statement to CBS News on Monday, which noted that community members should “always be aware of the potential risks associated when exposing open wounds, cuts, or scratches on the skin to warm, brackish, or salt water.”
“Sewage spills, like those caused from Hurricane Ian, may increase bacteria levels,” the statement continued. “As the post storm situation evolves, individuals should take precautions against and infection and illness caused by Vibrio vulnificus.”
Severe natural disasters
Climate change has increased both the length and severity of the hurricane and wildfire seasons in the U.S., causing many insurance companies to increase rates or stop offering coverage in high-risk areas altogether. When there’s fewer companies doing business in a particular area, the ones left are forced to establish stricter underwriting rules and increase rates on new and existing customers.
Record catastrophe losses
There were 97 natural disasters resulting in $92 billion in insured losses in 2021, according to the Insurance Information Institute (III). This is up from 92 events totaling $74 billion in losses in 2020. As a result, insurers have had to increase rates to account for higher reconstruction costs in affected areas, and to make up for the record losses.
Without decisive action to mitigate climate change, frequent droughts will threaten jobs and agricultural yields in Oklahoma and Texas; extreme heat will devastate an already high proportion of vulnerable residents in Mississippi and Kentucky; and the number of homes with flood risk will increase significantly in Louisiana and Delaware, according to our 2021 Policygenius Best & Worst States for Climate Change Index.
Last October, FEMA revamped its program to more accurately assess flood risk, causing insurance premiums for some coastal properties to rise to $4,000 or $5,000 annually, up from just $700 or $800, Porter from First Street Foundation said.
These hikes may be prohibitively expensive for lower-income families or retirees, especially those who may be living in a property inherited from family, Wright said.
“These family houses have been around forever, and they may not have a mortgage, so flood insurance may not be required,” he said. “But they should have it anyway.”
