Category: Global Warming

bookmark_borderCost of Property Insurance in Florida

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Florida Politics reports in their article, As climate in Florida sets ‘new normal,’ cost of property insurance will separate haves, have-nots:

“Insurers believe that due to climate change, this is the new normal. They’re finding that catastrophic and non-catastrophic weather events are increasing in severity every year,” said Paul Handerhan, president of the Federal Association for Insurance Reform, a national nonprofit advocacy organization based in Fort Lauderdale.

The consequences of climate change not only include catastrophic — and increasingly expensive — weather such as hurricanes and wildfires, but also more everyday events such as storms that pelt residential and commercial properties with straight-line wind and hail.

The actuarially sound way to respond to the new normal is to raise rates, reduce coverage, or throw in the towel, as eight property insurance companies in Florida have done since 2018. Just this week, three others asked state insurance regulators to approve hefty rate increases — as high as 49 percent on policyholders not among the tens of thousands who recently lost coverage altogether due to non-renewals.

Over time, Handerhan said, property insurance coverage will become so expensive that only the wealthiest of the wealthy can “afford to live in paradise.”

“This market is completely,100% out of control,” said Barry Gilway, president, CEO, and executive director of Citizens, during the board of governors meeting. “It all has to do with the total collapse of the overall Florida marketplace, and that collapse continues.”

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bookmark_borderObserved Increases in Well-mixed Greenhouse Gases

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2021 saw the largest emissions of greenhouse gases in human history.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported:
The Current State of the Climate

* It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred.

* Observed increases in well-mixed greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations since around 1750 are unequivocally caused by human activities. Since 2011 (measurements reported in AR5), concentrations have continued to increase in the atmosphere, reaching annual averages of 410 parts per million (ppm) for carbon dioxide (CO 2), 1866 parts per billion (ppb) for methane (CH 4), and 332 ppb for nitrous oxide (N 2O) in 2019.6 Land and ocean have taken up a near-constant proportion (globally about 56% per year) of CO2 emissions from human activities over the past six decades, with regional differences (high confidence).

* Each of the last four decades has been successively warmer than any decade that preceded it since 1850.

* Human influence is very likely the main driver of the global retreat of glaciers since the 1990s and the decrease in Arctic sea ice area between 1979–1988 and 2010–2019 (decreases of about 40% in September and about 10% in March).

* It is virtually certain that the global upper ocean (0–700 m) has warmed since the 1970s and extremely likely that human influence is the main driver. It is virtually certain that human-caused CO2 emissions are the main driver of current global acidifcation of the surface open ocean.

Anthropological Climate Change and Pollution

bookmark_border1 in 6 deaths Worldwide Attributed to Pollution

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* Pollution is the largest environmental cause of disease and premature death in the world today
* 1 in 6 deaths worldwide attributed to pollution
* 9 million people per year die from pollution

The Lancet Commission on pollution and health was updated for 2022:

Pollution and health: a progress update 2022 PDF

Key messages
• Over the past two decades, deaths caused by the modern forms of pollution (eg, ambient air pollution and toxic chemical pollution) have increased by 66%, driven by industrialisation, uncontrolled urbanisation, population growth, fossil fuel combustion, and an absence of adequate national or international chemical policy.
• Despite declines in deaths from household air and water pollution, pollution still causes more than 9 million deaths each year globally. This number has not changed since 2015.
• More than 90% of pollution-related deaths occur in low-income and middle-income countries.
• Key areas in which focus is needed include air pollution, lead poisoning, and chemical pollution. Air pollution causes over 6∙5 million deaths each year globally, and this number is increasing. Lead and other chemicals are responsible for 1∙8 million deaths each year globally, which is probably an undercounted figure.
• Most countries have done little to deal with this enormous public health problem. Although high-income countries have controlled their worst forms of pollution and linked pollution control to climate change mitigation, only a few low-income and middle-income countries have been able to make pollution a priority, devoted resources to pollution control, or made progress. Likewise, pollution control receives little attention in either official development assistance or global philanthropy.
• The triad of pollution, climate change, and biodiversity loss are the key global environmental issues of our time. These issues are intricately linked and solutions to each will benefit the others.
• We cannot continue to ignore pollution. We are going backwards.

Climate Change and Pollution Health Impacts

bookmark_borderFrequency of Flash Floods

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As the climate warms, the air holds more moisture. Theoretically, there is a 7% increase in atmospheric water holding capacity per degree Celsius warming. A recent study published in Nature The conterminous United States are projected to become more prone to flash floods in a high-end emissions scenario suggests extreme precipitation might be increasing even more due to changes in storm structure, storm dynamics, and large-scale weather patterns resulting in even more severe flash flooding that previously projected.

“Flash floods are largely driven by high rainfall rates in convective storms that are projected to increase in frequency and intensity in a warmer climate in the future. US floods are becoming 7.9% flashier by the end of the century assuming a high-emissions scenario. The Southwest (+10.5%) has the greatest increase in flashiness among historical flash flood hot spots, and the central US (+8.6%) is emerging as a new flash flood hot spot. Additionally, future flash flood-prone frontiers are advancing northwards.”

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bookmark_borderHomeowners Insurance and Extreme Weather Events

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Homeonwers insurance is becoming more expensive or even unavailable due to the increase frequency and intensity of extreme weather events caused by climate change.

NOLA newspapers reports:
Louisiana’s homeowners insurance market straining under weight of 600,000 claims
Two active Atlantic hurricane seasons in a row have made some insurers insolvent.

It’s the latest sign of a deepening crisis taking shape once again in Louisiana, where the legacy of Hurricane Katrina and other storms still looms large. As big national insurers pulled out of coastal areas in the southeast, homeowners increasingly relied on less-regulated regional insurance providers to make them whole in case of catastrophe. Now, even some of those companies — once willing to make a risky bet — are leaving.

In Calcasieu Parish, nearly three out of every four occupied homes filed an insurance claim after Hurricane Laura, according to a Times-Picayune analysis of state and census data. One in four filed claims again less than two months later after Delta made landfall about 10 miles west of where Laura came ashore.

Failures not ‘anomalies’
The flurry of storms was too much for some insurance companies to bear. The Department of Insurance has already seized control of three firms because they could not afford to pay claims.

“I wish I could say I thought they were anomalies, but I don’t,” said Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon. He said a fourth insurer that’s in dire financial straits will likely be placed under the care of the Louisiana Insurance Guaranty Association.

“I would say our property insurance market is in crisis,” said Jeff Albright, CEO of the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of Louisiana. “The sad part of it is we’re reliant on these small, thinly capitalized companies instead of having large national carriers that have lots of assets and can weather the big storms.”

Donelon said five companies have withdrawn entirely from the state and another five or six have stopped writing policies. As a result, Donelon said he expects the number of policies under Louisiana Citizens to double this year as the state launches headlong into another hurricane season.

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bookmark_borderUN Climate Report: It’s Now or Never

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A new flagship UN report on climate change indicating that harmful carbon emissions from 2010-2019 have never been higher in human history, is proof that the world is on a “fast track” to disaster, António Guterres has warned, with scientists arguing that it’s ‘now or never’ to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.

Reacting to the latest findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN Secretary-General insisted that unless governments everywhere reassess their energy policies, the world will be uninhabitable.

His comments reflected the IPCC’s insistence that all countries must reduce their fossil fuel use substantially, extend access to electricity, improve energy efficiency and increase the use of alternative fuels, such as hydrogen.

Unless action is taken soon, some major cities will be under water, Mr. Guterres said in a video message, which also forecast “unprecedented heatwaves, terrifying storms, widespread water shortages and the extinction of a million species of plants and animals”.
Horror story

The UN chief added: “This is not fiction or exaggeration. It is what science tells us will result from our current energy policies. We are on a pathway to global warming of more than double the 1.5-degree (Celsius, or 2.7-degrees Fahreinheit) limit” that was agreed in Paris in 2015.

Providing the scientific proof to back up that damning assessment, the IPCC report – written by hundreds of leading scientists and agreed by 195 countries – noted that greenhouse gas emissions generated by human activity, have increased since 2010 “across all major sectors globally”.

In an op-ed article penned for the Washington Post, Mr. Guterres described the latest IPCC report as “a litany of broken climate promises”, which revealed a “yawning gap between climate pledges, and reality.”

He wrote that high-emitting governments and corporations, were not just turning a blind eye, “they are adding fuel to the flames by continuing to invest in climate-choking industries. Scientists warn that we are already perilously close to tipping points that could lead to cascading and irreversible climate effects.”

IPCC Climate Change Mitigation 2022

The Human Induced Climate Change Experiment

bookmark_border99% of Population Breathes Air Pollution

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7 Million people die from air pollution related illness every year.

“After surviving a pandemic, it is unacceptable to still have 7 million preventable deaths and countless preventable lost years of good health due to air pollution,” said Dr. Maria Neira, head of WHO’s department of environment, climate change and health. “Yet too many investments are still being sunk into a polluted environment rather than in clean, healthy air.”

WHO reports:
Almost the entire global population (99%) breathes air that exceeds WHO air quality limits, and threatens their health. A record number of over 6000 cities in 117 countries are now monitoring air quality, but the people living in them are still breathing unhealthy levels of fine particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide, with people in low and middle-income countries suffering the highest exposures.

The findings have prompted the World Health Organization to highlight the importance of curbing fossil fuel use and taking other tangible steps to reduce air pollution levels.

WHO Air Quality Database and Report 2022

The Human Induced Climate Change Experiment

bookmark_borderClimate Change Feedback Loops: Brown Carbon, Wildfires, and Arctic Melting

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Feedback loops accelerate climate change at an exponential rate. In this case, brown carbon from wildfires warms the arctic. The warmer arctic absorbs more heat causing more wildfires. In turn, more wildfires cause more brown carbon resulting in a warmer arctic. The cycle keeps reinforcing itself as it repeats.

A study published in One Earth entitled “Brown carbon from biomass burning imposes strong circum-Arctic warming” reports:
• Brown carbon imposes strong Arctic warming
• Warming effect of water-soluble brown carbon is ∼30% relative to black carbon
• Biomass burning (wildfires) contributes ∼60% of the warming effect of brown carbon
• Warming climate leads to increased wildfires that reinforce Arctic warming

Rapid warming in the Arctic has a huge impact on the global environment. Atmospheric brown carbon (BrC) is one of the least understood and uncertain warming agents due to a scarcity of observations. Here, we performed direct observations of atmospheric BrC and quantified its light-absorbing properties during a 2-month circum-Arctic cruise in summer of 2017. Through observation-constrained modeling, we show that BrC, mainly originated from biomass burning in the mid- to high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere (∼60%), can be a strong warming agent in the Arctic region, especially in the summer, with an average radiative forcing of ∼90 mW m−2 (∼30% relative to black carbon). As climate change is projected to increase the frequency, intensity, and spread of wildfires, we expect BrC to play an increasing role in Arctic warming in the future.

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bookmark_borderClimate Change: Adapt or Die

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United Nations Press Release — UN scientists on Monday delivered a stark warning about the impact of climate change on people and the planet, saying that ecosystem collapse, species extinction, deadly heatwaves and floods are among the “unavoidable multiple climate hazards” the world will face over the next two decades due to global warming.

UN-IPCC-Climate-Change-March-2022 PDF

Climate change: a threat to human wellbeing and health of the planet. Taking action now can secure our future

BERLIN, Feb 28 – Human-induced climate change is causing dangerous and widespread disruption in nature and affecting the lives of billions of people around the world, despite efforts to reduce the risks. People and ecosystems least able to cope are being hardest hit, said scientists in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, released today.

“This report is a dire warning about the consequences of inaction,” said Hoesung Lee, Chair of the IPCC. “It shows that climate change is a grave and mounting threat to our wellbeing and a healthy planet. Our actions today will shape how people adapt and nature responds to increasing climate risks.”

The world faces unavoidable multiple climate hazards over the next two decades with global warming of 1.5°C (2.7°F). Even temporarily exceeding this warming level will result in additional severe impacts, some of which will be irreversible. Risks for society will increase, including to infrastructure and low-lying coastal settlements.

The Summary for Policymakers of the IPCC Working Group II report, Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability was approved on Sunday, February 27 2022, by 195 member governments of the IPCC, through a virtual approval session that was held over two weeks starting on February 14.

Urgent action required to deal with increasing risks

Increased heatwaves, droughts and floods are already exceeding plants’ and animals’ tolerance thresholds, driving mass mortalities in species such as trees and corals. These weather extremes are occurring simultaneously, causing cascading impacts that are increasingly difficult to manage. They have exposed millions of people to acute food and water insecurity, especially in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, on Small Islands and in the Arctic.

To avoid mounting loss of life, biodiversity and infrastructure, ambitious, accelerated action is required to adapt to climate change, at the same time as making rapid, deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. So far, progress on adaptation is uneven and there are increasing gaps between action taken and what is needed to deal with the increasing risks, the new report finds. These gaps are largest among lower-income populations.

The Working Group II report is the second instalment of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), which will be completed this year.

“This report recognizes the interdependence of climate, biodiversity and people and integrates natural, social and economic sciences more strongly than earlier IPCC assessments,” said Hoesung Lee. “It emphasizes the urgency of immediate and more ambitious action to address climate risks. Half measures are no longer an option.”

Safeguarding and strengthening nature is key to securing a liveable future

There are options to adapt to a changing climate. This report provides new insights into nature’s potential not only to reduce climate risks but also to improve people’s lives.

“Healthy ecosystems are more resilient to climate change and provide life-critical services such as food and clean water”, said IPCC Working Group II Co-Chair Hans-Otto Pörtner. “By restoring degraded ecosystems and effectively and equitably conserving 30 to 50 per cent of Earth’s land, freshwater and ocean habitats, society can benefit from nature’s capacity to absorb and store carbon, and we can accelerate progress towards sustainable development, but adequate finance and political support are essential.”

Scientists point out that climate change interacts with global trends such as unsustainable use of natural resources, growing urbanization, social inequalities, losses and damages from extreme events and a pandemic, jeopardizing future development.

“Our assessment clearly shows that tackling all these different challenges involves everyone – governments, the private sector, civil society – working together to prioritize risk reduction, as well as equity and justice, in decision-making and investment,” said IPCC Working Group II Co-Chair Debra Roberts.

“In this way, different interests, values and world views can be reconciled. By bringing together scientific and technological know-how as well as Indigenous and local knowledge, solutions will be more effective. Failure to achieve climate resilient and sustainable development will result in a sub-optimal future for people and nature.”

Cities: Hotspots of impacts and risks, but also a crucial part of the solution

This report provides a detailed assessment of climate change impacts, risks and adaptation in cities, where more than half the world’s population lives. People’s health, lives and livelihoods, as well as property and critical infrastructure, including energy and transportation systems, are being increasingly adversely affected by hazards from heatwaves, storms, drought and flooding as well as slow-onset changes, including sea level rise.

“Together, growing urbanization and climate change create complex risks, especially for those cities that already experience poorly planned urban growth, high levels of poverty and unemployment, and a lack of basic services,” Debra Roberts said.

“But cities also provide opportunities for climate action – green buildings, reliable supplies of clean water and renewable energy, and sustainable transport systems that connect urban and rural areas can all lead to a more inclusive, fairer society.”

There is increasing evidence of adaptation that has caused unintended consequences, for example destroying nature, putting peoples’ lives at risk or increasing greenhouse gas emissions. This can be avoided by involving everyone in planning, attention to equity and justice, and drawing on Indigenous and local knowledge.

A narrowing window for action

Climate change is a global challenge that requires local solutions and that’s why the Working Group II contribution to the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) provides extensive regional information to enable Climate Resilient Development.

The report clearly states Climate Resilient Development is already challenging at current warming levels. It will become more limited if global warming exceeds 1.5°C (2.7°F). In some regions it will be impossible if global warming exceeds 2°C (3.6°F). This key finding underlines the urgency for climate action, focusing on equity and justice. Adequate funding, technology transfer, political commitment and partnership lead to more effective climate change adaptation and emissions reductions.

“The scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a threat to human wellbeing and the health of the planet. Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future,” said Hans-Otto Pörtner.

bookmark_borderA Foot of Sea Level Rise

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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports U.S. coastline to see up to a foot of sea level rise by 2050. That is three times the rate of the previous one hundred years.

“For businesses along the coast, knowing what to expect and how to plan for the future is critical,” said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo. “These updated projections will help businesses, and the communities they support, understand risks and make smart investments in the years ahead.”

“This new data on sea rise is the latest reconfirmation that our climate crisis ⁠— as the President has said ⁠— is blinking ‘code red,’” said Gina McCarthy, National Climate Advisor. “We must redouble our efforts to cut the greenhouse gases that cause climate change while, at the same time, help our coastal communities become more resilient in the face of rising seas.”

“By 2050, moderate flooding ⁠— which is typically disruptive and damaging by today’s weather, sea level and infrastructure standards ⁠— is expected to occur more than 10 times as often as it does today,” said Nicole LeBoeuf, NOAA National Ocean Service Director. “These numbers mean a change from a single event every 2-5 years to multiple events each year, in some places.”

The Sea Level Rise Technical Report provides the most up-to-date sea level rise projections for all U.S. states and territories by decade for the next 100 years and beyond, based on a combination of tide gauge and satellite observations and all the model ensembles from the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The report projects sea levels along the coastline will rise an additional 10-12 inches by 2050 with specific amounts varying regionally, mainly due to land height changes.

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