The 9th National Risk Assessment for Homeowners Insurance found climate risks place 39 million U.S. homes at risk of losing their insurance. “Sound pricing is going to make it unaffordable to live in certain places as climate impacts emerge.”
“There’s this climate insurance bubble out there,” said Jeremy Porter, the head of climate implications at First Street and a contributor to the report. “And you can quantify it.”
“There’s no education to the public of what’s going on and where the risk is,” said Porter, explaining that most insurance models are proprietary. Even the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) doesn’t make flood insurance pricing available to the public. Homeowners must obtain coverage through a private insurance broker for a quote.
Wildfires are the fastest growing natural disaster risk. According to the report, “It’s not just wildfires – pressure on flood and wind insurance is increasing, too.”
Porter went on to say, “You don’t want someone to live in a place that always burns. They don”t belong there. We’re subsidizing people to live in harm’s way. Large numbers of people will need to be relocated away from areas that will be uninsurable. There is a reckoning on the horizon and it’s not pretty.”
The burning of fossil fuels and other human released emissions have impacted momentum’s impact. A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture. Warmer air allows for the creation of more massive raindrops. Warmer ocean temperatures create stronger hurricanes. Hail and tornadoes form in strong thunderstorm clouds with intense updrafts, high liquid-water content, and large water droplets.
Sidd added: It’s worse than that. Wind and water flow forces scale as the square of velocity, so as flow speeds increase (say due to more intense heating or heavier rain) the damage scales as the square of the velocity.
So a twenty mile an hour wind exerts four times as much force as a ten mile an hour wind. And a forty mile an hour wind exerts sixteen times as much force as a ten mile an hour wind. A wind of fifty miles an hour exerts twenty five times and a wind of sixty miles an hour exerts thirty six times as much force as one of ten miles an hour. Then you have the density term. Water is about eight hundred times denser than air, So the force exerted by a ten mile an hour flow of water is eight hundred times that of a ten mile an hour wind. So as flow velocities go up due to climate change, force and damage scale as square of the velocities. What is not clear is how much these velocities increase with climate change. But in a sense we are seeing this already as, for example, flood and sewage systems succumb and hillsides fall down, and so on.
Climate change’s influence on wind and water flow forces caused more severe damage and deaths. The Maui wildfire of August 2023 is an example. What would have been a fairly routine wildfire was fanned out-of-control by hurricane force winds. One headline read, “Maui fires: Hawaii blazes fanned by Hurricane Dora”. Another headline read, “Hawaii wildfires kill as ‘apocalypse’ hits Maui island”. The New York Times reported, “Gov. Josh Green of Hawaii said on Thursday that the devastating wildfires that swept through western Maui and killed at least 55 people, and possibly many more, were ‘likely the largest natural disaster in Hawaii state history.'”
Both wind and water flow forces contributed to the devastation. Hurricane Dora was at least 500 miles from Hawaii yet the wind forces impacted the fire in Maui. The winds were so strong that before the fire reached Lahaina extremely hot air blew over the town. The streets were so hot they burnt people’s feet trying to flee. The surface of everything became hot. Even after people jumped into the ocean, they said the debris in the water was too hot to float on. Almost all the boats in the harbor burned.
The blast of hot air over Lahaina created the conditions for a flashpoint. A flashpoint is the temperature at which a particular organic compound gives off sufficient vapor to ignite in air. The entire town ignited so quickly that warning sirens could not be activated and people did not have time to escape.
In an unexpected twist, water flow forces also contributed to the chaos. How could water flow add to the fire emergency conditions? When people fled the heat and fire, they jumped into the sea. ABC news reported: Shawn Dougherty, of Lahaina, was among the hundreds of residents forced to flee the resort city when the wildfire began engulfing their homes.
Like others, Dougherty said his only means of survival was to jump into the ocean with his girlfriend, but while some found safety in nearby jetties, the rocks and coral tore up Dougherty’s body.
“At one point, it seemed like I might drown,” he told ABC News. “{I’m a good swimmer, but the water was just really rough because of the wind and the turbulence.”
Also in August of 2023, climate change’s influence on water flow forces caused more severe damage and deaths. AccuWeather reported, “Dam bursts open as deadly flooding washes away homes in Norway. Torrents of water gushed through multiple towns across Norway and landslides cascaded down mountainsides after a deluge drenched Norway.”
Summary
By increasing the energy in the system, humans have increased flow volumes, masses and velocities leading to increased damage (and deaths.)
Newton’s second law: F = m * a
F = force
m = mass of an object
a = acceleration
ALSO SEE
Climate Change: Rate of Acceleration
By 2020, there was enough data to see the “doubling period” of some anthropogenic climate affects had gone from 100 years to 10 years. For instance the rate of sea level rise has gone from about 1.5 millimeters per year to over 3 millimeters. We expect to see the doubling period to continue to shrink raising the possibility of sea levels rising a foot/year by 2050.
Tipping points and feedback loops are parts of an equation that determine the rate of acceleration in climate change.
Climate Change: The End of Times
More articles on Flood Insurance, Rising Sea Levels and Global Warming.