The Reliance School

900 Words / 4 min. Read

Over the course of this series, we’ve taken a look at how population, location, and natural resources are key parts of building climate resilience. In this final post, we’re going to confront what may be people's biggest concern: climate-fueled natural disasters.

Fuel for the Fire

Climate change alone doesn’t cause natural disasters; there were fires, floods, and hurricanes long before we started burning fossil fuels. Instead, climate change increases their frequency, intensity, and duration.¹ Climate and weather-related disasters have surged 5-fold over the past 50 years,² with hundreds of billions in damages occurring each year in America alone.³

Adding heat to the atmosphere not only increases the average temperature, but causes greater temperature variance, leading to more extreme heat events.⁴ In dry areas, higher temperatures increase evaporation and transpiration, which exacerbate droughts.⁵ Warmer winters lead to increased populations of wood-boring insects, which turn forests into kindling for uncontrollable wildfires.⁶

In wet areas, increased evaporation forms denser clouds, which cause extreme rainfall and flooding.⁷ Over the oceans, higher temperatures and increased water vapor amplify the effects of hurricanes and tropical storms,⁸ allowing them to travel farther inland.⁹ The melting of ice sheets and glaciers leads to higher sea levels,¹⁰ which cause further damage from flooding, storm surges, erosion, aquifer contamination, and habitat loss.¹¹

While we’ve been able to insure against disaster in the past, the increased cost of coverage is leading major insurers to limit policies in disaster-prone areas, making it impossible for homeowners to rebuild.¹² As climate change intensifies, we may see entire regions of the country become economically untenable,¹³ not to mention the human cost of lives, homes, and communities swept away in a single moment. So how can we stay out of the path of destruction?

Regions to Avoid

To start, we’d recommend avoiding two major regions of the United States: the Southeast, and the Southwest. Heat amplifies climate risk across all environments, and southern regions will be the hardest-hit in a warming world.¹⁴

The Southeast is facing an unfortunate combination of heat waves, lethal wet bulb temperatures, extreme rainfall, flooding, hurricanes, sea level rise, and insect-borne disease.¹⁵ These risks are made worse by higher levels of poverty¹⁶ and declining resilience of local governance and infrastructure.¹⁷ As climate change worsens, it may overwhelm cities’ and communities’ abilities to prepare for (and recover from) disaster. One exception to this is the Appalachian Mountains, which will remain cooler due to their higher elevation.

The Southwest is facing extreme heat, drought, declining aquifers, and massive wildfires.¹⁸ Without reliable groundwater, it may be impossible to sustain food production and dense populations in the region.¹⁹ And while intense heat increases energy demands, drought decreases the energy output of hydropower dams, putting significant stress on regional power grids.²⁰

‍Areas to Avoid

Next, let’s look at some specific areas to avoid. To start, we’d recommend staying at least 100 miles inland of the coast, particularly on the Eastern seaboard (which is exposed to tropical storms).²¹ While sea level rise may not sound like much of a threat, it only takes a few centimeters to exponentially increase the risk of flooding.²² Coastlines also face a high risk of damage from hurricanes,⁷ as well as saltwater contamination of aquifers.²³

Second, we’d recommend looking at flood maps (such as those provided by FEMA)²⁴ to determine whether or not your home is in a high-risk area. Riverbanks, low-lying plains, and mountainsides are common areas to look out for, but flood risk isn’t always apparent. Exercise caution even in areas showing lower levels of risk, as chances of flooding will only increase in most areas over the coming decades.²⁵

Third, we’d recommend staying out of the urban-wildland interface (areas where human development intermingles with the natural environment),²⁶ particularly in hot or dry regions, and in fire-prone biomes like grasslands and coniferous forests.²⁷ Homes in rural areas are harder for firefighters to access, and surrounding vegetation provides abundant fuel for wildfires. As most wildfires are caused by humans,²⁸ building more homes in these areas only compounds the risk.²⁹

Putting It All Together

At the beginning of this series, we gave you a 4-part formula for finding a climate haven:

‍A small city in northern latitudes, with abundant water and farmland, and a low risk of natural disasters.

Now that we’ve gotten clear on each aspect of that, it’s up to you to take this information and start putting it to work. Think about what factors are most important to you, and start visualizing what you’d like your long-term future to look like. Break out the maps, and start zeroing in on areas that you’re interested in. Research city data, ask questions online, or better yet, take a roadtrip to some potential spots to get a felt sense for what they’re like.

This is a long process, and it should be; deciding where to live might be one of the most important decisions of your life. Whatever you choose, we hope this series helps you make a more informed decision, and that it helps you in facing the many challenges of our uncertain future.

Footnotes & References

1. The Influence of Climate Change on Extreme Environmental Events (National Geographic)
2. Climate and weather related disasters surge five-fold over 50 years (Daniel Pavlinovic, WMO)
3. A Record Number of Billion-Dollar Disasters Show U.S. Isn't Ready for Climate Change (Andrea Thompson, Scientific American)
4. The Rising Cost of Natural Hazards (NASA Earth Observatory)
5. ‍Climate change and droughts: What’s the connection? (Tiffany Means, Yale Climate Connections)
6. Wildfires and climate change: What’s the connection? (Bruce Lieberman, Yale Climate Connections)
7. Why is it raining so hard? Global warming is delivering heavier downpours (Tiffany Means, Yale Climate Connections)
8. How climate change is making hurricanes more dangerous (Jeff Berardelli, Yale Climate Connections)
9. Hurricanes are maintaining their strength farther inland as the planet warms, study finds (Drew Kann, CNN)
10. Melting glaciers drove 21% of sea level rise over past two decades (Ayesha Tandon, Carbon Brief)
11. Sea level rise, explained (Christina Nunez, National Geographic)
12. How climate change could cause a home insurance meltdown (Michael Copley, Rebecca Hersher, Nathan Rott, NPR)
13. Is the World Headed for an Uninsurable Future? (Emmy Hawker, ESG Investor)
14. As Climate Changes, Southern States Will Suffer More Than Others (Brad Plumer, Nadja Popovich, The New York Times)
15. The Southeast (U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit)
16. Socioenvironmental Maps - Poverty (CDC)
17. Development of a Cumulative Resilience Screening Index (CRSI) for Natural Hazards (EPA)
18. The Southwest (U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit)
19. Water scarcity is about to get a lot worse. Irrigated agriculture doesn’t have a plan. (Jessica Fu, The Counter)
20. Drought Is Threatening Hydropower in the Southwestern US (Doug Johnson, Wired)
21. Hurricane Impacts (Weather.gov)
22. Sea-level rise exponentially increases coastal flood frequency (Mohsen Taherkhani, Sean Vitousek, Patrick Barnard, Neil Frazer, Tiffany Anderson, Charles Fletcher, Scientific Reports)
23. Saltwater Intrusion (USGS)
24. FEMA Flood Map Service Center (FEMA)
25. These Maps Tell the Story of Two Americas: One Parched, One Soaked (Aatish Bhatia, Nadja Popovich, The New York Times)
26. Wildland Urban Interface (USFA)
27. ‍Wildfires (National Geographic)
28. Study Shows 84% of Wildfires Caused by Humans (Jason Daley, Smithsonian)
29. Rapid growth of the US wildland-urban interface raises wildfire risk (Volker Radeloff, David Helmers, H. Anu Kramer, Miranda Mockrin, Patricia Alexandre, Avi Bar-Massada, Van Butsic, Todd Hawbaker, Sebastián Martinuzzi, Alexandra Syphard,  Susan Stewart, PNAS)