Costly weather disasters continued to rain on America last year, hitting the country with 18 climate extremes that caused at least $1 billion in damage, for a total of more than $165 billion, federal climate scientists calculated Tuesday.
Although 2022 is not close to the warmest record for the United States, it is the third-highest year in the country with the number of extremes that cost $1 billion and overall damage from such weather disasters, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a published report. at the American Meteorological Society conference.
The number, cost and death toll of billion-dollar weather disasters make up the key measures, adjusted for inflation, that NOAA uses to see how human-caused climate change is progressing. They caused at least 474 deaths.
“People are seeing the impacts of a changing climate system where they live, work and play on a regular basis,” NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said at a news conference Tuesday. “With a changing climate, buckle up. More extreme events are expected.
Hurricane Ian, the costliest drought in a decade and the pre-Christmas winter storms caused last year’s damage to be the highest since 2017. The costliest years were 2017 – when Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria hit – and the 2005 disaster when there were many hurricanes. , headed by Katrina, pummeled the Southeast, Federal meteorologists said. The only busier years for billion dollar disasters are 2020 and 2021.
Ian was the third costliest hurricane in the U.S. with $112.9 billion in damage, followed by $22.2 billion in damage from the western and central drought that blocked barge traffic on the Mississippi River, officials said. The $165 billion total for 2022 does not include the total for the winter storm three weeks ago, which could have cost $170 billion, officials said.
More than 40% of the continental United States has been in official drought conditions for 119 straight weeks, a record in the 22 years of the federal drought monitor, easily surpassing the old mark of 68 straight weeks, Spinrad said. The state peaked at 63% of the state in drought in 2022. Spinrad said he expects the atmospheric river to pour rain in California to provide some relief, but not much.
“Climate change is causing many of these extremes that could lead to billion-dollar disasters,” said climate expert and NOAA economist Adam Smith, who calculated the catastrophe, updating it to account for inflation. He said more people are also damaging, on expensive beaches and rivers, and the lack of strong construction standards is also a problem. With a good portion of coastal development, real estate inflation could be a small local factor, he said.
“The United States has some of the most diverse and intense extreme weather and climate that you will see in many parts of the world. And we have a large population that is vulnerable to these extremes,” Smith told The Associated Press. “So it’s really unbalanced right now.”
Climate change is a factor that is difficult to ignore in extremes, from deadly heat to droughts and floods, Smith and other officials said.
“The risk of extreme events is growing and affecting every corner of the world,” said NOAA scientist Sarah Kapnick.
The problem is worse when it comes to dangerous heat, said NOAA climate scientist Stephanie Herring, who edited an annual study in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society that quantifies the number of extreme weather events in recent years that have worsened due to climate change.
“Research shows that these extreme heat events will also become the new normal,” Herring told a weather conference.
There has been a dramatic increase in the size and number of very expensive extremes in the U.S. since 2016, Smith said. In the past seven years, 121 different billion-dollar weather disasters caused more than $1 trillion in damage and killed more than 5,000 people.
Those years are smaller than what happened in the 1980s, 1990s or 2000s. For example, in the entire decade of the 1990s there were 55 different billion-dollar disasters that cost a total of $313 billion and caused 3,062 lives.
“It’s not just one but many, many different types of extremes across the country,” Smith said. “If extremes were on the bingo card, we’ve pretty much filled the card over the last few years.”
In 2022, there are nine billion dollars worth of non-tropical storms, including derechos, three hurricanes, two tornado outbreaks, one flood, one hurricane season, megadrought and costly wildfires. The only common type of weather disaster missing is ice freezes that cause $1 billion or more in crop damage, Smith said. And last month, Florida came close, but missed by a degree or two and some preventative measures by farmers, he said.
Preventing a freeze is one of two “silver linings” in the 2022 extremes, Smith said. The other is that the wildfire season, although costing more than $1 billion, is not as severe as in past years, except in New Mexico and Texas, he said.
During the first 11 months of 2022, California experienced the second driest year on record, but precipitation from atmospheric rivers that began in December made it only the ninth driest year on record for California, NOAA climate monitoring chief Karin said. Gleason.
With the third consecutive year of La Nina tightening the eastern Pacific, which tends to change weather patterns around the world and moderate global warming, 2022 will be only the 18th warmest year on U.S. records, Gleason said.
“It’s a warm year definitely above average for most of the state but it’s off the charts,” Gleason said. The nation’s average temperature is 53.4 degrees (11.9 degrees Celsius), which is 1.4 degrees (0.8 degrees) warmer than the 20th century average.
This year was 1.5 inches (3.8 centimeters) below normal for rain and snow, the 27th driest in 128 years, Gleason said.
NOAA and NASA on Thursday will announce how hot the world will be for 2022, which won’t be a record but could be in the seven hottest years. The European climate monitoring group Copernicus published its calculations on Tuesday, saying 2022 was the fifth warmest worldwide and the second warmest in Europe.
U.S. greenhouse gas emissions — which cause heat to cause global warming — will rise 1.3% in 2022, according to a report released Tuesday by the Rhodium Group, a think tank. That is less than the economy grew. The increase in emissions is driven by cars, trucks and industry with relatively less electricity pollution.
This is the second year in a row that, after the lockdown eased, America’s carbon pollution has increased after a fairly steady decline for several years. This makes it less likely that the United States will achieve its pledge to cut carbon emissions in half by 2030 compared to 2005 levels, according to Rhodium’s report.
___
Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. Read more about AP’s climate initiatives here. AP is solely responsible for all content.