Multi-hazard climate risk projections for the United States
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Multi‑hazard climate risk projections for the United States Binita KC1,4 · J. M. Shepherd2 · Anthony W. King1 · Cassandra Johnson Gaither3 Received: 18 April 2019 / Accepted: 17 October 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Climate risk is a consequence of climate hazards, exposure, and the vulnerability (IPCC 2014). Here, we assess future (2040–2049) climate risk for the entire contiguous US at the county level with a novel climate risk index integrating multiple hazards, exposures and vulnerabilities. Future, weather and climate hazards are characterized as frequency of heat wave, cold spells, dryer, and heavy precipitation events along with anomalies of temperature and precipitation using high resolution (4 km) downscaled climate projections. Exposure is characterized by projections of population, infrastructure, and built surfaces prone to multiple hazards including sea level rise and storm surges. Vulnerability is characterized by projections of demographic groups most sensitive to climate hazards. We found Florida, California, the central Gulf Coast, and North Atlantic at high climate risk in the future. However, the contributions to this risk vary regionally. Florida is projected to be equally hard hit by the three components of climate risk. The coastal counties in the Gulf states of Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi and Alabama are at high climate risk due to high exposure and hazard. High exposure and vulnerability drive high climate risk in California counties. This approach can guide planners in targeting counties at most risk and where adaptation strategies to reduce exposure or protect vulnerable populations might be best applied. Keywords Climate risk · Projection · Sea level rise · Hazards · Exposure · Vulnerability
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s1106 9-020-04385-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Binita KC [email protected] 1
Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, One Bethel Valley Road, Oak Ridge, TN 37830, USA
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Department of Geography, The University of Georgia, 210 Field Street, Athens, GA 30602, USA
3
USDA Forest Service, 320 Green Street, Athens, GA 30602‑2044, USA
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ADNET Systems Inc/ NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 610.2 Blg 32, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA
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Natural Hazards
1 Introduction The IPCC’s fifth assessment report (IPCC 2014) stresses the importance of three components in a climate risk model useful to policy makers: weather and climate hazards, exposure of people and assets to those hazards and the vulnerability of those exposed assets and people (Fig. 1). Single weather and climate events have their own risks (Hauer et al. 2016; Jones et al. 2015; Baum et al. 2008), but most locations are exposed to more than one type of extreme events. Each hazard is uniquely characterized by its impacts and consequences. For example, disaster events such as drought/heat wave and tropical storms are the leading cause of hum
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