Every Place Has Its Own Climate Risk. What Is It Where You Live?

By Stuart A. Thompson and Yaryna SerkezSept. 18, 2020

For most of us, climate change can feel like an amorphous threat — with the greatest dangers lingering ominously in the future and the solutions frustratingly out of reach.

So perhaps focusing on today’s real harms could help us figure out how to start dealing with climate change. Here’s one way to do that: by looking at the most significant climate threat unfolding in your own backyard.

Risk level (low to very high)

Wildfires

Extreme heat

Hurricanes

Water stress

Rainfall

Sea level rise

Risk level (low to very high)

Wildfires

Water stress

Extreme heat

Hurricanes

Extreme rainfall

Sea level rise

Note: “Water stress” reflects the change in drought-like conditions as well as water demand. The methodology does not consider distant water supply, so in counties where that may play a larger role, we have selected the second-highest climate risk. Risk levels reflect climate impacts from today to 2040. The “wildfire” label applies to counties where at least part of the region contains the highest risk rating in Four Twenty Seven’s data. Other terms are assigned using the highest percentile scores among the remaining climate risks.·Source: Four Twenty Seven

Thinking this way transforms the West Coast’s raging wildfires into “climate fires.” The Gulf Coast wouldn’t live under the annual threat of floods but of “climate floods.” Those are caused by ever more severe “climate hurricanes.” The Midwest suffers its own “climate droughts,” which threaten water supplies and endanger crops.

This picture of climate threats uses data from Four Twenty Seven, a company that assesses climate risk for financial markets. The index measures future risks based on climate models and historical data. We selected the highest risk for each county to build our map and combined it with separate data from Four Twenty Seven on wildfire risks.

“Every single county has some sort of climate threat that’s either emerged and is doing some damage right now or is going to emerge,” said Nik Steinberg, the managing director of research at Four Twenty Seven and lead author of the climate risk report we consulted.

Despite the clear environmental threats, people still tend to believe climate change is something “far away in time and space,” according to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. And surveys show that while 61 percent of Americans say climate change poses a risk for people in the United States, only 43 percent think it will affect them personally.

Climate change will harm...

Agree

Disagree

Plants and animals

71%

Future generations

Developing countries

United States

Me personally

43%

47%

Climate change will harm...

Agree

Disagree

Plants and animals

71%

Future generations

Ppl. in developing countries

People in the United States

Me personally

43%

47%

Climate change will harm...

Agree

Disagree

Plants and animals

71%

Future generations

Developing countries

United States

Me personally

43%

47%

Note: “Yes” includes “great” and “moderate” responses. “No” includes “little” and “not at all” responses. Source: Yale University and George Mason University

The solution may be found in research showing that addressing climate change in emotional and personal terms is far more persuasive.

“There is a lot of evidence behind the idea that personalizing climate change and helping people understand the local impacts are more important than talking about how it’s influencing melting glaciers or talking about wildfires when you live in Ohio,” said Jennifer Marlon, a research scientist and lecturer at Yale.

The idea of a climate rebranding gained new attention this week after Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington told reporters: “These are not just wildfires. They are climate fires.”

Others have suggested similar language tweaks. Aaron Hall, writing in AdAge, questioned whether “climate change” felt too neutral or inevitable. He proposed “climate meltdown” or “climate chaos,” among other turns of phrase. Conservatives who believe the threat is false or exaggerated are waging their own branding war under the banner of “climate realism.”

But there is nothing false or exaggerated about watching your neighborhood burn down. Making Americans care about the long-term threat requires communicating the real harm happening today.

Start at the coasts, where climate hurricanes decimate the region with increasing intensity. The warming planet hasn’t produced more hurricanes than before, scientists say, but the hurricanes that do develop are far more severe.

Each dot represents

1,000 people

Dallas

Shreveport

Fort Worth

LOUISIANA

TEXAS

Baton Rouge

Austin

Houston

New Orleans

San Antonio

Densely populated coastal

communities like New Orleans

Corpus Christi

and Houston are under high risk

of hurricanes, putting more than

seven million people in danger.

Each dot represents

1,000 people

Dallas

Shreveport

Fort Worth

LOUISIANA

TEXAS

Baton Rouge

Austin

New Orleans

Houston

San Antonio

Densely populated coastal communities like New Orleans and Houston are under high risk of hurricanes, putting more than seven million people in danger.

Corpus Christi

Each dot represents

1,000 people

Dallas

Shreveport

Fort Worth

LOUISIANA

TEXAS

Baton Rouge

Houston

New Orleans

Densely populated coastal communities like New Orleans and Houston are under high risk of hurricanes, putting more than seven million people in danger.

Corpus Christi

Note: Colored by county’s highest risk. Sources: Four Twenty Seven (climate threats); American Community Survey 2014-18 estimates (county population).

Cameron Parish, a community of just 7,000 people in western Louisiana, was ravaged when Hurricane Laura ripped through the region last month. While the parish has the top climate hurricane risk level, only 29 percent of its residents thought climate change would affect them personally, according to Yale.

In many coastal areas, worsening storms will cause climate flooding, driven in part by rising sea levels. But climate floods are also a threat inland, from heavy rainfall, fast-melting snowpack or climate hurricanes. And they do significant damage, costing an average of $6.9 billion in damage per year.

That’s how climate change works: The problems overlap and cause even more problems.

How many Americans will be affected by climate’s biggest risks?

Many parts of the U.S. have multiple high-risk climate threats.

Each dot represents 5,000 people

169 million people

have a high risk of water stress

104 million people

have a high risk

of hurricanes

94 million people

have a high risk

of extreme rainfall

92 million people

have a high risk

of heat stress

22 million people

have a high risk

of sea level rise

7 million people

have a high risk

of wildfires

Each dot represents 5,000 people

169 million people

have a high risk

of water stress

104 million people

have a high risk

of hurricanes

94 million people

have a high risk

of extreme rainfall

92 million people

have a high risk

threat of heat stress

22 million people

have a high risk

of sea level rise

7 million people

have a high risk

of wildfires

Each dot represents 5,000 people

169 million people

have a high risk of water stress

104 million people

have a high risk

of hurricanes

94 million people

have a high risk

of extreme rainfall

92 million people

have a high risk

of heat stress

22 million people

have a high risk

of sea level rise

7 million people

have a high risk

of wildfires

169 million people

have a high risk

of water stress

104 million people

have a high risk

of hurricanes

94 million people

have a high risk

of extreme rainfall

Risk of

hurricanes

and heat

Each dot represents

5,000 people

92 million people

have a high risk

of heat stress

22 million people

have a high risk

of sea level rise

7 million people

have a high risk

of wildfires

California faces

water stress, sea

level rise and wildfires

California faces

water stress, sea

level rise and wildfires

Water stress, heat, rainfall, hurricanes and sea level rise

Note: Shows areas where the risk is high. Sources: Four Twenty Seven (climate threats); American Community Survey 2014-18 estimates (county population).

Our data showed that the highest risk in much of California was water stress, which leads to droughts and wildfires. But those same regions can also face extreme rainfall, which feeds the vegetation that causes worsening wildfires.

“Just because a place has an extreme rainfall risk doesn’t mean that it also doesn’t have an extreme drought risk, and a sea level rise risk, and a wildfire risk,” said Jeffrey Mount, senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California’s Water Policy Center. “That, in a nutshell, is California.”

That brings us to the record-breaking climate fires sweeping the West Coast today. Though poor forest management and bad development decisions have contributed to worsening wildfires over the past several decades, climate droughts now lengthen fire season.

Each dot represents

1,000 people

Eureka

CALIFORNIA

Sacramento

The Bay Area is

San Francisco

home to almost

eight million people.

It’s under multiple

San Jose

climate threats,

including sea level rise,

wildfires, water

Fresno

stress and rainfall.

Eureka

Each dot represents

1,000 people

Sacramento

San Francisco

CALIFORNIA

The Bay Area is home to almost eight million people.

It’s under multiple climate threats, including sea level rise, wildfires, water

stress and rainfall.

San Jose

Fresno

Each dot represents

1,000 people

Eureka

CALIFORNIA

Sacramento

San Francisco

The Bay Area is

home to almost eight million people. It’s

under multiple

climate threats,

including sea level rise, wildfires, water

stress and rainfall.

San Jose

Fresno

Note: Colored by county’s highest risk. Sources: Four Twenty Seven (climate threats); American Community Survey 2014-18 estimates (county population).

The threat of climate change “will never be here-and-now in people’s minds unless you’re in California today or New Orleans during Katrina,” said Mr. Steinberg, the research director at Four Twenty Seven. “It’s got to be out your window for you to really say it’s having an impact on your life, your livelihood, your retirement plan or whatever it might be.”

We’re bad at contending with threats we can’t see. But with climate fires on one side of the country, climate hurricanes on another and a pandemic that has killed more than 900,000 people worldwide, it’s clear that these threats are devastatingly real.