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NOAA: Like 2017, 2018 will be a record year for floods

Thanks to global warming-induced sea-level rise, coastal waters are increasingly spilling into communities. In a report released Wednesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration quantified the extent of that inundation with some sobering statistics.

The bottom line: As a whole, the U.S. is experiencing more coastal flooding than ever.

NOAA

NOAA scientists analyzed data regarding high-tide flooding —defined as flooding that causes public inconveniences, like road closures — from nearly 100 coastal water-level gauges across the country in the past meteorological year (May 2017 through April 2018). Since 2000, the report says, parts of the U.S., primarily along the eastern seaboard, have experienced more than a 250-percent increase in yearly flooding.

“Due to sea level rise, the national average trend in high-tide flood frequency is now more than 50 percent higher than it was 20 years ago, and 100 percent higher than it was 30 years ago,” oceanographer and report author William Sweet said in a conference call with reporters.

And in the coming meteorological year, he said, “Records are expected to continue to be broken.”

NOAA

Here are the takeaways from Sweet and his colleagues’ findings:

2017 was a record-breaking year for flooding. More than 25 percent of coastline areas monitored either met or surpassed their record number of flood days.
National records were broken, too. Across the country, there were an average of six flood days at each gauge that NOAA monitored — that’s more than any previous year.
The northeast Atlantic and western Gulf of Mexico Coast regions were hit the hardest — Boston, Atlantic City, and Galveston, Texas, all broke flooding records and experienced some of the most flood days nationally.
Extreme weather played a role. Storms like Hurricane Irma and nor’easters that struck New England helped contribute to the upticks in water levels.
Notably, the official report does not implicate climate change — those words are not mentioned.
What’s on tap for 2018? You guessed it! More floods. The report predicts that in the 2018 meteorological year, there will be 60 percent more high-tide floods than at the start of the century — and possible mild El Niño conditions over the next year will likely play a role in that.

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NOAA: Like 2017, 2018 will be a record year for floods

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Trump grudgingly signs a bill that stops his border wall from ruining a wildlife refuge.

An investigation by the Associated Press and the Houston Chronicle uncovered more than 100 releases of industrial toxins in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.

The storm compromised chemical plants, refineries, and pipelines along Houston’s petrochemical corridor, bringing contaminated water, dirt, and air to surrounding neighborhoods. Carcinogens like benzene, vinyl chloride, and butadiene were released. In all but two cases, regulators did not inform the public of the spills or the risks they faced from exposure.

The report also found that the EPA failed to investigate Harvey’s environmental damage as thoroughly as other disasters. The EPA and state officials took 1,800 soil samples after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. After Hurricane Ike slammed into Texas in 2008, state regulators studied 85 soil samples and issued more than a dozen violations and orders to clean up.

But post-Harvey, soil and water sampling has been limited to 17 Superfund sites and some undisclosed industrial sites. Experts say this is a problem because floodwaters could have picked up toxins in one place and deposited them miles away.

“That soil ended up somewhere,” Hanadi Rifai, director of the University of Houston’s environmental engineering program, told the AP. “The net result on Galveston Bay is going to be nothing short of catastrophic.”

Seven months after Harvey, the EPA says it’s investigating 89 incidents. But it has yet to issue any enforcement actions.

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Trump grudgingly signs a bill that stops his border wall from ruining a wildlife refuge.

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Trump’s proposed cuts to weather research could make it much harder to prepare for storms

This story was originally published by Newsweek and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Hurricane Harvey is strengthening as it approaches the Texas coast, and the massive storm is underscoring another big disturbance on the way: the battle over President Donald Trump’s proposed cuts to the National Weather Service.

Charged with providing weather forecasts and warnings, the National Weather Service also makes its data available to hundreds of companies that use it for everything from smartphone applications to agricultural equipment. Trump earlier this year proposed cutting its budget by 6 percent and that of its parent agency, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), by a mammoth 16 percent. It was an unprecedented proposal in the National Weather Service’s storied history, which extends back to 1890, when it was founded as the U.S. Weather Bureau.

Trump also proposed huge subcuts for programs that engage in computer modeling of storms, as well as observation of storms and dissemination of data. Tsunami research and prediction would be cut, along with supercomputing investments and a program to extend more accurate modeling to 30 days from 16, which could have huge benefits for everything from the insurance to the transportation industries.

The Trump proposal “is opposite to the ‘leave it better than you found it’ philosophy. This is take the money while you can, and let someone else in the future put Humpty Dumpty (aka NOAA) together again,” David Titley, director of the Center for Solutions to Weather and Climate Risk at Penn State and a retired Navy rear admiral, told Climate Central, a consortium.

Already, the U.S. is behind Europe in its forecast accuracy, and further cuts to research would likely leave the country farther behind in what’s been called “climate intelligence.” The National Weather Service’s main forecasting model, the Global Forecasting System, has seen a major drop-off in accuracy. The White House’s budget proposal would only make it worse. It seeks to cut 26 percent from NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, which supports data collection, climate and science, as well as research into more accurate weather forecasting models. The budget blueprint also would cut $513 million from NOAA’s satellite division, the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service, a 22 percent reduction.

Such cuts would cripple NOAA’s ability to keep afloat its satellites and data-gathering activities. That would not only affect the military but any business that relies on data and governments that have to plan how to handle snowstorms and hurricanes.

Scientists and meteorologists have worried that the cuts, and much more devastating reductions in climate change programs at NASA and other agencies, would harm the agency’s ability to forecast storms. In recent decades, the improvement in forecasting technologies has saved hundreds of lives, especially when it comes to tornadoes. The National Weather Service notes that hundreds used to die from pop up tornadoes like the ones that blew through Oklahoma in the mid-1970s, and that deaths are way down due to accurate predictions.

Harvey, which was just upgraded to a Category 3 hurricane, the first of that strength in more than 11 years, illustrates the point. The deadliest hurricane in U.S. history, which hit Galveston, Texas, in the year 1900, led to 6,000 to 12,000 deaths. By contrast, 72 deaths were associated with Superstorm Sandy in 2012 and fewer than 2,000 with Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

James Franklin, who headed the hurricane forecast team at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, a part of the National Weather Service, laments the budget cuts that are being proposed, including to the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Program that was launched in 2009. “It’s hanging on really by a thread in terms of funding,” said Franklin.

Trump has yet to nominate an administrator to lead NOAA. By contrast, President Barack Obama had named his pick before his 2009 swearing in. Speculation has centered on Barry Myers, the CEO of Accuweather — a weather business — but he is not a scientist.

A Senate panel passed smaller cuts to NOAA; the cuts by the House panel were significantly closer to President Trump’s proposed reductions. By the time a new budget is due in October, the country will be deep into hurricane season — as well as the fiscal budget storm.

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Trump’s proposed cuts to weather research could make it much harder to prepare for storms

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