Nov 10, 2023 08:12 PM
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1007665
INTRO: Weather extremes, such as heatwaves and torrential rainfalls, are becoming more frequent and more intense across the United States under climate change.
In late September of this year, flash-flooding surged down neighborhood streets and subway stairways in New York City, as a historic rainfall led to canceled flights and closed roads and city officials urged people to stay at home or shelter in place. Some areas of the city saw up to 2.58 inches of rain in one day, nearly 50% more than the city sewer system’s maximum capacity, causing wastewater problems for many low-lying homes and businesses.
Intuitively, when an extreme weather event hits a city, the more residents it has, the larger number of people are affected. Currently, 83% of the United States population lives in urban settings, according to the U.S. Census. This number is expected to grow over the coming decades, rendering urban climate resilience extraordinarily important. As a result, many people have the impression that the growing sizes of cities are making weather extremes worse for the people who live there.
However, cities are designed and built by people. So, it stands to reason that if some methods of land development increase population exposures to extreme weather conditions, others might hold the potential to moderate or even reduce population exposures as the climate changes over the coming decades.
To explore this idea, University of Delaware researcher Jing Gao, assistant professor in the College of Earth, Ocean and Environment and a resident faculty member in the Data Science Institute, and colleague Melissa Bukovsky, associate professor in the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Wyoming, investigated how changes in urban land and population will affect future populations’ exposures to weather extremes under climate conditions at the end of the 21st century... (MORE - details, no ads)
INTRO: Weather extremes, such as heatwaves and torrential rainfalls, are becoming more frequent and more intense across the United States under climate change.
In late September of this year, flash-flooding surged down neighborhood streets and subway stairways in New York City, as a historic rainfall led to canceled flights and closed roads and city officials urged people to stay at home or shelter in place. Some areas of the city saw up to 2.58 inches of rain in one day, nearly 50% more than the city sewer system’s maximum capacity, causing wastewater problems for many low-lying homes and businesses.
Intuitively, when an extreme weather event hits a city, the more residents it has, the larger number of people are affected. Currently, 83% of the United States population lives in urban settings, according to the U.S. Census. This number is expected to grow over the coming decades, rendering urban climate resilience extraordinarily important. As a result, many people have the impression that the growing sizes of cities are making weather extremes worse for the people who live there.
However, cities are designed and built by people. So, it stands to reason that if some methods of land development increase population exposures to extreme weather conditions, others might hold the potential to moderate or even reduce population exposures as the climate changes over the coming decades.
To explore this idea, University of Delaware researcher Jing Gao, assistant professor in the College of Earth, Ocean and Environment and a resident faculty member in the Data Science Institute, and colleague Melissa Bukovsky, associate professor in the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Wyoming, investigated how changes in urban land and population will affect future populations’ exposures to weather extremes under climate conditions at the end of the 21st century... (MORE - details, no ads)