The Southeast U.S. Has Had More Billion-Dollar Disasters Than the Rest of the Country Combined

Heat.  Drought.  Sea level rise and invasive species. The Southeast and Caribbean will escape few of the impacts of climate change, and the regions are already grappling with how to deal with many of them, according to the just-released National Climate Assessment.

The assessment calls the Southeast and the Caribbean regions “exceptionally vulnerable to sea level rise, extreme heat events, hurricanes, and decreased water availability.”  Many of these impacts are already being felt by Southern states.  Florida, in particular, has struggled to adapt to sea level rise and increased frequency of intense storms, Jennifer Jurado, Director of the Natural Resources Planning and Management Division in Broward County, Florida, told ThinkProgress.

“It really reinforces what we intuitively know,” Jurado said of the report.  “It does underscore that these are established trends.  It’s not just coincidence — we really are seeing these things taking place.”

The vulnerability of the Southeast to climate impacts is troubling, the report notes, since the region is home to Atlanta and Miami, two of the most heavily-populated metropolitan areas in the U.S., and also contains some of the country’s fastest-growing metropolitan regions.

A combination of latitude, a wide range of topographies (South Florida, for instance, is low-lying, making it particularly vulnerable to sea level rise), proximity to the ocean and vulnerability to weather events such as El Nin~o have contributed to the Southeast experiencing more billion-dollar disasters in the past 30 years than the rest of the country combined.

The Southeast U.S. Has Had More Billion-Dollar Disasters Than the Rest of the Country Combined