An atmospheric river unleashed havoc in Southern California, causing flooding, mudslides, and perilous situations for residents, notably exemplified by three oceanfront mansions in Dana Point teetering on the edge of a cliff following a landslide triggered by the storms.
While authorities claimed the homes weren’t immediately endangered, the imagery underscores the threat posed by climate change-amplified extreme weather events even to affluent communities.
Despite the absence of emergency calls, the footage of luxury homes precariously perched on the cliff’s edge serves as a stark reminder of the broader devastation caused by the recent storms. According to The Guardian, the five-day onslaught incurred approximately $11 billion in damage and economic loss, accompanied by nine fatalities.
Scientists emphasize that such events signify just the outset of a worsening trend. Warmer oceans disrupt global weather patterns, leading to unpredictable shifts and heightened risks of extreme weather events.
The inadequacy of climate-mitigating infrastructure exacerbates vulnerabilities for communities, ecosystems, and properties designed for outdated climate norms. UCLA’s Alex Hall warns that with current warming trends, precipitation events could become 10% more intense than pre-industrial levels. Looking ahead, the potential for events 20% more intense and entirely novel in nature looms as temperatures continue to rise.
The recent events in Southern California show how important it is to take action on climate change and its effects. If we don’t act now, we could face even worse problems in the future. Governments everywhere, including the United States, need to focus on building strong infrastructure and plans to deal with the growing dangers of climate change. If we don’t, we risk losing homes and lives, and we could cause big changes to nature that have been the same for hundreds of years, leading to serious environmental problems.
“Given the amount of warming we’ve seen so far,” UCLA atmospheric physicist and climate scientist Alex Hall told the Guardian, “we expect that big precipitation events should be about 10 percent more intense than they were before greenhouse gasses were added to the atmosphere.”
“The scary thing is that if you look into the future to the point where we have twice as much warming as today, you have events that are 20 percent more intense,” he added, “and entirely new classes of events that don’t even exist now.”