HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Our atmosphere is changing. There's really no denying that fact. Our atmosphere is warming and that's evidenced by rising seasonal and yearly temperatures not just across the country, but around the world. Our warming atmosphere has some side effects. One of the biggest is more extreme weather events.
More intense droughts, stronger hurricanes and storms, heavier downpours,and extreme heat. All of these things are becoming more common and can usually be traced back to our warming atmosphere.
The NOAA/NCEI Climate Extremes Index (CEI) tracks extreme weather events by combining six indicators related to temperature, drought, precipitation events, and tropical cyclone activity. Scientists determine a percentage of the contiguous U.S. that is above or below these normal climate conditions to calculate the extremes.
- 2020 was the highest CEI on record with a percentage of 44.63%.
- Even though the CEI data goes back to 1910, five of the top six percentages occurred in the last decade (2012, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2020).
The methodology behind the CEI: NOAA CEI Explained
The problem isn't that we're just seeing more extreme weather across the United States as a result of our warming climate, but that these extreme weather events are expensive and deadly.
- Last year, the U.S. experienced 22 billion-dollar disasters, the highest number on record, that cost a whopping $95 billion dollars in total.
- In Alabama alone, there were nine billion-dollar disasters just in 2020. Those disasters added up to nearly 10-billion dollars.
- Climate extremes are also costly in human lives. In the last 5 years (2016-2020), there have been 3,969 deaths linked to billion-dollar disasters.
