New statistics portray scope, toll of heat, drought

Expected to go on

David Crossley, Dec 13, 11.

Considered separately, recent reports about this year’s record heat and drought are eye-opening enough. Considered together, they form a collage of sorts that affords a clearer and even more arresting picture of the disastrous scope and toll, according to a story in Texas Climate News:

In a report issued Wednesday, for instance, the National Climatic Data Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the wildfires in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona – regarded as a single weather-related “event” – now exceed $1 billion in damage. Three-fourths of that has occurred in Texas. The agency said:

Continued drought conditions and periods of extreme heat provided conditions favorable for a series of historic wildfires across Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. The Bastrop Fire in Texas was the most destructive fire in Texas history, destroying over 1,500 homes. The Wallow Fire consumed over 500,000 acres in Arizona, making it the largest on record in Arizona. The Las Conchas Fire in New Mexico was also the state’s largest wildfire on record, scorching over 150,000 acres while threatening the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Over 3 million acres have burned across Texas this wildfire season. Total damage in Texas alone due to loss of property, timber and agriculture exceeds $750 million. Losses for wildfire activity across all three states exceed $1.0 billion; at least 5 U.S. deaths.

The Associated Press reported there have been 12 billion-dollar disasters this year, though damage from Tropical Storm Lee and the Northeast snowstorm in October could ultimately total that much damage, too. The AP added:

Scientists blame an unlucky combination of global warming and freak chance [for the large number of major disasters]. They say even with the long-predicted increase in weather extremes triggered by manmade climate change, 2011 in the U.S. was wilder than they had predicted. For example, the six large outbreaks of tornadoes cannot be attributed to global warming, scientists say.

“The degree of devastation is extreme in and of itself, and it would be tempting to say it’s a sign of things to come, though we would be hard-pressed to see such a convergence of circumstances occurring in one single year again for a while,” said Jerry Meehl, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

Another factor in the rising number of billion-dollar calamities: “More people and more stuff in harm’s way,” such as in coastal areas, said NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco.

“What we’re seeing this year is not just an anomalous year, but a harbinger of things to come,” with heat waves, droughts and other extreme weather, Lubchenco said Wednesday at an American Geophysical Union science conference in San Francisco.
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