Source; From Snglr
Data show that flood impacts as measured by direct economic losses have actually decreased by about 90% since 1940 as a proportion of U.S. GDP. The United States is in fact more resilient to flooding than it has ever been. The reduction in flood impacts is an incredible story of success sitting out in plain sight that is completely ignored, in favor of stories that instead tell us that down is up.
The data shows U.S. annual flood damage as a proportion of GDP. In 1940 flood losses amounted to a 2023 equivalent of about $50 billion per year, and in 2022 they totaled about $5 billion, a reduction of over 90%.
Although it is true aggregate flood losses have increased, that is a result of price inflation and population growth in general, and in particular increased population density and development in areas historically prone to flooding. When you put more people in flood plains along attractive riverfronts, lakeshores, and coasts prone to hurricanes, while draining wetlands (which are natural buffers to flooding), channelizing formerly meandering waterways, and replacing natural areas that absorb or drain waters after storms with impervious surfaces, the result is more flooding and higher losses when storms come.
From 1940 through 2023, as flood damage tripled and GDP grew by more than 10 times, flood damage decreased dramatically as percentage of U.S. economic activity.
Claims that climate change is making flooding worse are untenable, not supported by the data. Such claims are also unsupported by the supposedly authoritative bodies charged with examining the impacts of “human-caused” climate change.
For example, in the 2018 National Climate Assessment (NCA) published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the agency stated, “Human-induced warming has not been formally identified as a factor in increased riverine flooding and the timing of any emergence of a future detectable human caused change is unclear.”
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) assessment concurs with NOAA’s. The IPCC reports having “low confidence” that there is even a “sign” of change in the frequency or severity of flooding. The IPCC also has “low confidence” that climate change affects flooding at all. Some regions of the world have had more flooding, others less. Neither trend can be attributed to global climate change, per the IPCC.
A study of flooding in the United States and Europe published in the Journal of Hydrology states, “The number of significant [flooding] trends was about the number expected due to chance alone.”
The science on flooding and climate change indicates flood costs aren’t rising as a percentage of GDP and there is no evidence floods are increasing as a result of climate change.
The team of researchers from China and Australia examined a variety of datasets, including reconstructed sea surface temperatures from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and monthly mean surface data from the Byrd station (“the only WAIS [West Antarctic Ice Sheet] station with complete long-term temperature records from 1958 to 2021”), to calculate the West Antarctic temperature trends. The scientists found West Antarctica’s mean annual surface temperatures cooled by more than -1.8°C (-0.93°C per decade) from 1999 to 2018, which many climate alarmists have proclaimed the warmest two decades on record. The spring temperature decline on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) was even steeper, cooling at a rate of 1.84°C per decade in that period.
The WAIS cooling in the last 2 decades is consistent with what has occurred on the continent as a whole: an approximately 1°C per decade cooling trend since 1999.
None of Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 models used and cited by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted or reflects the Antarctic cooling trend, either for the continent as a whole or for its various regions.
The Central Pacific and Eastern Pacific regions have also experienced significant cooling trends so far this century. The BAMS study suggests Antarctica’s temperatures and climate are dominated by various ocean current oscillations, primarily the Pacific Decadal Oscillation shifting from a negative to a positive phase, that have swamped any possible effect of increases in CO2 concentrations.
This trend, with its lack of conformity to the models’ predictions, implies substantial uncertainties in future temperature projections of CMIP6 models.
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