What

 

age do you really think we are entering into again?

‘Historic’ weather: why a cocktail of natural disasters is battering the US

"As the world heats up, weather events will increase and overlap, testing the limits of nation’s resiliency and recovery."

"In Montana, historic flooding devastated communities and infrastructure in and around Yellowstone national park and forced a rare closure. Further south, reservoirs sank to new lows, triple-digit heatwaves left millions sweltering, and wildfires ripped through Arizona, New Mexico, Alaska and California."

"These layered disasters offer a glimpse of what’s to come. As temperatures continue to climb, extreme events will not just increase – they’re more likely to overlap, causing more calamity and testing the limits of the nation’s resilience and recovery."

"But it is clear that, in a warming world, combinations of factors are increasingly likely to align and turn routine events into a catastrophe. So-called “compound extremes”, where a combination of contributing factors come together, are on the rise, Hoell said."

"With increasing global surface temperatures the possibility of more droughts and increased intensity of storms will likely occur,

US Geological Survey"

“As more water vapor is evaporated into the atmosphere it becomes fuel for more powerful storms to develop.”

“We certainly know that climate change is causing more natural disasters, more fires, bigger fires and more floods and bigger floods,” said Robert Manning, a retired University of Vermont professor of environment and natural resources. “These things are going to happen, and they’re going to happen probably a lot more intensely.”

"...the agricultural, ecological and industrial impacts are expected to mount, and swaths of the west will go without hope of precipitation through the summer and into autumn."

"The number of square miles burned so far this year is more than double the 10-year national average, and wildfires have already set records and destroyed hundreds of homes."

"Last year, the US spent an alarming $145bn on natural disasters – the third highest amount on record – and grappled with 20 extreme events that cost more than $1bn each, close to triple the average since 1980."

“The field of emergency management is at a pivotal moment in its history,” Fema administrator Deanne Criswell said during a hearing of the House homeland security subcommittee on emergency preparedness, response and recovery. The agency is managing more than triple the amount of disasters this year as it did a decade ago.

“The changing climate is the biggest crisis facing our nation and makes natural disasters more frequent and more destructive,” Criswell said.