U.S. Heatwave ‘Virtually Impossible’ Without Climate Change, Scientists Say

July 15, 2021 by

An international group of 27 climate scientists have concluded that the recent heat wave in the Pacific Northwest was “virtually impossible without human-caused climate change.”

National Weather Service reports show that in late June Seattle, Wash., reached all-time high temperature of 108 degrees F, while Portland, Ore. hit 116 F, also an all-time high.

The heat landed far outside the range of historically recorded temperatures, according to the scientists in a report released by World Weather Attribution. The scientists also note that the heatwave occurred a full month before the climatologically warmest part of the year, “making them particularly exceptional.”

“In the most realistic statistical analysis the event is estimated to be about a one-in-1,000 year event in today’s climate,” the report states.

The scientists warn that as global warming continues, such events will become far less rare.

“Our results provide a strong warning: our rapidly warming climate is bringing us into uncharted territory that has significant consequences for health, well-being, and livelihoods,” the report states. “Adaptation and mitigation are urgently needed to prepare societies for a very different future. Adaptation measures need to be much more ambitious and take account of the rising risk of heatwaves around the world, including surprises such as this unexpected extreme.”

Swiss Re

Swiss Re has published new research on practical measures needed to mitigate climate risks focused on the importance of carbon removal.

Swiss Re argues in its research that carbon removal/capture and storage will be a crucial part of the solution to reach the Paris Accord goals of zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 as well as President Joe Biden’s recent pledge to slash emissions by 2030.

The world will need to remove up to a quarter of the CO2 now emitted globally – equal to 10 billion tons of CO2 per year – by 2050. This would require increasing carbon removal capacity by 60% every year over the next three decades.

The main barrier to carbon removal is lack of business case. In the absence of carbon pricing in many parts of the world, society disposes of carbon into the atmosphere at will.

The report states that insurers can help in three ways.

They can improve the “bankability of removal projects” by providing standard engineering and insurance, as institutional investors insurers can provide financing for removal projects and infrastructure, insurers can be early buyers of carbon removal certificates to balance their own footprint.

NOAA

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says record high-tide flooding washed over U.S. coasts in the past year, and rising sea levels are expected to send the deluges into streets, homes and businesses even more frequently over the next decade.

NOAA in an annual report covered in a Bloomberg article in Insurance Journal said the surges, which are often referred to as “sunny day” floods, are increasingly becoming a reality as sea levels continue to rise.

That means the damaging flooding that used to occur primarily during storms now happens during regular events such a full-moon tide or with a change in prevailing winds.

“NOAA’s tide gauges show that 80% of locations where we collect date along the Southeast Atlantic and Gulf coasts are seeing an acceleration in the number of flood days,” said Nicole LeBoeuf, director of the National Ocean Service.

According to NOAA, flood records were set in Texas, Florida, South Carolina, and Georgia, while Galveston and Corpus Christi, Texas, along with Bay Waveland, Miss., had a record 20 days with high-tide flooding from May 2020 to April 2021. Twenty years ago these locations would typically only flood two or three days a year, according to the department.

Moody’s

Moody’s has launched a tool it says will generate environmental, social, and governance scores for millions of public and private small- and medium-sized enterprises.

The ESG Score Predictor provides financial institutions with quantitative data for portfolio and risk management, and helps companies monitor ESG risk across their global supply chains, according to the firm.

ESG reporting continues to become more popular. American International Group Inc. released its first ESG report, which AIG President and CEO Peter Zaffino said is part of the company’s “commitment to transparent ESG leadership is a central part of our global corporate citizenship agenda.”

Moody’s said that assessing a company’s exposure to ESG risks requires comparable and standardized metrics, which are limited in company disclosures that continue to affect data quality and company coverage, especially in the SME space.

“The ESG Score Predictor leverages state-of-the-art advanced analytics to provide 56 ESG scores and sub-scores for any given company using location, sector, and size,” Moody’s said in an announcement. “Customers can access approximately 140 million company ESG scores on Moody’s Orbis database, Procurement Catalyst and Credit Catalyst platforms, via an application programming interface (API), or leverage the ESG Score Predictor model with their in-house data to score their portfolios.

Moody’s ESG Solutions Group is a business unit of Moody’s Corp.

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