Telling people they have a flood risk rating of 10 is less powerful than explaining how much they’re likely to pay to deal with flooding over the next five years.
The Wall of Wind can create Category 5 hurricane winds for testing life-size structures.
Margi Rentis/Florida International University
The test facility in Miami helps building designers prevent future storm damage. With the warming climate intensifying hurricanes, engineers are planning a new one with 200 mph winds and storm surge.
Children don’t have to be in physical danger for disaster images to have a powerful psychological impact.
A tropical storm’s rain overwhelmed a dam in Thailand and caused widespread flooding in late September. It was just one of 2021’s disasters.
Chaiwat Subprasom/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
While surface temperatures were about the 6th warmest on record in 2021, the upper oceans were at their hottest – and they’re a stronger indicator of global warming. A top climate scientist explains.
Residents had to be rescued as Hurricane Ida flooded coastal Louisiana in August 2021.
Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images
A hurricane that wreaked havoc from Louisiana to New York City, the Texas freeze and devastating western wildfires topped NOAA’s list of billion-dollar disasters in 2021.
Wildfires that swept through Sequoia National Forest in California in September 2021 were so severe they killed ancient trees that had adapted to survive fires.
AP Photo/Noah Berger
The most vulnerable communities are being pushed deeper into poverty with each climate-related disaster. Part of the problem is that government aid helps the wealthiest people most.
The aftermath of the 2021 earthquake in Haiti.
EPA-EFE/ORLANDO BARRIA
Building even more power poles and transmission lines won’t avert outages when major disasters strike.
“My family has lost everything. We all live in this area, and now it’s all gone,” said Fusto Maldonado, whose home in Barataria, Louisiana, flooded during Hurricane Ida.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images
As the state copes with hurricanes and climate disasters, it is figuring out how to manage the slow-motion loss of its coastal land. But its plans could endanger the cultures that define the region.
Outages left downtown New Orleans in the dark after Hurricane Ida made landfall on Aug. 29, 2021.
Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Hurricane Ida left the entire city of New Orleans in the dark and renewed discussion of burying power lines. But there’s no way to completely protect the grid, above ground or below.
Philadelphia’s Manayunk neighborhood was flooded by the remnants of Hurricane Ida.
AP Images/Matt Rourke
Ida exploded from a weak hurricane to a powerful Category 4 storm in less than 24 hours, thanks to heat from an ocean eddy. An oceanographer explains its rapid intensification.
Hurricane Ida’s winds tore off roofs, including in New Orleans’ French Quarter.
AP Photo/Eric Gay
Some of the climate changes will be irreversible for millennia. But some can be slowed and even stopped if countries quickly reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, including from burning fossil fuels.