https://www.climatecentral.org/news/report-climate-pile-up-global-warmings-compounding-dangers
See the article at the link below for how this problem is affecting and is projected to affect various regions.
Recent research shows that unchecked warming pollution could bring concurrent climate crises to U.S. cities by midcentury — and that emissions cuts could reduce the danger.
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There are a few ways that climate change can produce compounding threats. Greenhouse gas emissions increase atmospheric temperature, in turn boosting the capacity of the air to hold moisture. Combined with the heat, that enhances the evaporation of water from soil. In drier areas, these processes can result in drought, boost heat waves, and ripen the conditions for wildfires. In places that are commonly wet, on the other hand, heightened water evaporation results in excess rain [and snowfall] — which can fall on saturated soil and lead to floods. In the oceans, meanwhile, warmer water evaporates faster, potentially increasing wind speeds and boosting the downpours released by hurricanes, whose surges can be aggravated by sea level rise.
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Start with health. Mora’s team found evidence of deaths as a result of hyperthermia during heat waves, asphyxiation during wildfires, injuries during storms, and drowning during floods. Other studies documented respiratory problems delivered by dust during droughts, mold in the wake of storms, and pollen from longer flowering periods. And the researchers found that climate change had eased the conditions for the spread of diseases, including cholera, encephalitis, and malaria. In the United States, wildfire smoke leads to billions of dollars in healthcare costs every year, according to researchers at the Environmental Protection Agency.
Second, consider food and water. The researchers found that temperature shifts experienced to date have contributed to disruptions in crop, livestock, and fisheries supplies. In 2003, when Europe was struck by a historic heat wave, about a third of the continent’s crops were lost. Three years earlier, more than three quarters of Kenya’s livestock died as a result of drought. In America’s Great Plains, years with strong heat waves tended to bring several thousand additional cattle deaths. Warming has contributed to drinking water shortages by encouraging drought and glacial retreat — and the quality of drinking water has been affected by heavy precipitation, hurricanes, and wildfires. In 2015, a group of scholars led by A. Park Williams of Columbia University found that climate change had worsened the California drought that began in 2011 by somewhere between 15 and 20 percent.
As for infrastructure, Mora and his colleagues reviewed numerous cases in which roads, railways, electrical grids, housing, and airports were damaged by weather and climate disasters. In 2003, a heat wave, which increased demand for electricity, left some 50 million people without power in Canada and the northeastern United States; Hurricane Sandy stripped some eight million Americans of power. Last year’s Camp Fire in Northern California destroyed nearly 19,000 buildings, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Those infrastructure losses often fed into broader economic damages. But the researchers found that the sources of economic damage were far broader than infrastructure. In 2015 alone, drought cost California’s agriculture sector $1.8 billion. 1992’s Hurricane Andrew pushed twelve insurance firms into insolvency — and more recently, subsequent to Mora’s analysis, Pacific Gas & Electric declared bankruptcy in the wake of the Camp Fire. Heat waves raised the costs of healthcare and reduced labor productivity. In the United States, the number of weather and climate disasters causing at least a billion dollars in damages has trended upward in recent years: 2018 recorded 14 such billion-dollar events, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Finally, hazards that have been broadly linked to climate change affected people’s security, forcing some to abandon their communities and, in some parts of the world, encouraging conflict over diminishing resources. In the United States, Hurricane Harvey contributed to an uptick in homelessness after years of decline, according to the Houston Chronicle. There is also evidence that some U.S. heat waves, which have generally become more intense as the climate has warmed, temporarily increased rates of rape and theft, according to research reviewed by the University of Hawaii-led team.
These dangers are not drawn from a vision of a darker future. Each of these impacts has already arrived. The natural hazards that produce these dangers — from rising seas and extreme precipitation to wildfire risk and stronger heat waves — are for the most part worsening, as humanity continually pours more heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere.
The warming of 1°C (1.8°F) that humanity has caused since the start of the industrial era represents just a fraction of the 3°C to 5°C (5.4°F to 9°F) of warming that the world can expect this century on its current emissions trajectory. In 2018, humans likely emitted more greenhouse gases than in any other year in history. Without deep cuts to warming emissions, the future will be significantly hotter, and more dangerous.
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By 2095 — well within the lifetimes of children born today — the differences in outcomes across emissions scenarios would become profound. By that time, 18 of the 244 U.S. locations assessed, or roughly 7 percent, are projected to face the equivalent of at least 4 extreme and concurrent climate hazards, should warming pollution grow unabated. 64 locations, or 26 percent, could face the equivalent of at least 3 crises. Mobile, Alabama and Pensacola, Florida are projected to face the equivalent of roughly 4.5.
Such changes stand in stark contrast to the smaller changes projected under deep emissions cuts. (Such an outcome would require that emissions peak around 2020, that they fall to zero around 2070, and that humanity removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in the years that follow.) In Detroit and Flint, Michigan, the level of damage projected under unabated emissions is nearly five times higher than that expected under deep cuts to warming pollution at the end of the century. In Anchorage, Alaska, high emissions would worsen the damage nearly 17-fold relative to deep cuts to warming pollution.
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Such profound dangers may appear to lie far from the United States’ borders. But their aftershocks will come close to home. Climate impacts in one area can have worldwide consequences. Heat-driven agricultural losses, for instance, can shape global food prices. Sea-level rise, drought, and other hazards can prompt international migration. Indeed, such effects have already materialized — and with more warming pollution, they could worsen. At stake in humanity’s emissions choices is not just the possibility of a climate pile-up in the United States, but of simultaneous devastation around the world.
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