Conference Agenda
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Climate Change Impacts and Distribution Location: B002 Session Chair: Matias Solorza, UC Davis | |
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Poor and unequal US populations are more vulnerable to hurricane damage 1: Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany; 2: Institute of Environmental Science and Geography, University of Potsdam, Germany Tropical cyclones are among the most damaging weather extremes globally. Recently, it has been shown that they can affect income inequality within countries and that the vulnerability to tropical cyclones decreases with economic development on the country level. However, it is not yet clear whether vulnerability depends upon income inequality and how vulnerability varies with income and income inequality across subnational regions. Here, we study the dependence of vulnerability of economic assets to hurricane impacts upon income and income inequality across counties in the United States. To this end, we develop an event-based approach that blends a spatially and temporally resolved representation of individual hurricane wind fields with spatially resolved data on the distribution of economic assets. The vulnerability of affected regions is expressed through vulnerability curves that statistically link reported county-level damages to local wind speeds. Studying damages from 72 storms over the period 1996-2021, as reported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Storm Events Database, we find that vulnerability is significantly lower in affected counties with higher average per capita income or lower income inequality. These vulnerability differences are large enough to have substantially shaped observed damages during the study period. If all counties had the reduced vulnerability of the top income quintile of affected counties, the annual average damage over the study period would have been nearly USD 2 bn lower, roughly a quarter of the annual average spendings of the Federal Emergency Management Agency Disaster Relief Fund over this period. Further, if the vulnerability had been as low as that of the least unequal quintile of counties, the annual average damage would have been lower by USD 3.9 bn. Our findings indicate that there are substantial adaptation potentials to hurricane damage in the United States. Vulnerability reduction could thus be an important co-benefit of policies aimed at the reduction of poverty and income inequality, which is important in the light of a likely intensification of tropical cyclones impacts under global warming and increasing socioeconomic disparities. | |