Widespread Flooding Disrupts Many Communities

Are West Virginia’s Floods The Result Of Climate Change?

From an Article by Ken Silverstein, Forbes Magazine, June 30, 2016

For a state that has been racked with recession and unemployment, the flash floods that have ravaged West Virginia don’t help much. But the key question to ask — no matter how unpleasant — is whether the coal sector there shares some of the blame.

At issue is the concept of climate change and whether the warmer atmosphere is holding more water and therefore intensifying the storms. To that end, West Virginia’s prime industry has been coal, a fuel that when burned is responsible for a third of all human-induced carbon emissions.

Even more, the surface mining that has occurred is lopping off whole mountaintops and removing the vegetation, leaving the landscape vulnerable to erosion. The water running off the mountain is thus more rapid, adding to the problem of flash flooding, says Kathleen Miller, a scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., in a phone interview.

“The climate is highly variable and you can’t attribute specific events to climate change,” adds Dr. Miller. “But when you look long term, many environmental changes are all pointing in the same direction and supporting the conclusion that global climate change is underway: melting sea ice, melting glaciers and rising sea levels. “It is the weight of the evidence that must be considered.”

Photo in original article:  WV State Trooper C.S. Hartman, left, and Bridgeport WV, fireman, Ryan Moran, wade through flooded streets as they search homes in Rainelle. A rainstorm that seemed no big deal at first turned into a catastrophe for the small town in West Virginia, trapping dozens of people whose screams would echo all night.

As for the storms and the resulting floods in West Virginia, at least 25 people have died while thousands of homes have been destroyed. It’s the third worst flood in state history, with the worst one occurring in 1972 — a rainfall so hard that a dam built over a coal slurry pond had dislodged and ravaged the community of Buffalo Creek, WV,  killing hundreds.

One of the hardest hit areas of the 2016 flood is Greenbrier County, where the famed Greenbrier Resort is located and where the New Orleans Saints have training camp. The amount of rain that occurred last week is said to be a once-in-a-thousand year event. Is it because of climate change?

According to Kevin Trenberth, distinguished senior scientist at the Center for Atmospheric Research, there is about 10 percent more moisture in the atmosphere since 1970. That immediately increases precipitation by 10 percent.

“But that process then releases latent heat into the storm and can invigorate the storm so that the net increase in precipitation is up to 20 percent,” he says, meaning that rainfall can be double the resident moisture in the atmosphere.

In the Northeastern region that includes West Virginia, rainfall in the most extreme precipitation events has increased by 73 percent from 1958 to 2012, says the Third U.S. Climate Assessment — a problem particularly acute for the coal-producing state, which has water running off of mountains and into the townships below.

To be sure, some scientists point out that the aberrant weather patterns may not be the result of climate change. Rich Muller, a climate scientist from the University of California at Berkeley, who was hired by the Koch brothers, concludes that rising temperatures are the result of burning fossil fuels. But he says that at least hurricanes and tornados have actually decreased with time.

Specifically, he told this writer in an earlier talk that from 1750 to the present, global temperatures have risen by 1.5 degrees Celsius — directly tied to the excessive release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. He said that his models indicate that temperatures will continue to rise into the future.

“Global warming is real and it is caused by humans … But climate change is not contributing to more intense tornados and hurricanes,” Muller says.  To be clear, 17 of the warmest years on record have occurred in the last 18 years, says Dr. Miller, with the National Center for Atmospheric Research. And 2015 was, in fact, the hottest ever.

One of things that the climate skeptics will point to, she notes, is that a short-term trend can indicate a “warming pause.” But she emphasizes that short-term trend calculations can be manipulated by selecting an unusually warm starting point. The longer-term trend paints a different picture:

>>> It’s difficult news for a state like West Virginia to absorb— one that has built an economy on a fuel that is responsible for a third of all man-made heat-trapping emissions. What is the leadership to do?

>>> It must stop with the politics and look instead to science. Just as businesses consider “what if” scenarios when they look forward, responsible leaders must do the same.

>>> As for West Virginia, it must wean itself from coal and rapidly diversify from both an environmental and economic standpoint.

See also: Local Flood Report from WV Public Radio