The Resilience Roundup highlights announcements, events, and funding opportunities along with links to the previous month's local, state, and national resilience news.
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Resilient Connecticut Project Updates |
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10 Steps to Municipal Resilience
CIRCA describes “10 Steps to Municipal Resilience” in a new fact sheet to help CT towns and cities adapt to the growing impacts of climate change. These 10 steps can help decision makers determine if they are moving their community toward resiliency. Along with the fact sheet are two additional resources: 1) a website that describes both CIRCA’s and other organizations’ resources and tools to help communities implement the 10 steps and 2) a video featuring Jim O’Donnell (CIRCA’s Executive Director and Professor in Marine Sciences) and Joe MacDougald (Executive Director of UConn School of Law’s Center for Energy and Environmental Law) who provide informal commentary and added insight for each of the 10 steps.
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Sept. 27 Webinar: Crafting Competitive Proposals for
the National Coastal Resilience Fund and Beyond
In the next year the Resilient Connecticut project will move into Phase 3, which means CIRCA will be working more directly with communities to identify priority areas for resilience projects. On September 27, CIRCA will host a webinar for people interested in writing competitive grant proposals for various funding sources to implement projects, including the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s National Coastal Resilience Fund (NCRF). NCRF’s team of Field Liasons, Throwe Environmental, will present to webinar participants:
- Key tips and practices for putting together stronger, more competitive, and more successful proposals for various funding sources, including the NCRF.
- Opportunities to develop specific project ideas through proposal development meetings and site visits this winter/spring.
- Information about sustainable approaches to funding and financing.
See the info flyer and REGISTER to attend the webinar from 12-1pm on Sept 27.
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NOAA Climate Program Office: Changing Precipitation Webinar Series
NOAA's Climate Program Office is hosting a five-part webinar series on "Our Changing Precipitation". Join to learn more about some of the considerations and methods for working with available precipitation science and information to advance resilience planning. Webinars will take place on Tuesday afternoons:
Focus on Science
September 14, 2:00 - 3:00 p.m.
Understand the state of the science on precipitation prediction and climate modeling.
From Science to Application: Climate Science, Hydrology, and Planning - Part 1
September 21, 2:00 - 3:00 p.m.
Learn about results of studies evaluating local and regional trends in extreme events, different approaches for evaluating future precipitation, and analysis of current state stormwater infrastructure standards.
From Science to Application: Climate Science, Hydrology, and Planning - Part 2
September 28, 2:00 - 4:00 p.m.
Learn about ways researchers are helping communities consider climate change impacts on hydrology for local planning.
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C2ES Webinar: What Happens After COP26?
September 23, 10:00 - 11:30 a.m.
COP26 is a key political moment to advance climate action. The long-awaited conference is an opportunity for countries to deliver timely commitments that take us further towards achieving the Paris Agreement’s goals of limiting temperature rise to 1.5°C, adapting to the adverse impacts of climate change and making financial flows consistent with both. But what happens after Glasgow?
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Climate and Housing Crisis: A Research Agenda for Urban Communities
September 23, 12:00 p.m.
Join the Sustainable Solutions Lab and the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy for a briefing on a joint working paper, “Climate and Housing Crisis: A Research Agenda for Urban Communities.” This paper explores several key questions, including: What community characteristics support successful implementation of residential development projects that are affordable and sustainable?
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EBC September Webinars
September 28, 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
This webinar will focus on climate change considerations for the management, rehabilitation, and removal of dams. Due to the increasing magnitude and frequency of storm events, it is important to ensure that existing dams can accommodate flood flows, to design dam rehabilitation and removal projects to withstand floods and improve flood resiliency where feasible, and to plan for potential dam failure emergencies. Webinar topics will include design considerations, case studies, and recent regulatory and legislative developments.
September 30, 1:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
This webinar will inform about risks from increasing temperatures in cities, discuss vulnerabilities such as health issues, and address counter measures Boston and Cambridge have taken. Solutions span from raising awareness and education to implementation measures. Experts from Phoenix, Arizona and Boston will address policy, zoning, and educational measures and share some of the tools they are developing to cool down entire neighborhoods, (street) corridors, and buildings.
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2021 Living Shorelines Tech Transfer Workshop
October 19 - 20, 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
This workshop will be held in Cape May, New Jersey and brings together experts from across the country for a two-day experience combining interactive field sessions with ground-breaking discussions. Topics will include adoption of living shorelines, regulation, engaging your community, new techniques, and more. The workshop is geared towards anyone working in the marketing, design, construction, management, and permitting of living shorelines and nature-based shoreline stabilization.
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FACT SHEET: Biden Administration Announces Nearly $5 Billion in Resilience Funding to Help Communities Prepare for Extreme Weather and Climate-Related Disasters
FEMA announced three pre-disaster funding opportunities to help states and communities prepare for major disasters that are costing lives and livelihoods and devastating local communities and businesses. These programs will allow communities to apply for nearly $5 billion to increase their preparedness for and recover from climate-related extreme weather events.
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New New DEEP Coastal Property Owner's Guide
The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) has created a new Coastal Property Owner’s Guide with the goal of helping current and potential property owners, real estate agents, attorneys, builders and anyone involved in selling or buying shoreline properties, understand the regulations and requirements associated with coastal structures, including FEMA floodplain construction and insurance requirements. The guide is available as a poster and as a tri-fold brochure.
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Connecticut State Division of Emergency Management and Homeland Security List of Resources for Disaster Situations
DEMHS provides a list of resources to CT residents for "disaster situations" like Hurricanes Henri and Ida. The resources include phone numbers, apps, radio stations, and social media accounts, which can provide the public with critical information before, during, and after storms.
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Study Maps Urban Heat Islands With Focus on Environmental Justice
Floods, tornadoes and hurricanes cause deaths every year, but when it comes to weather-related fatalities, extreme heat is America’s deadliest killer. Combine dense built urban environments with heat generated by human activities and you soon begin to see urban heat islands – inner-city zones where temperatures can be as much as 20 degrees F warmer than surrounding, vegetated areas. This project equipped participants with portable sensors and dispatched them across the study area in cars and on bikes to gather surface temperature data. The data collected will be used not only to create a detailed heat map, but to also help identify areas where environmental justice issues are a concern.
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National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Report: Motivating Local Climate Adaptation and Strengthening Resilience
Local communities are already experiencing dire effects caused by climate change that are expected to increase in frequency, intensity, duration, and type. Public concern about climate-related challenges is increasing, available information and resources on climate risks are expanding, and cities across the country and the globe are developing approaches to and experience with measures for mitigating climate impacts. Building and sustaining local capacities for climate resilience requires both resilient physical and social infrastructure systems and inclusive, resilient communities.
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State and Regional News Clips |
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New London Solved Chronic Flooding By Charging A Fee. Will Other Shoreline Towns Do The Same?
Middletown Press - August 1, 2021
NEW LONDON — The acres of concrete and asphalt covering downtown had begun to weigh on the leaders of this old port city by the end of the last decade. Every time it rained hard, water would run off those hard surfaces and overwhelm the city’s outdated stormwater system before flowing down toward the busy riverfront and onto Bank Street. The problem became so persistent that by 2018 Mayor Michael Passero and other city officials turned to a decade-old pilot program allowing New London and three other coastal cities to establish their own stormwater authorities for the first time.
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NYPA To Study Impact Of Climate Change On Operations
Niagara Gazet - August 8, 2021
New York Power Authority officials say they will study the long-term effects of climate change on NYPA's physical power generation and transmission assets and system operations. The research, in collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy science and engineering research center, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP), aims to inform NYPA’s risk and expenditure planning and strengthen its resilience against all hazards, including major weather events.
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The Long, Slow Drowning of the New Jersey Shore
The New York Times - August 15, 2021
At Avalon, located on Seven Mile Island, the ocean did an unexpected thing during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. When it hit one of the most carefully managed beachfronts — and stable dune systems — the nearly 10 feet of storm surge was simply redirected from the shore to, and through, the island’s two inlets, where the water faced little impediment from the low-slung bulkheads of back-bay homes. While the ocean famously breached several locations farther up the coast, here the floodwaters mostly came from behind. This flooding caused by Sandy obliterated any notion that beach replenishment would be enough to protect the barrier islands as the sea level there begins to rise.
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Ocean State's Chief Resiliency Officer has a Climate Plan
ecoRI News - August 16, 2021
Shortly after he was named Rhode Island’s first chief resiliency officer, in mid-September 2017, Shaun O’Rourke was handed a monumental task: write a state resiliency plan to deal with the climate crisis by July 1, 2018. The plan was to include funding proposals to protect the most at-risk infrastructure and economic zones, such as wastewater treatment facilities, low-lying coastal roads and seaports. It was to include adaptation initiatives to protect public buildings and vital infrastructure from sea-level rise, flooding and extreme weather.
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Tropical Storm Henri Is Bringing High Winds, Heavy Rain And Flooding. Is It Climate Change?
WBUR News - August 22, 2021
As Tropical Storm Henri batters much of New England this weekend with damaging winds, heavy rainfall, storm surges and a large possibility of inland flooding, it may feel like one more item to add to the list of abnormal weather events we’ve seen this year. And what a year it’s been — from wildfires out west and record heat here in New England, to deadly flooding in Germany and China — weather events in 2021 have led many to ask, “Is this climate change?”
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$106M Awarded To Protect, Improve, Preserve Long Island Sound
Port Washington News - August 25, 2021
Senator Chuck Schumer recently held a press conference at the Town Dock in Port Washington to announce that $106 million dollars will be secured to protect, improve and preserve the Long Island Sound. This money was included in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Plan in hopes of improving the water quality by reducing the nitrogen, protecting the wildlife, diminishing the effects of climate change and helping to preserve Long Island’s recreation and fishing industries.
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NH Coastal Communities May Benefit from Infusion of Federal Funds
New Hampshire Union Leader - August 25,2021
2021 may well be the year when the words “infrastructure” and “resiliency” enter the public lexicon like never before. But it is not the words alone that have created a new energy and optimism among environmentalists, civil engineers, academics, and city planners in the 17 communities considered coastal New Hampshire. It’s the prospect of an infusion of Washington money on a scale some experts say rivals Roosevelt’s New Deal.
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'No easy answers' WHOI Building Project Designed for Sea-Level Rise
Cape Cod Times - August 26, 2021
WOODS HOLE — The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is one of the leading organizations focused on ocean research, exploration and education. Its vessels roam the world's oceans, their researchers explore the deepest oceanic canyons and the shallows of a salt marsh. For an institution that has experienced, researched and documented the impacts of climate change on the ocean, it follows that when it contemplated building a new $100 million dock and waterfront facilities, WHOI would incorporate sea-level rise into planning.
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New York Region's Historic Floods Send Deadly Climate Change Lesson
Axios - September 1, 2021
The remnants of Hurricane Ida brought a tropical deluge of unprecedented proportions to the New York City metro area on Wednesday night into Thursday. The flooding that resulted from the heavy rainfall shut down Newark Airport, and turned city and country roads in all five boroughs and surrounding areas of New Jersey and Pennsylvania into rivers. The historic deluge clearly demonstrates that climate change is winning the battle between a rapidly shifting climate and outdated infrastructure.
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NOAA's Updated Hurricane Outlook Calls for Even More storms in 2021
Axios - August 4, 2021
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Wednesday updated its 2021 Atlantic hurricane seasonal forecast, slightly increasing expectations for the number of named storms and powerful hurricanes. Why it matters: With the U.S. already reeling from extreme heat and wildfires, disaster response agencies are overstretched. A particularly destructive and active hurricane season could overwhelm some of its response capacity.
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4 Issues To Watch As Heat Disrupts The Grid
E&E News - August 6, 2021
As coronavirus cases surge across the United States, another factor is playing a large role in shifting power demand and meddling with the grid and electricity mix: heat. High temperatures have pushed some parts of the country to electric consumption levels well beyond what was seen last year as people crank up air conditioners to keep cool. Utilities have to juggle the realities of an evolving generation mix as intermittent wind and solar play larger roles in supplying power. Some experts caution that states are not necessarily ready for the new reality of disruption.
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U.N. Panel Issues Scientific ‘Reality Check’
On Threat From Climate Change
Forbes - August 9, 2021
The scientific verdict is in: “The scale of recent changes across the climate system as a whole and the present state of many aspects of the climate system are unprecedented over many centuries to many thousands of years.” So says a panel of scientists in a United Nations report released this morning. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the Working Group I contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) entitled Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis on August 9, 2021. In the report, the 234 authors from 66 countries assess the science of climate change, together with a policy summary and an interactive atlas showing global impacts as they vary by region.
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The Devastating New UN Report On Climate Change, Explained
Vox August 9, 2021
How much has humanity already changed the climate? And how much worse will it get? The answers now are sharper than ever, according to an international team of scientists. In a new report, they say that far more aggressive action is needed to limit catastrophic climate change, and that time is running out. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations’ climate science research group, concluded in a major report that it is “unequivocal” that humans have warmed the skies, waters, and lands, and that “widespread and rapid changes” have already occurred in every inhabited region across the globe.
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Major Climate Changes Inevitable And Irreversible –
IPCC’s Starkest Warning Yet
The Guardian - August 9, 2021
Within the next two decades, temperatures are likely to rise by more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, breaching the ambition of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, and bringing widespread devastation and extreme weather. Only rapid and drastic reductions in greenhouse gases in this decade can prevent such climate breakdown, with every fraction of a degree of further heating likely to compound the accelerating effects, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s leading authority on climate science.
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A Hotter Future Is Certain, Climate Panel Warns.
But How Hot Is Up to Us
The New York Times - August 9, 2021
Nations have delayed curbing their fossil-fuel emissions for so long that they can no longer stop global warming from intensifying over the next 30 years, though there is still a short window to prevent the most harrowing future, a major new United Nations scientific report has concluded. Humans have already heated the planet by roughly 1.1 degrees Celsius, or 2 degrees Fahrenheit, since the 19th century, largely by burning coal, oil and gas for energy. And the consequences can be felt across the globe.
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Senate Passes $1 Trillion Infrastructure Bill
The New York Times - August 10, 2021
WASHINGTON — The Senate gave overwhelming bipartisan approval on Tuesday to a $1 trillion infrastructure bill to rebuild the nation’s deteriorating roads and bridges and fund new climate resilience and broadband initiatives, delivering a key component of President Biden’s agenda. “This historic investment in infrastructure is what I believe you, the American people, want, what you’ve been asking for for a long, long time,” Mr. Biden said from the White House as he thanked Republicans for showing “a lot of courage.”
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UNICEF Report Shows 1 Billion Children At ‘Extremely High’ Risk From Climate Change
Forbes - August 20, 2021
A new report from UNICEF concludes that nearly half of the world's children — roughly 1 billion — live in one of 33 countries classified as "extremely high risk" due to climate change impacts. "The Climate Crisis Is a Child Rights Crisis: Introducing the Children's Climate Risk Index" is the first comprehensive analysis of climate risk from a child's perspective — ranking countries based on level of exposure to climate-related shocks, such as cyclones and heat waves, and their relative vulnerability based on access to essential services.
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How Should California Confront the Rising Sea? These Lawmakers Have Some Bold Ideas
Los Angeles Times - August 20, 2021
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Tennessee floods show a pressing climate danger across America: ‘Walls of water’
The Washington Post - August 23, 2021
Tennessee’s flash floods underscore the peril climate change poses even in inland areas, where people once thought themselves immune. A warmer atmosphere that holds more water, combined with rapid development and crumbling infrastructure, is turning once-rare disasters into common occurrences. Yet Americans, who often associate global warming with melting glaciers and intense heat, are not prepared for the coming deluge.
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What We Know About Climate Change and Hurricanes
The New York Times - August 29,2021
Hurricane Ida intensified overnight, becoming a Category 4 storm over the course of just a few hours. The rapid increase in strength raises questions about how much climate change is affecting hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean. While researchers can’t say for sure whether human-caused climate change will mean longer or more active hurricane seasons in the future, there is broad agreement on one thing: Global warming is changing storms.
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How Climate Change Is Fueling Hurricanes Like Ida
NPR - August 30, 2021
Ida was a fierce Category 4 hurricane when it came ashore Sunday in Louisiana. With sustained winds of about 150 mph, the storm ripped roofs off buildings and snapped power poles. It pushed a wall of water powerful enough to sweep homes off foundations and tear boats and barges from their moorings. Climate change helped Ida rapidly gain strength right before it made landfall. In about 24 hours, it jumped from a Category 1 to a Category 4 storm as it moved over abnormally hot water in the Gulf of Mexico.
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Raising the Estimate of Sea-Level Rise
Harvard Magazine - September - October 2021
Picture a plastic bowl. Put a large piece of ice in it—one tall enough that it rises high above the bowl’s rim. Now melt the ice. The bowl will catch most of the water, but not all of it. Since the ice is tall, the bowl will reach full capacity before the block melts completely. With no place else to go, the extra water will spill over the lip and onto the counter. This is an approximation of how climate scientists have long modeled the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). Should the two-million-square-kilometer ice sheet fully collapse, some water would stay in the geological bowl. The rest would flow into the open ocean, where scientists previously estimated it would raise global mean sea level by a little more than three meters within 1,000 years of the collapse.
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The Resilience Roundup highlights CIRCA's presence in the news, provides links to recent local/state/national news articles related to resilience and adaptation, and announces upcoming events and seminars.
The Connecticut Institute for Resilience and Climate Adaptation's (CIRCA) mission is to increase the resilience and sustainability of vulnerable communities along Connecticut's coast and inland waterways to the growing impacts of climate change and extreme weather on the natural, built, and human environment. The institute is located at the University of Connecticut's Avery Point campus and includes faculty from across the university. CIRCA is a partnership between UConn and the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (CT DEEP).
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State and Regional News Clips |
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