Posts tagged with "NOAA"

Chart source: First Street Foundation for CNBC

Every U.S. home now has a wildfire threat score—and some areas see a 200% jump in risk

May 17, 2022

Raging New Mexico and California wildfires may offer an ominous outlook for a growing swath of America—and not just in the West, reports CNBC.

Wildfire risk is increasing, likely due to global warming, and its destruction is becoming ever more expensive. Of the wildfires that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has tracked since 1980, 66% of the damage has occurred in the last five years.

Insured damage from wildfires last year totaled $5 billion, according to a Yale University report, marking the seventh consecutive year of insured losses above $2 billion.

Wildfire risk modeling is more crucial than ever to help protect lives and property, and new technology from a Brooklyn-based nonprofit, First Street Foundation, is mapping the threat with house-by-house specificity.

First Street uses everything from property tax data to satellite imagery and assigns a wildfire risk score that factors in construction type, roof type, weather and exposure to natural fuels like trees and grass.

“We calculate every individual property and structure’s risk across the country, be it a commercial building, or be it an individual’s home,” said Matthew Eby, founder and executive director of First Street Foundation. “What you’re able to see from that is that one home might have the same probability as another of being in a wildfire, but may be much more susceptible to burning down.”

Certain homes may be more vulnerable because of their building materials, the defensible space around them or the roof type, for example. The company models the immediate risk to Americans’ homes and then adjusts for projected climate change.

“We can then use supercomputers to simulate 100 million scenarios of wildfire today, and then another 100 million scenarios 30 years in the future with the forecasted weather conditions,” Eby said.

First Street gives every home a unique score and unique probabilities of risk. It did the same for water threats, working with Realtor.com to put a flood score on every property on the home-selling website. That feature is now the second-most clicked map on Realtor.com, behind school district data on K-12 performance.

“The reaction to flood has been overwhelmingly positive. It’s really helpful in being able to make informed decisions and to understand what it is to protect your home,” said Sara Brinton, lead project manager with Realtor.com.

Potential buyers and homeowners who find their flood and fire scores on Realtor.com can click a link for more information on First Street’s site to find out how best to protect their homes.

“On a on a monthly basis, we see tens of millions of impressions against our flood factor data,” said Eby.

More than 71% of recent homebuyers took natural disasters into account when considering where to move, according to a recent survey from Realtor.com and analytics company HarrisX. About half of respondents reported being more concerned about natural disasters today than they were five years ago.

The First Street fire model pays particular attention to what it calls the “wildland urban interface,” where housing developments butt up against wooded areas.

At least 10 million properties rank somewhere between “major” and “extreme” wildfire risk, according to First Street. While flood risk grows by about 25% over a span of 30 years, wildfire risk overall is doubling and jumping more than 200% in places you might not expect, like New Jersey, Massachusetts, Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, and Arkansas.

That change helps explains why big firms, like Nuveen Real Estate, are buying the data to inform their investments.

“The First Street data is helping us get that really close look at how will the building be impacted? And more importantly, how can we reflect this increasing risk in our underwriting?” said Jessica Long, head of sustainability for Nuveen’s U.S. real estate portfolio. “We use the data as part of new investment screening as well as part of our annual business-planning process.”

For homeowners, the information not only guides them in buying a home, but it can also help in protecting one they already own. The fire score, for example, can help inform minor changes to reduce that risk, like adjusting landscaping or ventilation. Experts say it’s much easier to protect a home from wildfire than from major flooding.

When First Street introduced its flood-score feature, the data was met with concern that it would lower the value of homes with higher risk. Realtor.com’s Brinton said there have been very few complaints, but added, “In a few places we see homes appreciating somewhat more slowly in areas with high flood-risk scores.”

Research contact: @CNBC

Above, oceanographers were exploring off the coast of Hawaii when they spotted what appeared to be a well-preserved brick road at the bottom of the sea. (Photo source: YouTube/E/VNautilus)

Follow the yellow brick road: Have scientists found an undersea path to the lost city of Atlantis?

May 12, 2022

Not every road leads to Rome. Some paths appear to be headed to the very heart of the ocean—like the one recently spotted by scientists in the Pacific, which they dubbed the “road to Atlantis,” reports the New York Post.

Late last month, oceanographers aboard the E/V Nautilus vessel were out exploring the floor of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument—a submarine range of volcanic mountains off the coast of Hawaii—when they came across what looked like a well-preserved brick road on the ocean floor.

On April 29, the researchers were amazed to see such a structure 3,376 feet underwater, near the top of Nootka Seamount. The discovery, as part of the Luʻuaeaahikiikekumu expedition, was captured on video during the group’s 24/7 livestream on YouTube.

“It’s the road to Atlantis,” one scientist is heard saying in the background of the footage.

“That’s a really unique structure,” another added.

“This is the yellow brick road,” a third researcher chimed.

“Are you kidding me? This is crazy,” an additional voice exclaimed.

Only about 3% of the 583,000 square miles within the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument area has been recorded, although its peaks are known to rise over 16,000 feet from the seabed and summit just 200 feet below the surface of the water.

If the lost city of Atlantis were real, it would have fallen near the Strait of Gibraltar in the Mediterranean, according to Plato’s writings. Indeed, the legend of Atlantis dates back to Plato’s “Dialogues, written about 360 B.C.—the first of all records of the lost city in history.

In the philosopher’s tale, the city was a metaphor for the corruption of power, wealth, and industry. In other words, it was created strictly as a plot device—and not the stuff of prehistoric folklore. Moreover, there isn’t a trace of archaeologic or geologic evidence that a sunken city ever existed.

However, the scientists now believe, “What may look like a ‘yellow brick road’ to the mythical city of Atlantis is really an example of ancient active volcanic geology.”

What the team actually had seen was later identified as hyaloclastite, “a volcanic rock formed in high-energy eruptions where many rock fragments settle to the seabed,” they explained, while the “unique 90-degree fractures” that made it look like stone laid for a road are likely a result of “heating and cooling stress from multiple eruptions.”

The current mission, funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, set out to obtain a deeper understanding of how the northwestern Hawaiian Islands were formed.

Research contact: @nypost

Above, a summary infographic shows hurricane season probability and numbers of named storms predicted from NOAA's 2021 Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook. (Chart source: NOAA)

Biden doubles FEMA funding for extreme weather preparations

NOAA: Pollution from personal care products is comparable to tailpipe emissions in Boulder

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August 26, 2019

Motor vehicles have long been recognized as a dominant source of pollution. But a new study led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows that—during the morning rush hour in Boulder, Colorado—the trail of chemical vapors emitted by commuters who have applied a variety of personal care products to their skin and hair is comparable in magnitude to the emissions of major components of vehicle exhaust.

People, it turns out, are a major source of pollution too, NOAA has found.

“We detected a pattern of emissions that coincides with human activity,” said lead author Matthew Coggon, a CIRES scientist working at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory. “People apply these products in the morning, leave their homes, and drive to work or school. We see emissions spike in the morning and show a lower peak again at the end of the day.”

The study findings, published in the journal, Environmental Science and Technology, confirms other recent findings, which demonstrate that chemical emissions from personal care products can contribute significantly to urban air pollution.

Among the chief culprits: D5 Siloxane, short for decamethylcyclopentasiloxane, a common ingredient added to shampoos, lotions, and other personal care products to give them a smooth, silky feeling.

Siloxane belongs to a class of chemicals called volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are designed to evaporate. Once released into the atmosphere, NOAA says, sunlight can catalyze reactions between VOCs, nitrogen oxides, and other compounds to form ozone and particulate matter—two types of pollution that are regulated because of their effects on air quality and human health.

Coggon and his colleagues measured VOCs from the roof of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in December 2015 and January 2017—and from a mobile laboratory driving around Boulder during rush hour in February, 2016. They sampled everything they could, including compounds such as benzene, which are known markers of vehicle exhaust.

“We were surveying the air, monitoring every chemical compound our instrument was sensitive to—about 150 compounds,” said Coggon. From that soup of chemicals, one compound in particular caught their attention. “We found a big peak in the data but we didn’t know what it was,” he said.

Based on the measurements, Patrick Veres, a NOAA scientist and co-author on the paper, suggested the suspect might be a chemical known as D5 siloxane, a refined petroleum product he recognized from another research project. When Coggon’s team saw that siloxane levels appeared to rise and fall throughout the day in step with measurements of benzene emissions from traffic, they initially theorized siloxane was a component of vehicle exhaust. But when they tested tailpipe emissions directly and took roadside measurement, siloxane was absent.

Siloxane and benzene weren’t coming from the same source, but Coggon and his colleagues recognized that the chemicals were linked with a particular human behavior: Commuting.

By studying their data hour-by-hour, they realized siloxane emissions peaked in the morning, when people put on personal care products and went outside into their cars or buses. That’s when benzene emissions went up too. Emissions of both chemicals decreased during the day, then peaked again during the evening commute. The evening peak of siloxane emissions was lower than in the morning, because, they theorized, the personal care products had largely evaporated throughout the day.

The findings support an emerging body of research into the role of consumer and industrial products as sources of urban air pollution.

The research team is looking at other chemicals in personal care products that may also spike in the morning, as people commute. “We all have a personal plume, from our cars and our personal care products,” said Coggon.

Research contact: @NOAAResearch