Texas ignores climate change at our own peril | Opinion

The flood that tore through the Texas Hill Country early July 4 left more than broken infrastructure and a ruined weekend; it left a heartbreaking human toll of more than 100 lives lost and scores more missing.

As we grieve for the victims, the familiar refrains of “natural disaster” or “act of God” will inevitably surface to dismiss this tragedy. Such labeling obscures the role of human decisions and policies, creating a shield that protects governments, corporations and individuals from accountability for harm that could have been prevented.

There are two main factors about the flood people need to understand: First, this disaster was amplified by human-caused climate change. Second, there was a tragic failure to adequately warn those in harm’s way.

Climate change deserves particular attention. To be clear: Climate change doesn’t cause rain events like this. Instead, it acts like steroids for the weather, injecting extra intensity into patterns that occur naturally.

After two centuries of dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,  resulting in dramatic warming, this human influence now touches virtually every weather event. 

So the question is no longer whether climate change played a role in this flood — it almost certainly did. Rather, the question is, how much worse did climate change make it?

The answer will require detailed scientific analysis over the coming months, but we don’t need to wait to understand that climate change is making these events more severe.

The physics is straightforward: For every degree Celsius our planet warms, the atmosphere holds about 7% more water vapor. When a storm occurs in our warmed world, the air converging into the storm carries more moisture, leading to more intense rain events. 

 In fact, “more intense rainfall” is one of the oldest predicted consequences of climate change and has since been confirmed in observational datasets.  

However, even as we work toward long-term climate solutions, there are immediate steps we can take to protect lives. In particular, many lives could have been saved if those in danger had received and acted on timely, effective alerts.

I am not criticizing the National Weather Service, whose meteorologists saw the disaster coming. As early as 1:14 a.m. on the day of the flood, the NWS issued a Flash Flood Warning for the affected counties, using dire language like, “Life threatening flash flooding of creeks and streams.” By 5:34 a.m., it had escalated to a rare Flash Flood Emergency, warning of a “large and deadly flood wave.”

Rather, the problem was that the forecast did not get to those in harm’s way. As weather expert Daniel Swain notes, an accurate forecast only becomes a life-saving forecast when it is communicated effectively.

Many people either did not get the warning or did not understand how serious it was.  There was no county warning system in Kerr County, where most of the fatalities were located.  When asked about this, Rob Kelly, the Kerr County judge, gave a starkly honest answer: “Taxpayers won’t pay for it.”

Those who died in this flood deserved better — better warning systems, better climate action, and better leadership that values human life over fossil fuel profits. Their deaths will not be in vain if we finally commit to the actions necessary to prevent the next tragedy. The question isn’t whether we’ll face more climate-amplified disasters, but whether we’ll be ready when they arrive.

Andrew Dessler is a professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University and director of the Texas Center for Extreme Weather.  Read more of his writings at theclimatebrink.com.