Harvey highlights how climate is changing
Houston has the opportunity to show the world how to respond to challenges of new global realities
Hurricane Harvey started as a tropical depression, moved across the Yucatan Peninsula and entered the Gulf of Mexico. This tropical depression quickly strengthened and received the name Harvey. What happened next will be talked about for decades to come.
According to measurements taken by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the temperature of the waters of the Gulf of Mexico just off the Texas coast before Harvey arrived was 2.7 to 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than “normal”, making it one of the hottest bodies of water in the world. This above average temperature is a relatively new circumstance and different from past storms.
If you think of a storm as a car, this heat from the Gulf is the “fuel” that drives and powers tropical systems such as Harvey. With more fuel, these storms can increase in size rapidly and generate more rainfall due to the evaporation potential of the Gulf. Harvey might well have formed in our tropical oceans with cooler surface water temperatures, but its characteristics likely would not have been as bad as they were.
Harvey will be a record-setting storm. Climate scientists have told us for the last two decades that one of the risks of climate change is a higher frequency of severe storm events. Houston has experienced that issue many times before Harvey. In places, the “Memorial Day” and “Tax Day” floods have been evaluated as larger than a 100-year storm and some rainfall and creek flows during those storms were labeled as 1,000-year storms. But they really are not that rare anymore as Harvey proved.
People all over this region shake their heads when they hear that we just experienced a 100-year or greater storm because the term has lost its meaning. Common sense tells us that this is true. And when common sense and science come together, we should carefully listen.
We have to begin to have an honest, civil conversation about climate change. Employees of the State of Texas and various units of local government are afraid that they will be fired if they mention climate change. In many circles, “weird weather” is Texas code for climate change. Imagine that — having to talk in code because of the political implications of science.
Moving forward after Harvey, we cannot develop and plan for restoring and maintaining Houston and our region if we deny the recent trends in severe weather. The massive amount of rainfall and runoff affects every flood-related engineering and planning design.
Our current 100-year rainfall amount of about 13 inches in 24 hours is obsolete and must be increased based on our experiences of the last few decades. Big storms used to be considered rare, but no more. They are the new norm.
There are many among us who resist hearing or talking about our “weird weather” and it is with both care and concern that we raise it. However, the stakes are incredibly high. If we don’t look at the facts and try to honestly evaluate what is facing us, we will fail at the greatest challenge this region has ever faced, and that is also unacceptable.
There are ways to go forward. There are options for storing and managing this new norm. There are many solutions which the region will be hearing about in coming months. Hard choices will have to be made in order to succeed. And we won’t get there without openness and honest conversation.
We citizens of the HoustonGalveston region are not alone in this dilemma. Every major coastal city in the world will be facing these same issues as well as sea level rise, another looming issue. It is doubtful that any city could have handled the rainfall amount just experienced by our region. And the rest of world is watching to see how we respond.
Houston has the opportunity to show the world how to respond to the challenges of these new global realities. We have shown by our emergency response that we have world-class, wonderful citizens with big hearts and care and concern about each other. It is what makes Texas and Houston great. Now we just have to show that we are smart enough and brave enough to find our way out of this mess called Hurricane Harvey.