Petition Requesting That The Federal Emergency Management Agency Amend Its Regulations Implementing the National Flood Insurance Program

I. Introduction

Flooding poses a significant threat to life and property and is the most common natural hazard in the United States. Since 1973, the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) has paid more than $69 billion in flood insurance claims, half of which have occurred in the last 12 years. Further, the risk of flooding is increasing due to climate change impacts, like sea level rise and changing precipitation patterns, and increased development in the nation’s floodplains. As atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations continue to rise, flood risk will continue to increase, presenting grave challenges to our nation’s cities, towns, and neighborhoods when floods strike.

The Great Ice Meltdown and Rising Seas: Lessons for Tomorrow

By Vivien Gornitz — June 2012

As accumulating atmospheric greenhouse gases lead to further climate warming, sea level rise will accelerate, endangering coastal communities by more frequent flooding, exacerbated beach erosion, and saltwater penetration into streams and aquifers. Twentieth century global sea level rise has averaged 1.7 mm/yr, increasing to around 3 mm/yr since 1993, as measured by TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason satellite altimetry. Current trends exceed those of the last few millennia by 1 to 2 mm/yr, based on saltmarsh data from many localities.

NASA Science Briefs – The Great Ice Meltdown and Rising Seas: Lessons for Tomorrow

The Generation of Meltwater Pulses – video

The Bad News Game

This is a learning tool on how to build effective fake news. The objective is to teach critical thinking about fake news and disinformation.

The Bad News Primer on Dis/Misinformation

The Bad News Game (Click on Play the Game, then click on one of the responses to get started.)

National Security Issues

NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence: Digital Hydra: Security Implications of False Information Online (2017)

During the last glacial maximum, sea level was around 600 feet lower than today. Southeast Britain was connected to Europe by a land bridge called Doggerland, which is derived from the Dogger Banks which the name of the submerged area. Northern and western Britain was covered by an ice sheet at this time. Doggerland provided a habitat for neolithic tribes migrating from the ice sheet. It was covered with forests and wetlands and was likely a prime area for hunting and gathering. About 8,150 years ago, when most of Doggerland had been inundated by the melting of the ice cap, there was a massive tsunami caused by the collapses of parts of the continental shelf off the coast of Norway. The tsunami was estimated to be 25 meters (82 feet) high. It would have devastated British coastal areas and much of the remaining area of Doggerland. There is evidence that some areas of Doggerland, which would have been islands at the time, were high enough to be refuges for the neolithic peoples in the area. These refugees may have been critical in the resettlement of Britain as sea level stabilized and the ice sheet disappeared.

Sabin Center Climate Deregulation Tracker

Harvard Regulatory Rollback Tracker

Berkeley website focused on strategies for reversing the nearly 200 federal rollbacks

Day 2 Actions

Conrad, David R. Higher Ground: A Report on Voluntary Property Buyouts in the Nation’s Floodplains: A Common Ground Solution Serving People At Risk, Taxpayers and the Environment. National Wildlife Federation, 1998.

Prolonged Siberian heat of 2020

A large, rapid multi-method attribution study, supported by observational and large ensemble model analyses, indicates with high confidence that extremely warm periods such as the 6 months of January – June 2020 over the Siberian region would have been at least 2 °C cooler in a world without human influence. Similar events have a best estimate return time in the current climate of around 130 years and are now more than 600 times as likely to occur as they would have been at the beginning of the 20th century; with the best estimate orders of magnitude larger. By 2050 we expect such a regional warm period in the first 6 months of the year to be at least another 0.5 °C warmer, and possibly up to 5 °C warmer, with similar 6-month regional temperatures becoming correspondingly more frequent. Statements regarding the very high June daily maximum temperatures (38 °C) such as were reported at Verkhoyansk can be made only with much lower confidence. Nevertheless, results also indicate a large increase in the likelihood of such temperatures and, with more confidence, an increase in extreme daily maxima of more than 1 °C when comparing the climate of 1900 to the present day.

Updated

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Sea level rise flooding of U.S. coastlines is happening now, and it is becoming more frequent each year. This flooding typically occurs when ocean waters reach 0.5 meter (m) to 0.65 m above the daily average high tide and starts spilling onto streets or bubbling up from storm drains. Evidence of a rapid increase in sea level rise related flooding started to emerge about two decades ago, and it is now very clear. This type of coastal flooding will continue to grow in extent, frequency, and depth as sea levels continue to rise over the coming years and decades.

2019 State of U.S. High Tide Flooding with a 2020 Outlook

https://floodfactor.com/

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