Wind and rain compound with tides to cause frequent and unexpected coastal floods.

With sea-level rise, flooding in coastal communities is now common during the highest high tides. Floods also occur at normal tidal levels when rainfall overcomes stormwater infrastructure that is partially submerged by tides. Data describing this type of compound flooding is scarce and, therefore, it is unclear how often these floods occur and the extent to which non-tidal factors contribute to flooding.

Assessing the full costs of floodplain buyouts.

Given projected increases in flood damages, managed retreat strategies are likely to become more widespread. Voluntary buyouts, where governments acquire flood-damaged properties and return the sites to open space, have been the primary form of federally funded retreat in the USA to date. However, little attention has been paid to the cost structure of buyout projects.

The effect of information about climate risk on property values.

Floods and other climate hazards pose a widespread and growing threat to housing and infrastructure around the world. By reflecting climate risk in prices, markets can discourage excessive development in hazardous areas. However, the extent to which markets price these risks remains poorly understood.

Risk screening methods for extreme heat: Implications for equity-oriented adaptation.

Morbidity and mortality impacts of extreme heat amplified by climate change will be unequally distributed among communities given pre-existing differences in socioeconomic, health, and environmental conditions. Many governments are interested in adaptation policies that target those especially vulnerable to the risks, but there are important questions about how to effectively identify and support communities most in need of heat adaptations. Here, we use an equity-oriented adaptation program from the state of California as a case study to evaluate the implications of the currently used environmental justice index (CalEnviroScreen 3.

Managed retreat through voluntary buyouts of flood-prone properties.

Retreat from some areas will become unavoidable under intensifying climate change. Existing deployments of managed retreat are at small scale compared to potential future needs, leaving open questions about where, when, and how retreat under climate change will occur. Here, we analyze more than 40,000 voluntary buyouts of flood-prone properties in the United States, in which homeowners sell properties to the government and the land is restored to open space.

High-tide flooding disrupts local economic activity.

Evaluation of observed sea level rise impacts to date has emphasized sea level extremes, such as those from tropical cyclones. Far less is known about the consequences of more frequent high-tide flooding. Empirical analysis of the disruption caused by high-tide floods, also called nuisance or sunny-day floods, is challenging due to the short duration of these floods and their impacts.