Enter your county and we’ll tell you.
Enter your county and we’ll tell you.
Every Place Has Its Own Climate Risk. What Is It Where You Live?
ByStuart A. ThompsonandYaryna SerkezSept. 18, 2020
For most of us, climate change can feel like an amorphous threat — with the greatest dangers lingering ominously in the future and the solutions frustratingly out of reach.
So perhaps focusing on today’s real harms could help us figure out how to start dealing with climate change. Here’s one way to do that: by looking at the most significant climate threat unfolding in your own backyard.

Risk level (low to very high)
Wildfires
Extreme heat
Hurricanes
Water stress
Rainfall
Sea level rise
Risk level (low to very high)
Wildfires
Water stress
Extreme heat
Hurricanes
Extreme rainfall
Sea level rise
Thinking this way transforms the West Coast’s raging wildfires into “climate fires.” The Gulf Coast wouldn’t live under the annual threat of floods but of “climate floods.” Those are caused by ever more severe “climate hurricanes.” The Midwest suffers its own “climate droughts,” which threaten water supplies and endanger crops.
This picture of climate threats uses data fromFour Twenty Seven, a company that assesses climate risk for financial markets. The index measures future risks based on climate models and historical data. We selected the highest risk for each county to build our map and combined it with separate data from Four Twenty Seven on wildfire risks.
“Every single county has some sort of climate threat that’s either emerged and is doing some damage right now or is going to emerge,” said Nik Steinberg, the managing director of research at Four Twenty Seven and lead author of theclimate risk reportwe consulted.
Despite the clear environmental threats, people still tend to believe climate change is something “far away in time and space,” according tothe Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Andsurveys showthat while 61 percent of Americans say climate change poses a risk for people in the United States, only 43 percent think it will affect them personally.
Climate change will harm...
Agree
Disagree
Plants and animals
71%
19
Future generations
71
18
Developing countries
62
22
United States
61
29
Me personally
43%
47%
Climate change will harm...
Agree
Disagree
Plants and animals
71%
19
Future generations
71
18
Ppl. in developing countries
62
22
People in the United States
61
29
Me personally
43%
47%
Climate change will harm...
Agree
Disagree
Plants and animals
71%
19
Future generations
71
18
Developing countries
62
22
United States
61
29
Me personally
43%
47%
The solution may be found inresearch showingthat addressing climate change in emotional and personal terms is far more persuasive.
“There is a lot of evidence behind the idea that personalizing climate change and helping people understand the local impacts are more important than talking about how it’s influencing melting glaciers or talking about wildfires when you live in Ohio,” said Jennifer Marlon, a research scientist and lecturer at Yale.
The idea of a climate rebranding gained new attention this week after Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington told reporters: “These are not just wildfires. They are climate fires.”
Others have suggested similar language tweaks. Aaron Hall,writing in AdAge, questioned whether “climate change” felt too neutral or inevitable. He proposed “climate meltdown” or “climate chaos,” among other turns of phrase. Conservatives who believe the threat is false or exaggerated are waging their own branding war under the banner of “climate realism.”
But there is nothing false or exaggerated aboutwatching your neighborhood burn down. Making Americans care about the long-term threat requires communicating the real harm happening today.
Start at the coasts, where climate hurricanes decimate the region with increasing intensity. The warming planet hasn’t produced more hurricanes than before, scientists say, but the hurricanes that do develop arefar more severe.
Each dot represents
1,000 people
Dallas
Dallas
Shreveport
Shreveport
Fort Worth
Fort Worth
LOUISIANA
LOUISIANA
TEXAS
TEXAS
Baton Rouge
Baton Rouge
Austin
Austin
Houston
Houston
New Orleans
New Orleans
San Antonio
San Antonio
Densely populated coastal
communities like New Orleans
Corpus Christi
Corpus Christi
and Houston are under high risk
of hurricanes, putting more than
seven million people in danger.
Each dot represents
1,000 people
Dallas
Dallas
Shreveport
Shreveport
Fort Worth
Fort Worth
LOUISIANA
LOUISIANA
TEXAS
TEXAS
Baton Rouge
Baton Rouge
Austin
Austin
New Orleans
New Orleans
Houston
Houston
San Antonio
San Antonio
Densely populated coastal communities like New Orleans and Houston are under high risk of hurricanes, putting more than seven million people in danger.
Corpus Christi
Corpus Christi
Each dot represents
1,000 people
Dallas
Dallas
Shreveport
Shreveport
Fort Worth
Fort Worth
LOUISIANA
LOUISIANA
TEXAS
TEXAS
Baton Rouge
Baton Rouge
Houston
Houston
New Orleans
New Orleans
Densely populated coastal communities like New Orleans and Houston are under high risk of hurricanes, putting more than seven million people in danger.
Corpus Christi
Corpus Christi
Cameron Parish, a community of just 7,000 people in western Louisiana, was ravaged when Hurricane Lauraripped through the regionlast month. While the parish has the top climate hurricane risk level, only 29 percent of its residents thought climate change would affect them personally, according to Yale.
In many coastal areas, worsening storms will cause climate flooding, driven in part byrising sea levels. But climate floods are also a threat inland, from heavy rainfall, fast-melting snowpack or climate hurricanes. And theydo significant damage, costing an average of$6.9 billion in damage per year.
That’s how climate change works: The problems overlap and cause even more problems.
How many Americans will be affected by climate’s biggest risks?
Many parts of the U.S. have multiple high-risk climate threats.
Each dot represents 5,000 people
169 million people
have a high risk of water stress
104 million people
have a high risk
of hurricanes
94 million people
have a high risk
of extreme rainfall
92 million people
have a high risk
of heat stress
22 million people
have a high risk
of sea level rise
7 million people
have a high risk
of wildfires
Each dot represents 5,000 people
169 million people
have a high risk
of water stress
104 million people
have a high risk
of hurricanes
94 million people
have a high risk
of extreme rainfall
92 million people
have a high risk
threat of heat stress
22 million people
have a high risk
of sea level rise
7 million people
have a high risk
of wildfires
Each dot represents 5,000 people
169 million people
have a high risk of water stress
104 million people
have a high risk
of hurricanes
94 million people
have a high risk
of extreme rainfall
92 million people
have a high risk
of heat stress
22 million people
have a high risk
of sea level rise
7 million people
have a high risk
of wildfires
169 million people
have a high risk
of water stress
104 million people
have a high risk
of hurricanes
94 million people
have a high risk
of extreme rainfall
Risk of
hurricanes
and heat
Each dot represents
5,000 people
92 million people
have a high risk
of heat stress
22 million people
have a high risk
of sea level rise
7 million people
have a high risk
of wildfires
California faces
water stress, sea
level rise and wildfires
California faces
water stress, sea
level rise and wildfires
Water stress, heat, rainfall, hurricanes and sea level rise
Water stress, heat, rainfall, hurricanes and sea level rise
Our data showed that the highest risk in much of California was water stress, which leads to droughts and wildfires. But those same regions can also face extreme rainfall, which feeds the vegetation that causes worsening wildfires.
“Just because a place has an extreme rainfall risk doesn’t mean that it also doesn’t have an extreme drought risk, and a sea level rise risk, and a wildfire risk,” said Jeffrey Mount, senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California’s Water Policy Center. “That, in a nutshell, is California.”
That brings us to the record-breaking climate fires sweeping the West Coast today. Thoughpoor forest managementand bad development decisions have contributed to worsening wildfires over the past several decades, climate droughts now lengthen fire season.
Each dot represents
1,000 people
Eureka
Eureka
CALIFORNIA
CALIFORNIA
Sacramento
Sacramento
The Bay Area is
San Francisco
San Francisco
home to almost
eight million people.
It’s under multiple
San Jose
San Jose
climate threats,
including sea level rise,
wildfires, water
Fresno
Fresno
stress and rainfall.
Eureka
Eureka
Each dot represents
1,000 people
Sacramento
Sacramento
San Francisco
San Francisco
CALIFORNIA
CALIFORNIA
The Bay Area is home to almost eight million people.
It’s under multiple climate threats, including sea level rise, wildfires, water
stress and rainfall.
San Jose
San Jose
Fresno
Fresno
Each dot represents
1,000 people
Eureka
Eureka
CALIFORNIA
CALIFORNIA
Sacramento
Sacramento
San Francisco
San Francisco
The Bay Area is
home to almost eight million people. It’s
under multiple
climate threats,
including sea level rise, wildfires, water
stress and rainfall.
San Jose
San Jose
Fresno
Fresno
The threat of climate change “will never be here-and-now in people’s minds unless you’re in California today or New Orleans during Katrina,” said Mr. Steinberg, the research director at Four Twenty Seven. “It’s got to be out your window for you to really say it’s having an impact on your life, your livelihood, your retirement plan or whatever it might be.”
We’re bad at contending with threats we can’t see. But with climate fires on one side of the country, climate hurricanes on another and a pandemic that has killedmore than 900,000people worldwide, it’s clear that these threats are devastatingly real.
Stuart A. Thompson (@stuartathompson) is a writer and the graphics director for Opinion. Yaryna Serkez (@iarynam) is a graphics editor for Opinion.
Stuart A. Thompson is a writer and graphics director for Opinion. Yaryna Serkez is a graphics editor.