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Language: en
climate change may be a global issue but
how it affects us depends on where we
live if you're in Chicago and
experienced intense summer heat you're
not going to be so concerned with say
rising sea levels on the other hand if
you're in Miami rising seas are a real
threat one way to think about adaptation
is to boil it down to a locations
exposure and vulnerability think of
exposure as the presence of humans and
their communities if a hurricane
somewhere in the Atlantic makes landfall
in an unpopulated area then there's no
exposure if it's sparsely populated then
there's low exposure on the other hand
if that same hurricane makes landfall
somewhere densely populated say Houston
a lot of people would be in harm's way
so Houston has high exposure okay
now let's consider vulnerability which
comes down to how prepared the city is
for disaster keeping with the hurricane
example does Houston have accurate flood
maps a good drainage system is it hilly
or flat which relates to how much
flooding a city experiences the better
equipped to places the less vulnerable
it is even if it has a lot of exposure
and preparation varies city by city so
things could be completely different for
two cities that are only a few hundred
miles apart it can get complicated which
is why climate scientists Radley Horton
and Katharine Hayhoe are partnering the
cities to help them develop adaptation
strategies I work with the city to help
them understand how climate risks are
going to change it's a long-term
partnership with decision-makers asking
them things like how have extreme
weather events in the past impacted you
a heat wave a drought a flood a
hurricane a storm or more what
vulnerabilities are they concerned about
what are the events that keep you up at
night they're sort of almost disasters
and then I is the climate scientist look
at how these different events are
changing so we pair these things
together with the priorities people have
and that helps identify the most
sensible action
to build resilience it might be social
resilience it might be economic
resilience it might be physical
resilience in terms of building places
for the water to go when it floods
sometimes what is maybe most central to
vulnerability has to do with the people
themselves do they have the economic
resources and access to information to
protect themselves and to make decisions
climate change takes the environmental
challenges a community is already
exposed to and makes them worse it
exacerbates the extremes meaning it will
make disasters more disastrous
or more frequent so as more and more
people are exposed to a growing list of
climate disasters can we decrease our
vulnerability scientists like hey-ho
think that building resilience to the
challenges we already face today is how
we adapt to a changing climate building
climate resilience can actually improve
the quality of our lives it decreases
our vulnerability it improves our
well-being and our safety it can improve
our air quality and our water quality
reduce our pollution levels improve our
health there are all kinds of smart
sensible ways that adaptation can help
us today as well as in the future
building resilience now can help us live
with some of the consequences of a
changing climate but if we need to adapt
to climate changes worst case scenario
it could require an enormous shift in
the world order and we can't fully
predict what all the consequences will
be nor how they'll affect us this is why
while adaptation is a crucial strategy
for dealing with climate change it can't
be the only one follow us on social to
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