Co-occurring climate events and environmental justice in California, 2018–2019
Climate change will increase the frequency of extreme weather events. This means climate-driven events like wildfires and power outages will likely co-occur more often, potentially magnifying their health risks. We characterized three types of climate-driven events—anomalously warm temperatures, wil...
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
IOP Publishing
2025-01-01
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| Series: | Environmental Research: Health |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1088/2752-5309/ada96f |
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| Summary: | Climate change will increase the frequency of extreme weather events. This means climate-driven events like wildfires and power outages will likely co-occur more often, potentially magnifying their health risks. We characterized three types of climate-driven events—anomalously warm temperatures, wildfire burn zone disasters, and long power outages—in 58 California counties during 2018–2019. We defined county-day anomalously warm temperatures when daily average temperatures exceeded 24 °C and the 85th percentile of the long-term county average. We defined county-day wildfire burn zone disasters when an active wildfire burn zone intersected a county, burned 1+ structures, killed a civilian, or received a Federal Emergency Management Agency Fire Management Declaration, and overlapped with a community. For a subset of the 38 counties (66%), long power outage county days were identified using PowerOutage.us data when an outage affected >0.5% of county customers for 8+ h. Co-occurring events were when 2+ of these events occurred on the same county day. Using the CDC/ATSDR Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), we determined whether co-occurring events disproportionately affected vulnerable populations. Nearly every county (97%) experienced at least one day of anomalously warm temperatures, 57% had at least one wildfire burn zone disaster day, and 63% (24/38 counties with available data) had at least one long power outage day. The most common co-occurring events (anomalously warm temperatures and wildfire burn zone disasters) impacted 24 (41%) counties for 144 total county-days. We did not find a clear connection between co-occurring events and social vulnerability. We observed an inverse correlation between co-occurring wildfire burn zone disasters and long power outage days with SVI, and a positive correlation between co-occurring anomalously warm and long power outage days with SVI. This analysis can inform regional resource allocation and other state-wide planning and policy objectives to reduce the adverse effects of climate-driven events. |
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| ISSN: | 2752-5309 |