Season 4, Episode 7: Marshall Shepherd: The Climate Science Behind Stronger Tropical Storms
Marshall Shepherd, the Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor of Geography and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Georgia
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Dr. Marshall Shepherd, Director of the Atmospheric Sciences Program at the University of Georgia, joins John to discuss the fourth transformation: how tropical storms and extreme weather are intensifying in frequency and power. From hurricanes moving further inland to the compounding effects of heatwaves and heavy rainfall, Marshall explains the science behind these shifts and the growing challenges they pose for communities across the U.S. Together, they explore the critical steps needed to adapt, rethink infrastructure, and address inequities in how extreme weather impacts vulnerable populations.
“People have this experience with weather. They experience it on a day to day or a week to week basis. But ... weather is your mood and climate is your personality. That’s how I make the distinction when people make that mistake of sort of conflating the two.”
Key Topics
Weather vs. Climate: Marshall explains the distinction between weather and climate, using the analogy of mood versus personality to address misconceptions about how daily weather events relate to long-term climate trends.
Hurricanes Moving Inland: John and Marshall discuss how stronger hurricanes are traveling farther inland due to climate change, bringing heavy rainfall and destruction to communities once considered safe from such extreme weather.
Rapid Intensification: Marshall explores the phenomenon of rapid intensification, where hurricanes strengthen dramatically in a short time, and its implications for disaster planning and evacuation strategies in coastal and inland areas.
Compound Disasters: John and Marshall explore the cascading effects of extreme weather events, such as hurricanes combined with heatwaves and non-tropical rainfall, and how these overlapping challenges amplify risks for vulnerable populations.
Adaptation and Resilience: John and Marshall discuss the need for proactive planning and investment in resilient infrastructure to help communities prepare for the impacts of intensifying storms and compound disasters.
Links to Relevant Studies and Resources:
Learn more about Dr. Marshall Shepherd and his work at the University of Georgia’s Atmospheric Sciences Program here.
Marshall references a paper on the Brown Ocean Effect, showing how hurricanes can retain strength over wetlands like those in Louisiana. Read more here.
Explore the National Academy study on weather-climate attribution, co-authored by Marshall in 2016, here.
Marshall appears in EarthStorm, a Netflix documentary about extreme weather, including Hurricane Ida. Watch it here.
Marshall mentions a Forbes article he wrote recently called 2024 Likely the Warmest Year on Record: Why It Matters to You. Read it here.
Marshall discusses how biases like confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance shape our understanding of science in his TED Talk, 3 Kinds of Bias That Shape Your Worldview. Watch his talk here.
Further Reading:
Explore research from the Atmospheric Sciences program at the University of Georgia here.
Find all of Marshall Shepherd's Forbes articles here.
“ The playbook has changed. I want to emphasize that the procedures and processes that we think about for hurricanes, heat waves, disasters and so forth is fundamentally different and will require a fundamentally different way of thinking about that on the adaptation and resiliency side until we get this macro mitigation solution in place. ”
Transcript
START (AUDACIOUS WATER EPISODE 7, SEASON 4)
[MUSIC]
JOHN: Welcome to Audacious Water, the podcast about how to create a world of water abundance for everyone. I'm John Sabo, director of the ByWater Institute at Tulane University. On today's show, the fourth transformation--how tropical storms and extreme weather are intensifying in frequency and power. My guest is Dr. Marshall Shepherd, director of the Atmospheric Sciences program at the University of Georgia, and a leading expert in weather and climate science. Today we'll talk about the difference between climate and weather, why storms are getting stronger, and the compound disasters that have been challenging cities in the Gulf South.
JOHN: Marshall, welcome to the show.
MARSHALL: Thank you for having me, John, happy to be here.
JOHN: Yeah, I've been really looking forward to this conversation. And if you don't mind, let's start with: why meteorology? What got you interested in the field and where along the way did you begin to focus on climate science?
MARSHALL: It's crazy because it all starts with a honeybee of all things. I was an only child growing up in Canton, Georgia, and I used to be out in the yard catching honeybees all the time. And so thought I wanted to be an entomologist, got stung by a honey bee, found out I was highly allergic to bee stings, and so a sixth-grade science project came around and I said, "I need a plan bee," pun intended, "I need something that I can do my science project on that won't kill me." And so I did a project called "Can a 6th grader predict the weather?" So I made all the weather instruments from things that we had around the house, and did a little weather model for my community, and I won the science fair. And so from that point on I knew I wanted to study the weather. But I didn't want to be on TV pointing at maps or telling you today's forecast - or tomorrow's forecast. I was more interested always in the hows and whys of weather. Started doing research, ended up finding Florida State University had a really good meteorology program. I was from the South, so went on from there, got my bachelor's, master's, and PhD. And then during my time at NASA, as a scientist at NASA, that's when I started to get more into both weather and climate. Because NASA was concerned about the Earth as a system, not just specific parts of it.
JOHN: Wow, that's great. I love "plan bee;" we might find a way to work that into the title for this. And I'll say, too, science fair was my entry to science for sure. You know, I grew up in Colorado fly fishing with my dad, and found a way to make that school work so that I could go fishing every weekend with my dad, and also won the science fair doing that. You know, that was by-and-large how I got into science was through (the) science fair.
MARSHALL: A quick story about science fairs, my most success- that was my sixth-grade science project - my most successful science project was actually my eighth grade science project on hypertension and race. And so that actually made it all the way to the state science fair here in the State of Georgia. So yeah, science fairs are always important to me. I was in 4-H, which is something here--I don't know how pervasive it is--but we used to have these projects called "DPA, District Project Achievement," and they had projects. So I honed some of my early chops on those types of projects.
JOHN: Yeah, for sure. And I assume you also had good teachers, because I had good teachers behind me.
MARSHALL: Yeah, my science teacher, Miss (Lily Mae Nash), I really - recently paid homage to her because she was the first person that taught me the scientific method, and how to ask questions, and post hypotheses, and test what you're doing with real data and methodology. So yeah, I had a string of teachers along the way. I've got to shout out to my mom, fourth grade... I actually was in my mom's fourth-grade class. Now, that was a horror if anybody's ever been in their own parent's class in elementary school. But, you know, yeah, some of my early - you know, both my - I grew up with my mom, single parent, but both of my parents were educators though.
JOHN: As long as we're giving shout-outs, I'll give a shout-out to Miss Sandra Bernhardt, who was my junior high and high school science teacher, got me into (the) science fair, and certainly was the enthusiasm that kept it all going, right?
MARSHALL: Yeah, can we just, while we're on this podcast - I mean, this podcast is all about water, and Earth, and science, and climate, and various other things. We need science fairs. I mean, I have two high-school-aged kids--one's actually in college now; one's a senior in high school--and I just don't see the same emphasis that I used to see back in my day on participation in science fairs. I mean, they teach valuable skills, even if you don't go on to be a NASA scientist or a professor at the University of Georgia.
JOHN: Fully agree, fully agree, and that's a good shout-out. Let's move on to climate science and other topics. So over the years I've seen your comments in major news stories. I read your Forbes column. I have a column of my own. You talk a lot about weather vs. climate.
MARSHALL: Yes.
JOHN: Why do you think this conflation is so pervasive and problematic?
MARSHALL: Well, and it's particularly problematic - we're recording this as we are about to enter into the winter solstice, and it's particularly problematic at this time, because when people see a snowstorm or a cold day they start tweeting me: "Hey Dr. Shepherd, I thought there was climate warming. I've got 20 inches of global warming in my yard right now. What are you guys talking about?" You know, people have this experience with weather, they experience it on a day-to-day or a week-to-week basis. But as you probably know, because I've said this many times in public, weather is your mood and climate is your personality. That's how I make the distinction when people sort of make that mistake of sort of conflating the two. I mean, your mood today doesn't necessarily tell me anything about your personality anymore than a cold day in December says about climate change. It's winter, or about to be winter. In fact, it is meteorological winter--meteorological seasons start on the first day of the month. And so we have to keep that in mind that, you know, climate is the statistics of weather. And I want to - I emphasize that because many of us were probably taught it's the average weather. That's really a mischaracterization. Average is one aspect, but it's all of the statistical aspects of weather. It's the max and minima. It's the extremes. It's the frequency of occurrence. So it's all of the statistical properties in a given location or over time of weather. It's not just average weather, which is sort of oversimplified, even when I was coming up as a student.
JOHN: Yeah, two comments on that. And I love that analogy to mood and personality. First comment is: a general challenge in science communication is communicating variance. And in your case with weather, and especially with climate, variance in space and time is even harder for the human brain to grasp, you know, that fourth dimension.
MARSHALL: Absolutely. There are so many sort of things that I've written about over the years in terms of challenges. People struggle with variance, they struggle with probability, things like the cone of uncertainty, the percent chance of rain. They, you know, struggle with the notion that we can make good forecasts out to about 10 to 14 days' worth of weather. But beyond that the models break down because it's solving a series of equations that are predicting this atmospheric fluid's change. So then people say, "Well, okay, if you just say that then how do we know the climate models are correct?" Well, the climate models are not trying to predict an exact state of the atmosphere in the year 2050. It's predicting a climate state. So these sort of variants - your point about variance, uncertainty, probability, multiple processes happening at the same time... When I teach classes here at the University of Georgia, and I teach about how a cloud forms, I'll often talk about the fact that as a parcel of air rises it cools, but it also expands because of something - I'm going to use a big fancy term called "adiabatic" processes. There's no heat exchange in the system, so that as that parcel expands it also cools until it reaches a dew point, and then you get condensation, and boom, you have a cloud. But you would be surprised at how many very sharp, 1500 SAT, 5.0 GPA students struggle with concepts where there's uncertainty or multiple processes happening simultaneously.
JOHN: Yeah - no, I agree. It's challenging. It's challenging also in the media, just reading about some of these changes that we're going to get into in this podcast. You know, they happen - you know, if it's the mood they happen in space and time in different ways. And integrating that information I think in space and time into a climate perspective is really hard for you to do if you're reading the newspaper or, you know, if you're scrolling news stories, which tend to come from different places at different times, right?
MARSHALL: Correct.
JOHN: I'm really interested in talking to you about tropical storms, extreme weather. You know, there is the claim out there that tropical storms, hurricanes, etc., are happening more frequently and with stronger magnitudes. Talk to me about what the most compelling datapoints from your perspective are on that point, and then relate it to the broader context of climate.
MARSHALL: Well, it's a little tricky, because you're absolutely right, I do hear that. What the literature actually suggests is that as climate warms and our oceans warm... And by the way, 90% of the climate and the global warming on our planet is in the ocean, and so that is in part what feeds strong hurricanes. It's not so much that we're seeing more of the storms, but when they're happening they're stronger. So what the literature is showing us right now - and I'll talk about tropical cyclones broadly, not just hurricanes. Of course they're hurricanes in the Atlantic basin and the eastern Pacific, there are typhoons in the western Pacif, and there's cyclones in the Indian Ocean. What the literature suggests is that it's not so much about the frequency of occurrence that's changing as much as the intensity. And that's because we're seeing, you know, this higher ocean heat content. You often hear people talk about the ocean temperatures, and the sea-surface temperatures, but it's really that deep ocean heat content. That's the fuel supply for storms. So when we look at recent storms in 2024, like Hurricane Helene, Hurricane Milton, these were storms that exhibited rapid intensification, they were major hurricanes. If you've looked at the last 5 to 10 years or so we've had essentially major hurricanes quite commonly. I recall when I was younger - I just don't recall as many of the Cat 3, Cat 4, Cat 5, it was like a big deal to get a Katrina or an Andrew. But we get a couple of them a year it seems now. But what we're also seeing is more rapid intensification. You know, they'd gain, you know, 30, 35 knots or so, miles per hour of wind in less than a day. I look at Milton this year, Hurricane Milton in the Gulf of Mexico went from a tropical storm to, like, a major hurricane in 42 hours. That's just unbelievable. So it's that additional energy from this warming ocean that is leading to a sort of a stronger generation of hurricanes. And they're wetter also. They're likely producing more precipitation because of basic physics. There's something called a "Clausius-Clapeyron" relationship--as temperature warms there's more water vapor available to these weather systems. And so that's bearing out. And goodness gracious, we certainly saw that with Hurricane Helene, with the excessive rainfall in parts of the Southeast, particularly the mountains of North Carolina.
JOHN: Let's talk about Helene a little bit. I'm glad you brought us there. It had far-reaching impacts inland. And this was also true for Ida, which was maybe not a similar type of storm, but a storm that, you know, started in New Orleans where I am and ended up in New York City. So these storms are having far-reaching impacts. Do stronger storms make it further inland?
MARSHALL: Well, that's one of the things, John, that concerns me the most. I think people - and I just co-authored a report for the National Academies, with you being in New Orleans you might be interested in, if you haven't seen it. We published a report recently on compound disasters in the Gulf region in 2020 and 2021. And we were on the ground talking to people in Lake Charles, and in Houston, and parts of Alabama about their experiences with these compound disasters. Hurricanes crisscrossing that region in 2020 and 2021. COVID. The winter storm from the polar-vortex-related storm. Tornadoes. These are compound events that have cascading effects on society. One of the things that we've found is that people have these benchmarks or context storms in their mind--"Oh, I've lived through a Laura or a Wilma, so I'm prepared for an Ida or a Helene." As we just talked about, the storms we're experiencing now on average and going forward aren't the storms that are in your benchmark or your context. And so that very much affects decision-making. So we're seeing storms. I grew up in Georgia. I don't recall seeing hurricane watches in metropolitan Atlanta. That's exactly what we had with Hurricane Helene. 2018 we had Hurricane Michael move into Georgia, 90-plus-mph winds, destroyed much of our agricultural crop that year in the southwest part of the state where we grow peanuts, and pecans, and cotton, things that you benefit from no matter where you're listening to this podcast. Same thing with Hurricane Helene. I've seen projections from my university that there's $5 billion, with a B, dollars in loss in timber and agriculture. But these storms are moving inland and they're stronger, and so it takes them a long time to ramp down. And so the consequences and impacts can be felt further inland. You know, people talk about places like Asheville, North Carolina as "climate havens," places where they were moving to get away from storms like Helene. And yet we saw what happened.
JOHN: Yeah, that's exactly where I was going. And I wanted to kind of pick your brain about this idea a little bit more. I've looked at, you know, NOAA website, I've looked at historical storm tracks to see, you know, where they go. You know, you see over history some storms that make it - you know, to go back into Canada. So a question is, do you think it's happening more often, that interior penetration, and can we expect that in the future to happen more often?
MARSHALL: Well, I think - you know, it's not my opinion, there's actually scientific literature by Kerry Emanuel and various other groups that have shown that these storms are reaching their intensity - highest intensity over their life cycle at higher latitude, which means further away from the tropics. So that brings into play things like New York, and D.C. Think about Hurricane Sandy, or what we called "Superstorm Sandy" in 2012. So I think what is of concern is that you've got this rich, deep, warm pool of water in the Gulf of Mexico and the north Atlantic. If you looked at the north Atlantic this year - 2024, by the way, is likely to be the warmest year on record after beating 2023. I just wrote a column in Forbes about that over the weekend. But also the ocean temperatures are exceedingly warm, and they extend further into the north Atlantic. Hurricanes aren't intelligent, so as long as there's warm water beneath them that reaches the threshold for what they need they'll develop and form. And so we're seeing this rich ocean heat content extending well up into the northern Atlantic, also really deep ocean heat content in the Gulf of Mexico. So as these storms like Ida, and Idalia, and Milton are barreling towards Florida, you know, they're still ramping up. They're still intensifying up to landfall. So of course, even as they get over land it takes a while for them to break, if you will. And so you still get these winds and rainfall. And we know the rainfall and water is the deadliest aspect of a hurricane. And then the wind causes infrastructure issues. I've done some research here in my research group at the University of Georgia on something called the "Brown Ocean Effect," this idea that in some cases even as the hurricanes move over land, if there's preceding wet soil, or swampland, or wetlands, they can maintain their intensity. Remember I just said they're not intelligent. So a wet swampland still producing water vapor to the storm, that's what I think may have happened with Hurricane Ida. There's literature to support that. There are published paper(s) that suggest that when it was sitting over parts of the wetlands of Louisiana near where you are it didn't really weaken, because it still felt like it was over water. It was still receiving water vapor from that marshy wetland. So there are all kinds of really interesting connections when we talk about this Earth system that we in the weather/climate research world are starting to better understand even within this context of changing extreme events. And it's not just hurricanes, and I think you were alluding to; it's heatwaves, it's flood events, aspects of wildfires, and so forth. We published a National Academy study in 2016 on what we call "Weather Climate Attribution." "Attribution" is what can we say about how much DNA of climate change is in today's weather events? And we're increasingly--and that was 2016--we've made significant advances since then. We have a pretty good feel for how climate change is impacting today's heatwaves, floods, hurricanes, and so forth. So that's just the new branch of our field that is rapidly exploding.
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JOHN: Up next, Marshall explains why hurricanes are moving further inland, the challenges this creates for communities once considered safe from extreme weather, and how we can adapt to face these growing risks.
JOHN: That's a really important point, attribution. Because that's a question that I get as a non-meteorologist--"Well, how do you know? How do you know it's climate change that's driving this? Hasn't this happened in the past?"
MARSHALL: Yeah, you know, when I walk in to order my Italian BMT sandwich at Subway and I tell someone I'm a climate scientist, they immediately start asking me a couple questions. "Well, climate change (is naturally) doesn't" - or didn't we always have hurricanes?" or all of what I call "zombie theories," these things that I hear all the time that have been refuted by a scientist, but they live on like zombies and the walking dead. But in terms of attribution, you know, if you read that report we break it down. But it's a pretty heavy read so let me kind of simplify it for you. There are various ways we can look at long records of observations to sort of look at the trends and change. We can also use climate and weather models to produce counter-factual or control (inaudible) and look at sort of the impacts under these sort of change conditions. Give you an example. 2021 or so there was a massive heatwave in the Pacific Northwest. Well, an attribution study came forth that said that heatwave likely would've happened naturally, but it was 150 times more likely that intense because of the influence of climate warming. And, you know, you end up using observational capacity or modeling capacity. So when I hear this... I love analogies. I wrote an article in Forbes several years ago: 9 Tips for Communicating Science to Those Who Aren't Scientist. I encourage the listeners to check it out. Analogies are very important. So when people say climate change is natural, I remind them it's not an either/or proposition; it's an and proposition. Your grass on your lawn grows naturally, too, but if you fertilize the lawn it grows differently. So this notion that it's natural or anthropogenic is flawed; it's both.
JOHN: Right, that's a really good point. And we'll definitely include those nine points on our readers list in this podcast. Let's go on to something a little bit different but related. So one of the things that we're seeing the Gulf South is that the non-tropical cyclone rainfall intensity - and in some cases frequency, is different. Intensity is much stronger. Frequency is just I would say less predictable. What does the science say about trends that are happening in this piece of the climate puzzle?
MARSHALL: Well, yeah, it goes back to the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship, which I mentioned. We know that in almost every part of the U.S. the heaviest rainstorms are raining with greater intensity. It means more rain is falling over shorter periods of time in those storms. And so our infrastructure is designed, for the most part, under the assumption of what's called "stationarity." In other words, when stormwater managers and engineers were designing the stormwater removal in New Orleans, or Atlanta, or Athens, Georgia, they assumed that the rainstorms of 1970 would look like the rainstorms of 2024, but they don't. The data is very clear--it rains with much more intensity in short bursts or over periods of time than it did 30, 40 years ago. Now, here's the challenge that I have as a climate scientist. At the same time that climate change is increasing these high-intensity rain events, it's also increasing the frequency and intensity of the extreme dry events, right? And in people's brains that doesn't make sense--"Wait a minute, you're telling me it's both - it's both sides of the leger that are being impacted?" Yes. It's both sides of the extremes that are being affected by these climate changes. I can make an argument that some snowstorms or blizzards may be more intense because of climate change. That blows people's minds when I say that, because in their mind they think "snow, cold, blizzard," right? But remember, more water vapor availability in the atmosphere ultimately becomes snow. And so going back to sort of public understanding of science, what we were alluding to earlier, people tend to oversimplify complex non-linear processes to their level of understanding, but also at times to the demise of the integrity of the science.
JOHN: Makes a lot of sense. And that's a great scientific way of articulating the point that I was trying to make before, which is that things are happening in space and time and it's hard for the human brain to integrate them. And I think it's because it's complex and non-linear, that's, you know, the driving function that makes it that way. Super interesting. Let's move to a couple of - we're moving towards the close, so I'll get to one question. So what do you think about solutions in this space? Like we're seeing in the Southeast and Eastern Seaboard these intensifying storms. We've got intensifying non-tropical cyclone rainfall, you know, compound disasters. What does this tell you about how this part of the world will need to transform in order to meet these challenges?
MARSHALL: Great question. And there's a macro answer. One, we've got to reduce carbon emissions, and that's what things like the Paris Agreement are trying to do. That's the macro-level solution. But the reality is we have to have adaptation strategies and greater resilience. I think we know that hurricanes are becoming more intense, and so we need to adapt in our infrastructure, we need to adapt in terms of the generation of heatwaves that we're facing, and drought, and so forth. Those are adaptation strategies. Perhaps there are new kind of seawall or sort of barrier technologies that some of the places in Europe use that might be applied in parts of the Gulf region for example. Or perhaps we need to at least think about resiliency or new strategies. For example, during Hurricane Ida... And by the way, I'm in an episode of Earth Storm on Netflix, if the listeners are interested in a really interesting documentary on Hurricane Ida, and I'm in there and along with the Mayor of New Orleans, and many other experts. And one of the really tricky things about Ida is because we are in this era of hurricane rapid-intensification, typically decision-makers need about three days' of information to determine large-scale evacuations or counterflow on interstates and so forth. We're in an era now where they may not have that. And so what are the other plans for people that don't have the means? There's a socioeconomic sort of vulnerability and risk that we face in this country as well, where I can take my family and go to Memphis and stay in a hotel for five days; many people in New Orleans probably can't do that. So then do we have hardened places in shelter? Do we have resiliency plans? Do we have other types of plans for this new generation of different timing? The playbook has changed. The playbook has changed. I want to emphasize that. The procedures and processes that we think about for hurricanes, heatwaves, disasters, and so forth, is fundamentally different and will require a fundamentally different way of thinking about that on the adaptation and resiliency side until we get this macro-mitigation solution in place.
JOHN: Couldn't agree more. And I like your point about the timeframe necessary for evacuation. And just to put a pin on this point, I sheltered in place in Ida. I live on the 20th floor of an apartment building downtown, and so I was - I watched the eye pass over me, so to speak, windows rattling, building swaying. And the reason I did that is it was my first year in New Orleans and I was, like, I need to understand what hurricanes are about. And my observation sort of was that it wasn't the storm necessarily, it was everything that happened after the storm that determined how bad the disaster was, right? And obviously we had damaged grid infrastructure that was catastrophic in Ida, so that did happen during the storm. But just seeing how people responded, and also, you know, the services that were not available for the next week was just incredible. And so, like, I wanted to just emphasize this point at least in the disaster-response space--everything that happens starting the day the hurricane is gone is almost more important than the hurricane itself.
MARSHALL: Well, I would add to that - and that's what we mean by these "compounding and cascading effects." One of the things that we're doing research on here at (the) University of Georgia right now--I'm co-leading that with my colleague Dr. Andrew Grundstein--something we saw with Hurricane Beryl just this year in Houston, a lot of people don't think about this but many of the hurricanes that happen in major cities, or in rural places, are happening in the middle of the summer. And so when they come through and knock out the electricity often these folks are in heatwaves, too. And so people die from heat-related issues and so forth. We saw that with Beryl in Houston this year. So we're trying to better understand the sort of post-hurricane landfall heat-related dangers. That's a new line of research that we're sort of exploring here at the University of Georgia as we speak.
JOHN: Yeah, super interesting. I think one other point that you brought up that I think - I wanted to follow up on is the adaptation piece, but more in the context of long-term resilience of coastal communities. And, you know, there's talk in - there was a New York Times article very recently about how New Orleanians are perhaps more prepared for the idea of managed retreat than any other place in the Gulf South. I would beg to differ, but maybe more than Miami. Let's talk about that a little bit. And the place where I want to go with it is Asheville, you know, the safe haven for climate change, and now people saying, "Well, there's no safe place from climate change." What do we do for these communities that want to have a plan B? And I can give you more detail about that, but plan B would be if Katrina happens again. We're coming up on the 20th anniversary of Katrina. A lot of people in New Orleans have plan Bs. They're going to go to Nashville, they're going to go to Houston, they're going to go to, you know, Atlanta, because that's where they went before and they have communities there. Talk to me a little bit about that, and especially in the context of not having safe havens.
JOHN: Well, I mean, that's a very interesting discussion. So, you know, Matt Hauer at Florida State University is kind of the guru on this topic of sort of climate- or weather-forced migration, if you will. And he studied cities that will be receptor cities for events like these episodic hurricanes or even long-term climate change as people move away from the coasts because of sea-level rise or the increasing threat of storms like Ida. So that's one. We kind of know where receptor cities are and those receptor cities that you'd get this new influx, as we saw with Katrina and New Orleans, and Atlanta. You know, an influx of people into Georgia, for example, changed the demographic makeup, the political-cultural makeup. So it has effects far beyond the weather and climate. But again, keep in mind, even in those plan Bs - many of us have plan Bs--there's a large segment of the population that would love a plan B but they don't have the money B to activate that plan B. And so we have to address the income and other sort of gaps that are more socioeconomic and vul... We know that the most vulnerable people in extreme weather and climate events are communities of color, poor communities, elderly, and children under five. Everyone's going to be susceptible and hit by these events, but those particular groups are going to be hit even harder and take longer to recover. The data and studies have shown the - heck, some of our studies have shown that. And so it is important to have different plan Bs, but in some cases I think policy and sort of our jurisdictions and governments are going to have to have plan Bs also for those people that can't have their own individual plan Bs.
JOHN: Agreed. Yeah, this is, you know, a challenge across the Gulf South for sure.
MARSHALL: Yeah, if you look at sort of socioeconomically it's a region that has a lot of those vulnerable groups that I just mentioned, (about housing) this vulnerable to extreme wind, for example, from tornadoes and hurricanes. You have the Black Belt region that extends throughout much of the South and so forth. Those are sort of some of the storylines that were echoed in that National Academies report on compound disasters in the Gulf region that I mentioned.
JOHN: Great. All right, just maybe a closing question on a personal note. I found your commentary on meteorologists being bullied during hurricane season really important. How do we move forward given that context?
MARSHALL: It's so disappointing that... You know, I used to have people tell me it's - you all or we all can't affect or control the weather. I mean, that's something out of control of mankind. And now some of those very people are saying we're steering hurricanes or controlling hurricanes, and it's just ridiculous. But what does is it breeds a hostility that many of us in the climate world already face in both weather and climate. There's been a sort of latent or sort of subversive hostility towards scientists. I think we saw it with people in COVID with some of the health scientists and people advocating for vaccines. I've written about why people maybe have some of these hostile feelings, in some cases a lack of understanding, some cases is it sort of aligns with belief systems that they already have, or in some cases they feel threatened by the prospect of not being able to do something about something they can't control. Whatever it is it really ramped up with Hurricanes Helene and Milton. There was a hostility level that I hadn't seen in my 25, 30 years of being in this field. I think part of it was because we were in a political or election cycle, but social media, and misinformation, and sort of the zombie theories that are out there were driving some of it. It placed some of my colleagues in danger; people were getting death threats or, you know, suffering mental... It's already stressful enough to be in a profession where we're - you know, know that an event is coming that's going to fundamentally change the lives of thousands or more people. That's stressful in itself. But then to have to deal with people sort of threatening you, or challenging your expertise, or just saying flat out wrong things, that's something that we've got to kind of get our head around a little bit. I challenge and implore people that are listening to this podcast to make sure that you understand what information you're consuming, understand the sources. Just because someone posted it on Facebook or some other site doesn't mean you should automatically reshare or retweet it. Verify and understand those sources.
JOHN: That's excellent advice. Let's turn to the personal part of the question. We both have kids almost the same age. I mean, they're probably almost identical in age. And I've had my daughter on this podcast and taken her to see sea-level rise, you know, right in front of her. How do you as a parent project optimism for a generation that's going to face bigger changes than we've seen?
MARSHALL: Well, because they're not stuck in the (marinades) that weigh us down. Our generation and older are stuck in political, cultural, religious, regional, and other types of (marinades) that blind their consumption of science. I spoke all about this in a TED Talk that I gave. For the most part this generation, our kids' generation, whether they're politically left, or right, or whatever, or middle, they understand this threat and they understand that we don't have a planet B. We were talking about plan Bs earlier. And so I think they do get it, and that gives me optimism. What also gives me optimism is we're not sitting here without a vaccine for climate change. We know what needs to be done. With COVID we had to kind of figure it out and quickly develop a va... We've got the climate-change vaccines, we just have to enact and do it quickly before we get on that exponential curve that we saw with COVID. Maybe we're already here; I hope not. But, you know, again, I'm always optimistic because, again, I know we know what needs to be done. We have the technology and know how to do it. Now, there will be some headwinds going forward, but I think the thing that I have seen when we've had headwinds in the past is that private sector, faith-based communities, our military, local and state government, all tend to come together. This is a solution that doesn't have one particular stakeholder that can make a difference.
JOHN: That's a great point to stop. And I appreciate the optimistic note. I love the analogy and kind of, like, the prose that you used to describe this. "Planet B" and "we have the vaccine" I think are pretty powerful messages. Thank you so much, Marshall, for being on the show.
MARSHALL: Thank you, John, for having me.
[MUSIC]
JOHN: Okay, so that's a wrap. Mood and personality--I love this analogy. Climate is like your personality and weather is your mood on a particular day. This analogy also captured the embedded but very important concept of the difference between an observation and variability in observations over time, or the mean and variance, which is a really sticky topic to teach even at the university level. A couple of themes from our discussion that I think are very insightful: first, compound disasters. In the West we have the well-known drought fire-flood cycle. Droughts are the underlying symptom that leads to fire; fire removes trees, which are the friction that slows down rainfall as it makes its way to the river; and so we have flash floods following fire. In the Gulf South we have hurricanes, then tornadoes, then non-hurricane rainfall that causes urban flooding with damaged infrastructure - oh, and we have drought and fire now, all in two years. A second theme is that we don't have a planet B to work with. Earth is our only and very unique patient, and climate change is the ailment. Fortunately Marshall says we do have the vaccine, and this vaccine is mitigation. The question I pose to you is how we treat the symptoms of things like compound disasters. Will nature-based solutions be enough? Will managed retreat work if there are no climate havens? These are the challenges of the emerging field of climate adaptation science.
JOHN: That's it for this episode of Audacious Water. If you like the show please rate and review us, and tell your colleagues and friends. For more information about Audacious Water and to find in-depth show notes from this episode, visit our website at AudaciousWater.org. Until next time I'm John Sabo.
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END (AUDACIOUS WATER EPISODE 7, SEASON 4)