Beaufort County SC Ranked #1 Of US Counties For Climate Risk; Permanent Tidal Flooding, Lethal Heat
Climate change in Beaufort County in the next 40 years won’t just mean hotter summers. It will mean between 5% and 10% of all property will be below water at high tide. We will have insufferable heat that makes it dangerous to be outside. We’ll experience poor crop yields and huge damage to the county’s wealth and economy.
Those are called “compounding calamities,” and they are the factors that earn Beaufort County, with its municipalities — Beaufort, Bluffton, Hilton Head Island and Port Royal — the No. 1 spot on the list of counties in the United States at greatest risk of life-altering and life-threatening climate change. The assessment comes from data from the Rhodium Group analyzed by ProPublica and the New York Times Magazine and published Sept. 15.
Beaufort County and most of coastal South Carolina is typically in the spotlight in national studies on climate change, but it’s been thrust to the top of this list because it will be severely affected by so many factors. The analysis considers heat, “wet bulb” temperatures that combine heat and humidity, farm crop yields, sea level rise, fire risk and economic damages. “Taken together, some parts of the U.S. will see a number of issues stack on top of one another — heat and humidity may make it harder to work outside, while the ocean continues to claim more coastal land,” the ProPublica article says.
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“When heat meets excessive humidity, the body can no longer cool itself by sweating. That combination creates wet bulb temperatures, where 82 degrees can feel like southern Alabama on its hottest day, making it dangerous to work outdoors and for children to play school sports. As wet bulb temperatures increase even higher, so will the risk of heat stroke — and even death,” according to the ProPublica report. Beaufort County could see 15 to 25 high wet bulb temperature days each year in a moderate emissions situation and and between 25 and 40 days in a high emissions situation. These days would bring a combination of temperature and humidity that make it dangerous to be outside. Locally, that means fewer people will be able to spend time biking on the Spanish Moss Trail or enjoying Pinckney Island National Wildlife Refuge.
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https://www.thestate.com/news/state/south-carolina/article245898260.html