Property-Specific Assessments of Losses Anticipated from Physical Climate Risk in the US

Physical climate risk information products have been created and publicly distributed by the nonprofit First Street Foundation and its partners at the Pyregence Consortium and the Arup Corporation. These risk products are resolved at the property level for the US, and convey both the probability of experiencing flood, wildfire, wind, and heat exposure over the next 30 years in a changing climate, as well as the likely costs associated with any damages anticipated to buildings on those properties. New versions of the First Street flood model (v3) and wildfire model (v2) were delivered in July 2023, with updates including projections using CMIP6 climate models; new precipitation intensity, duration, and frequency estimates as inputs for pluvial flood estimates; geographically-variable fire suppression; pyrome-specific calibration of wildfire behavior; and revised loss/cost estimates. In 2023, First Street estimates that there are an estimated 18 million homes at risk of a 1:100 year event, with over $60 billion in expected losses. These estimates climb in 2053 to over 19 million homes with $80 billion of possible losses. Similarly, for wildfire risk there is a probable loss of over 17 thousand homes in the US for 2023, growing to an 33 thousand homes expected to be destroyed in 2053. The costs of those expected losses grow from $12 billion in 2023 to $24 billion in 2053. These anticipated physical and economic losses are expected to impact real estate values and thus local economies in vulnerable locations (Gourevitch et al, 2023) and are expected to play a role in patterns of climate migration across the US.