Social Implications of an Extreme Event Attribution Analysis of Hurricane Ida’s Wind and Flood Impacts

In the physical science field of extreme event attribution, great strides are being made in quantifying how anthropogenic climate change may increase the frequency or severity of extreme weather events. In the social sciences, though, few works directly quantify how anthropogenic climate change increases the frequency or severity of extreme weather events.

Using a transdisciplinary perspective crossing physical and social sciences, we investigate the socio-spatial impacts of Hurricane Ida using extreme event attribution science in conjunction with geographic and environmental justice analysis.

To do so, we first conduct extreme event attribution of Hurricane Ida in south Louisiana to delineate to what extent cyclone characteristics can be attributed to climate change, and create three scenarios to showcase this impact: (a) a modeled storm mirroring Hurricane Ida in 2021, (b) a modeled storm with climate conditions set at 1970 norms (i.e., a period conceptualized as without the physical impact of climate change), and (c) a modeled storm with climate conditions set at 2070 (including multiple sub-scenarios for RCP pathways for future emissions [i.e., 4.5 and 8]). Second, we use these data to create storm surge flood models for each of the different scenarios, and for damage models derived for wind impacts. These models delineate building-level storm surge flood and wind damages across south Louisiana from each scenario. Differences between scenarios are considered to be attributed to climate change. Third, we correlate socio-demographic characteristics with the storm surge flood levels and wind damages to determine the overall level of impacts across communities and any inequalities in these impacts. Socio-demographic characteristics of core interest include race and ethnicity, income, housing (such as housing age or structure characteristics), urban and rural location, and levee and/or floodplain protection and designations. These characteristics could showcase inequalities in impacts with environmental justice implications.

In all, this work incorporates social science insights into extreme event attribution research in ways that can catalyze research advances in both fields.