Preparing, Identifying, and Responding to the Archival Impacts Climate Change

Background: In a changing climate, there is an increasingly pressing need for cultural heritage institutions to assess their unique climate change-related threats to their collections and missions as part of their overall disaster and emergency management plans. According to the 2019 Heritage Health Information (HHI) Survey, 58% of institutions do not have a disaster plan with 75% lacking both a plan & staff training to implement a plan. Furthermore, the HHI report indicated an increased attribution of damage between 2017-2019 due to water or moisture (56%) with natural disasters accounting for 10%.

Purpose: This study spatially quantifies the climate change threats impacting the archival community through developing a national categorical climate change risk assessment scale for galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMs), focusing on the risk and potential impacts of heat and hurricanes. This process is accomplished through a geographic information system (GIS) analysis of these existing climate change threats and models.

Methods: The National Hurricane Center's HURDAT2 dataset is used to provide the per-county tropical cyclone frequency since 1851. Tropical cyclone data are separated into either the minor category, including anything between 18 ms-1 and 49 ms-1, or the major category, including anything greater than or equal to 50 ms-1 (i.e., Category 3 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale). Buffers were drawn around each hurricane track segment to define an area of impact. Buffer sizes depend on the minor/major category designation. For heat and humidity dangers to GLAMs, we use a threshold exceedance for 9.3^oC (50% RH at 20^oC T_air), wherein damage to archives would occur. Maps provided demonstrate the percent of time wherein this threshold is exceeded under current conditions (2016–2025) and end-of-century using two climate models and two SSP-RCP combinations (i.e., GFDL ESM4 SSP2-4.5, GFDL ESM4 SSP5-8.5, MP1-ESM1.2 SSP2-4.5, MP1-ESM1-SSP5-8.5) at ~1°1.25° atmosphere/land grid.

Results & Discussion: Preliminary results on hurricane risk indicate that within the southeastern region of the United States, Miami-Dade County, Florida is the county with the highest frequency of major hurricanes and the highest number of GLAMs. The dewpoint threshold is already reached almost 100% of days in locations in the Southeast, such as Florida, which is of high risk if power outages occur at GLAMS without generators. By end-of century, larger swaths of the lower states, particularly in the southeast, will experience continuous dewpoints above 9.3^oC. The two risks will be combined into an overall risk scale to aid GLAMs in understanding, and thus preparing for, potential impacts of these two climate extremes on their holdings today and in the future.