Co-occurring climate events and environmental justice in California, 2018–2019

Climate change will increase the frequency of extreme weather events. This means climate-driven events like wildfires and power outages will likely co-occur more often, potentially magnifying their health risks. We characterized three types of climate-driven events—anomalously warm temperatures, wil...

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Published in:Environmental research, health : ERH Vol. 3; no. 2; pp. 21001 - 21007
Main Authors: Shea, Brittany, Meltzer, Gabriella Y, Steiger, Benjamin B, Parks, Robbie M, Do, Vivian, McBrien, Heather, Flores, Nina, Gordon, Milo, Blake, Elizabeth M, Casey, Joan A
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: England IOP Publishing 01.06.2025
Subjects:
climate change
disasters
Letter
power outages
social vulnerability
temperature
wildfires
temperature
social vulnerability
power outages
wildfires
disasters
climate change
ISSN:2752-5309, 2752-5309
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Climate change will increase the frequency of extreme weather events. This means climate-driven events like wildfires and power outages will likely co-occur more often, potentially magnifying their health risks. We characterized three types of climate-driven events—anomalously warm temperatures, wildfire burn zone disasters, and long power outages—in 58 California counties during 2018–2019. We defined county-day anomalously warm temperatures when daily average temperatures exceeded 24 °C and the 85th percentile of the long-term county average. We defined county-day wildfire burn zone disasters when an active wildfire burn zone intersected a county, burned 1+ structures, killed a civilian, or received a Federal Emergency Management Agency Fire Management Declaration, and overlapped with a community. For a subset of the 38 counties (66%), long power outage county days were identified using PowerOutage.us data when an outage affected >0.5% of county customers for 8+ h. Co-occurring events were when 2+ of these events occurred on the same county day. Using the CDC/ATSDR Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), we determined whether co-occurring events disproportionately affected vulnerable populations. Nearly every county (97%) experienced at least one day of anomalously warm temperatures, 57% had at least one wildfire burn zone disaster day, and 63% (24/38 counties with available data) had at least one long power outage day. The most common co-occurring events (anomalously warm temperatures and wildfire burn zone disasters) impacted 24 (41%) counties for 144 total county-days. We did not find a clear connection between co-occurring events and social vulnerability. We observed an inverse correlation between co-occurring wildfire burn zone disasters and long power outage days with SVI, and a positive correlation between co-occurring anomalously warm and long power outage days with SVI. This analysis can inform regional resource allocation and other state-wide planning and policy objectives to reduce the adverse effects of climate-driven events.
Bibliography:ERH-100231.R1
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ISSN:2752-5309
2752-5309
DOI:10.1088/2752-5309/ada96f