"The agency has needed Congress to approve extra disaster relief funds every year over roughly the past decade to handle mounting climate-related damage."

"Thanks to climate change, extreme weather disasters have hammered the United States with increasing frequency in recent years—from drought and wildfires to coastal storms and flooding.

It is perhaps surprising, then, that the U.S. agency in charge of preparing for and responding to these disasters, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), doesn't account for climate change in most of its budget planning and resource allocation or in the National Flood Insurance Program it administers.

'Climate change is affecting everything the agency does, and yet it isn't given much consideration,' said Michael Crimmins, an environmental scientist at the University of Arizona who is leading a project to try to improve FEMA's use of climate science data. 'FEMA has to be climate literate in a way that many other agencies don't have to be.'"

Katherine Bagley reports for InsideClimate News January 27, 2014. [2]