As One Door Shuts on Climate Risk Data, News Outlet Opens Another

A Malibu, California, roadway closed after a severe landslide from heavy winter storms in 2010. Photo: FEMA/Adam DuBrowa via Wikimedia Commons (United States government work).

Reporter’s Toolbox: As One Door Shuts on Climate Risk Data, News Outlet Opens Another

By Joseph A. Davis

What you don’t know … can’t hurt financial contributions from the oil and gas industry to Donald Trump. Unless data rescuers at The Guardian are on the case.

A newly reconstructed database helps U.S. residents map the different kinds of climate risks they may face in a future world (Guardian journalist Oliver Milman and data maven Andrew Witherspoon did a bang-up description of the rescued data).

At the very least, it’s a trove for journalists working up local climate stories.

The data was originally collected and presented by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Bless them.

But under Trump, agencies like FEMA have rushed to remove any mention of the C-word (climate) from public spaces. The logic: Making the word disappear should make the problems disappear.

Maybe it doesn’t matter. Trump hopes to eliminate the entirety of FEMA as an agency by Oct. 1 anyway — relieving Americans of burdensome and unnecessary assistance when their homes have been destroyed by floods, hurricanes and wildfires.

So even though the renamed data is still (as of this writing) online, it may not be long for this world.

 

Where the data comes from

The original FEMA data originally came from multiple government sources, including satellite data from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies. They fly satellites that collect the data.

FEMA originally combined wildfire risk data, flood risk data, extreme heat data and other data in a single mapped index. There is extensive documentation here.

We think you can rely on this data (even though it consists of probabilistic projections) with as much confidence as anything available.

We like the granularity of the data. It goes down to the county level, and even to the census tract level, which is ideal for local stories.

 

How to use the data smartly

You will probably notice that hurricane risks tend to present the worst threats in particular places (i.e., the Atlantic and Gulf coasts and areas inland). Same with wildfire risks (which become an annual industry in parts of Idaho, for example).

 

The point is that the best use of

this data tool may be to support

local stories about climate risks.

 

The point is that the best use of this data tool may be to support local stories about climate risks (there — we used the C-word).

So remember that climate disasters are ultimately about the people affected, and not just about the data.

Go out and talk to people on the ground about what they have and haven’t done to prepare. Talk to local experts and researchers. Talk to people who survived the last “big one.”

[Editor’s Note: For more on reporting risk, check out another recent Reporter’s Toolbox on climate risk data, a TipSheet on a hazardous risk reporting resource at risk of a Trump blackout and an EJ TransitionWatch on whether Trump will “disappear” environment and climate data.]

Joseph A. Davis is a freelance writer/editor in Washington, D.C. who has been writing about the environment since 1976. He writes SEJournal Online's TipSheet, Reporter's Toolbox and Issue Backgrounder, and curates SEJ's weekday news headlines service EJToday and @EJTodayNews. Davis also directs SEJ's Freedom of Information Project and writes the WatchDog opinion column.

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* From the weekly news magazine SEJournal Online, Vol. 10, No. 15. Content from each new issue of SEJournal Online is available to the public via the SEJournal Online main page. Subscribe to the e-newsletter here. And see past issues of the SEJournal archived here.