Vulnerable communities in the Southeastern United States must look to the future, not the past, to prepare for climate disasters, according to researchers at the Feinstein International Center, located at Tufts University’s Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy. 

In a recent paper published in the American Meteorological Society Journal, the researchers document substantially higher risk of extreme temperatures and flooding in the Southeast U.S. 

They also propose a framework to help these communities better prepare for disasters they have not yet experienced but are likely to encounter.

“Disaster planning based on historical events is like driving forward while only looking in the rearview mirror,” says corresponding author Erin Coughlan de Perez, research director at Feinstein and associate professor at the Friedman School. “Many communities are planning for what they have seen in the past, only slightly worse. They need to be preparing for things they haven’t seen at all.”

While the entire region is at risk for extreme weather events, some communities also have a “high potential for surprise,” say the researchers, who include The Fletcher School graduate students Bethany Tietjen, F20, and Jenna Clark, A21, as well as Amy Jaffe, a non-resident senior fellow at the Climate Policy Lab.

“These are communities where the overall risk has increased over time, but the community hasn’t experienced one of these severe weather events in recent memory,” says Coughlan de Perez. This makes them potentially poorly prepared for future disasters, or “sitting ducks,” according to the researchers’ framework.

Analyzing five counties, researchers found them all to be “sitting ducks” when it comes to an extreme heat event. According to the study, Montgomery County, AL, Yazoo County, MS, Madison Country, TN, Warren County, KY, and Terrebonne Parish, LA, have gotten lucky in recent years and not had significant heatwaves.

“What our models showed is that temperatures have been rising gradually over the years, with one year maybe being really hot, but because the risk has been changing slowly, people living in these communities may not have noticed it,” Coughlan de Perez says.

When it comes to flooding, researchers concluded that Yazoo County is also a “sitting duck.” The other four communities fall into what the researchers call the “living memory” category, meaning there is a recent flooding event that people can remember, which can encourage people to stay prepared for future events. “Flooding events have also increased in frequency during the rainiest months of the year, but not every community has experienced catastrophic flooding,” Coughlan de Perez says. 

In what the researchers categorize as “fading memory” communities, a particular weather event has become less frequent, and people barely remember it. “Boston used to have frequent extreme cold snaps in the winter, for example, but that happens less often now,” Coughlan de Perez says. Similarly, in “recent rarity” communities, people might remember a particular weather event —but the likelihood of it happening again is also relatively low.

In their analysis, the authors used large weather models of historical weather events between 1981-2021 to examine the five Southeastern U.S. counties, which were a combination of urban and rural communities. “It’s a roll of the die whether they have experienced extreme weather events yet or not. Extreme heat and flooding are in their futures,” Coughlan de Perez says. 

Preparation may include identifying those at greatest risk; setting up accessible cooling centers for those who are homeless or don’t have air conditioning; educating the public about evacuation plans and potential shelters for floods; putting state or local heat protections in place for outdoor workers; establishing communication systems to alert residents to the dangers of high daytime and overnight temperatures or impending floods; and other measures.

The Tufts team is working with the American Red Cross in multiple locations to improve disaster planning, but Coughlan de Perez notes that state and local policies addressing extreme heat and flooding are often limited and need to be developed further.

In the meantime, Coughlan de Perez says, “Our ultimate goal is to provide a framework to help all communities prepare for weather events they may not have experienced before but have a high likelihood of facing in the future.”