Climate portal projects future risk models for local governments, utility administrators

From wildfires in the west to east coast flooding, climate change is rapidly changing landscapes across the United States. The Climate Risk and Resilience Portal (ClimRR), a new online climate risk and resiliency portal launched by the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), AT&T and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, gives local governments an accessible toolkit with which they can project future changes via complex scientific modeling.

​“Harnessing the power of our supercomputers, we are making cutting-edge climate data available to the public sector and local planning officials to help them better understand local climate change risks and take the needed actions to become more climate resilient,” said Paul Kearns, director of the Argonne National Laboratory.

Intended to help improve America’s preparedness for future climate extremes, the ClimRR portal provides data points including temperature, precipitation, wind and drought conditions. Other risk factors, such as wildfire and flooding, will be added in the coming months, according to a joint statement issued by the organizations. Initially, AT&T commissioned the Argonne National Laboratory to create the model as a way to predict climate impacts on its own cellular infrastructure. FEMA was brought on board to add additional data that made the modeling relevant for public infrastructure. 

“Resiliency can’t be built in a vacuum,” said Charlene Lake, chief sustainability officer at AT&T. ​“Our world is interdependent. We want other organizations and communities to see where they’re potentially vulnerable to climate change and take steps to become resilient. That’s why we’re excited to make our data publicly available and to work closely with FEMA and Argonne to get it into the right hands.”

The project was announced last month by federal administration officials along with Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego and Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava ahead of the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference, which is being held this week in Egypt.

“We are spending tens of millions of dollars on climate resilience,” Gallego said during the announcement event. “This tool will help me understand where are the most effective places to put these dollars.”

Technically, the portal, which was requested by President Joe Biden soon after he took office, presents peer-reviewed data “in a nontechnical format and puts high-resolution, forward-looking climate insights into the hands of those who need them most,” the statement says. “Access to this information will assist leaders as they strategically invest in infrastructure and response capabilities to protect communities for future generations.”

A brief from the Argonne laboratory notes that climate projections from ClimRR can be overlayed with Tribal, state and local community and infrastructure information sourced from FEMA’s Resilience Analysis and Planning Tool (RAPT). 

“Combining data from ClimRR and RAPT allows users to understand local-scale climate risks in the context of existing community demographics and infrastructure, including the location of vulnerable populations and critical infrastructure,” the brief says.

For administrators of electric utilities, the data could be applied to better understand future wind patterns to mitigate risk to power lines. And with the free information, public health and local emergency management officials can examine the changes in flooding intensity and duration, said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm in an announcement about the portal.

“One in three Americans say they’ve been personally affected by weather in the last two years. And these climate impacts are having more and more impact, and they’re getting more and more intense,” she said. Especially in underserved communities that have historically been impacted harder by climate-related events, “The need for cutting edge tools and support is even more acute. … With this portal, communities can analyze climate projections. They can prepare for future climate extremes as well as incremental changes.”