Human response to climate change - The Global Climate System: Patterns, Processes, and Teleconnections - page 278

severe droughts or wet periods that had preceded it during the 1920s, 1930s,
1940s, and early 1950s. This low incidence era was sufficiently long for many
climate-sensitive operations, including the insurance industry, to be designed,
financed, and operated based on conditions with few climate extremes. Many
climate-sensitive operations and managers became attuned to functioning in a
period with few major extremes.
Conditions began to change during the late 1970s, as climate aberrations
again became commonplace nationwide, comparable to conditions in the
1900-50 period. Many managers of climate-sensitive activities faced prob-
lems they did not understand. The list below describes the run of major
extremes from the mid 1970s to the early 2000s.
The late 1970s had a series of four winters that were abnormally severe, setting
records in the central United States.
The early 1980s included the wettest five years on record in the nation, producing
record high lake levels on the Great Lakes and Great Salt Lake, with attendant
major shoreline damage around the lakes.
Droughts developed in the Southeast in 1986 and covered half the nation in 1988-9.
California had its six consecutive driest years on record before the drought broke
in 1992.
The summers of 1992 and 1993 became the two worst years for hail loss to both
crops and property in the High Plains. Prolonged storminess throughout both
growing seasons created billions of dollars in crop losses, and major hail damage
occurred to property in Denver (1990), Wichita (1992), Dallas-Fort Worth (1994-5),
and St. Louis (2001).
Record Midwestern flooding, in duration and areal extent, occurred in 1993 at the
same time that the Southeast had an extreme warm season drought. Severe flooding
occurred again in 1996 and 1997 in the Chicago area, California, along the Ohio
River, and in the Dakotas.
Major winter storms and prolonged record cold made the winter 1993-4 the worst
on record in the East Coast and parts of the Midwest. Damages reached billions of
dollars as the parade of bad storms continued into 1996-7.
Major droughts became established in the western United States during 1998-9 and
persisted into 2004. These created major water shortages and massive wildfires.
The impacts of these events on the government were sizable. Relief
programs were employed to help with the trauma of losses, but the multi-
billion dollar relief bills to pay for climate-induced losses since 1987 were
seen as a threat to the ever-growing national debt. Furthermore, many federal
policies relevant to handling these climate anomalies using more sensible
fiscal approaches were flawed (Hooke 2000 ). The floodplain management
program was recognized as inadequate as for each of the major floods of
1993, 1996, and 1997, less than 10 percent of those damaged had flood