61
elevated homes resting awkwardly on cin-
der blocks.
But this past spring, the combination
of persistent rain and high water levels
from fast-melting snowpack caused Dav-
enport’s levee system to fail. Downtown
was inundated; the city’s main thorough-
fare was underwater. In total, the eco-
nomic impact ran to some $30 million.
Driving through town, you can still see the
marks on doors and windows where water
levels stagnated, in many cases for as long
as two months. Parts of town were inac-
cessible for even longer than that. “They
call them 100-year floods,” says Lykam.
“We’ve had three of them in the last 15
to 18 years.”
The flooding in Davenport is just
one example of how climate change and
extreme weather have rocked Iowa. Throw
a dart at a map of the state, and you’re
likely to hit a place that has flooded in re-
cent years. In the past year alone, nearly
40% of Iowans have personally experi-
enced anxiety over extreme weather or
know a family member who has, accord-
ing to a July survey from Climate Nexus in
partnership with Yale and George Mason
universities.
This isn’t a surprise to scientists.
Warmer air holds more moisture, which
creates the potential for bigger storms,
a problem that will leave few corners of
the globe untouched. Across Iowa, the
annual precipitation level averaged less
than 33 in. during every decade of the
20th century. For the first half of this de-
cade, average precipitation tops 36 in.
An analysis from Iowa State University
released earlier this year found a greater
than 90% chance that global warming has
driven the spike in the state’s late-spring
floods.
Voters across Iowa say the real-life ef-
fects of climate change have sparked a
political awakening of sorts. Hogg, the
state senator from Cedar Rapids, says re-
cord flooding in 2008 all but eliminated
climate- change skepticism in the city. Re-
curring flooding contributed to the Iowa
City council’s recent decision to declare
a climate crisis. The council made a com-
mitment in August to reduce the city’s
greenhouse- gas emissions 45% by 2030.
“It’s not just about climate strikers,” says
Iowa City Mayor Jim Throgmorton, refer-
ring to the global movement of schoolchil-
dren striking to call for action on climate
change, and “not just about the IPCC re-
port, but also about our own experience
and own observation.”
Flooding, and the extreme precipita-
tion that caused it, has had a range of ef-
fects across Iowa, disrupting the cycles
that farmers rely on to plant, grow and
harvest their crops. This spring alone,
extreme rain put 100,000 acres of farm-
land underwater in the state, resulting
in tens of millions of dollars in damage
to farmers. To top it off, July was excep-
tionally dry, throwing another wrinkle at
farmers. By 2050, climate change threat-
ens to erase all the gains made in agricul-
tural productivity since the 1980s in the
Midwest, meaning farmers will need to
Kotchakorn
Voraakhom
ARCHITECTURE
As a child, Kotchakorn
Voraakhom liked to pry
apart cracked pavement to
let seedlings burst through
Bangkok’s sprawl. Now, the
landscape architect designs
park-size cracks to help
Southeast Asia’s megacities
cope with climate change.
Last year, her 11-acre
project at Chulalongkorn
University was Bangkok’s
first new public park in
30 years and won awards
for its innovative design,
which adds much needed
“green lungs” to a dense
metropolis and absorbs
and reuses excess water
plaguing Thailand’s
capital—one of the
locations most at risk from
worsening storms, floods
and sea-level rise. This year,
she will open a 36-acre plot
with the capability of storing
more than 2.5 million
gallons of water. Her social
enterprise, the Porous City
Network, champions green
interventions like these
“thirsty” parks, as well
as urban farming, green
roofs and canal restoration
to help vulnerable
communities in Southeast
Asia adapt to the coming
deluge. ÑLaignee Barron
CLIMATE OPTIMISTS
Rising sea levels and worsening
hurricane seasons threaten the
Mississippi River Delta, a key
economic driver for the U.S.
1
Droughts threaten Mexico City’s
water supply and are causing the city
to sink into the ground
2
Many areas on the U.S. East Coast
suffer from flooding brought on by sea-
level rise, including Virginia’s most
populous city, Virginia Beach
3
In northern Alaska, warmer and
longer summers are melting the Arctic
permafrost, releasing more carbon
dioxide into the air, creating a vicious
climate feedback loop
4
Longer and worse droughts threaten
California’s Central Valley, which
accounts for a quarter of U.S. food
production, and raise wildfire risk
5
A combination of hotter summers
and more frequent, intense storms
is threatening the livelihood of
farmers and the viability of urban
infrastructure in the U.S. Midwest,
the traditional American heartland
6
NORTH AMERICA
OPENING PAGES: DANIEL ACKER—BLOOMBERG/GETTY IMAGES; MAP BY JING ZHANG FOR TIME; ILLUSTRATION BY JACQUI OAKLEY FOR TIME
