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Climate extremes, such as hurricanes, combined with large-scale integration of environment-sensitive renewables, could exacerbate the risk of widespread power outages. We introduce a coupled climate-energy model for cascading power outages, which comprehensively captures the impacts of climate extremes on renewable generation, and transmission and distribution networks. The model is validated with the 2022 Puerto Rico catastrophic blackout during Hurricane Fiona – a unique system-wide blackout event with complete records of weather-induced outages. The model reveals a resilience pattern that was not captured by the previous models: early failure of certain critical components enhances overall system resilience. Sensitivity analysis on various scenarios of behind-the-meter solar integration demonstrates that lower integration levels (below 45%, including the current level) exhibit minimal impact on system resilience in this event. However, surpassing this critical level without pairing it with energy storage can exacerbate the probability of catastrophic blackouts. 

While equity in climate adaptation is increasingly recognized, university-based research can inadvertently reinforce inequities. This paper examines a partnership between Homies Helping Homies, a South Philadelphia mutual aid organization, and university researchers to document climate impacts on low-income and marginalized communities. Inequities often arise when research fails to engage communities, overlooks relevant concerns, lacks trust, or misinterprets responses due to insufficient cultural understanding. Mutual aid organizations, inherently community-based, foster resilience and solidarity, addressing unmet needs while building collective trust. Anchored in Participatory Action Research (PAR) and Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR), we adopt a reflexive, co-produced approach that foregrounds positionality, reciprocity, and shared decision-making. This approach transformed the researcher-community relationships, leveled hierarchies, and addressed the gaps in familiarity among researchers and other actors. By centering everyday experiences of heat, flooding, and resource scarcity, the collaboration revealed how local knowledge and trust networks shape risk perception and adaptive behavior. The case demonstrates how mutual aid organizations can serve as both community resilience infrastructure and methodological partners in producing usable, justice-oriented climate knowledge. We argue that embedding research within reciprocal, care-centered relationships enhances the legitimacy, ethics, and transformative potential of climate risk management, particularly in urban contexts marked by systemic inequity. 

Coastal flooding from tropical cyclone (TC)‐induced storm surges is among the most devastating natural hazards in the US. Accurately quantifying storm surge hazards is crucial for risk mitigation and climate adaptation. In this study, we conduct climatology‐hydrodynamic modeling to estimate TC surge hazards along the US northeast coastline under future climate scenarios. In this methodology, we generate synthetic TCs for the northeastern US to drive a hydrodynamic model (ADCIRC) to simulate storm surges. Observing their significant effect on storm surge, for the first time, we bias‐correct landfall angles of synthetic TCs, in addition to bias‐correcting their frequency and intensity. Our findings show that under the combined effects of sea level rise (SLR) and TC climatology change, historical 100‐year extreme water levels (EWLs) along the US northeast coastline would occur annually at the end of the century in both SSP2‐4.5 and SSP5‐8.5 emissions scenarios. 500‐year EWLs are also projected to occur every 1–60 (1–20) years under SSP2‐4.5 (SSP5‐8.5). SLR is the dominant factor in the dramatic changes in the EWLs. However, while in higher latitudes () TC climatology change modestly affect EWLs ( contribution for 100‐year and for 500‐year EWL changes), in lower latitudes the impact is more significant (up to 40% contribution to 100‐year and 55% for 500‐year EWL changes). Extending previous methods, the physics‐based probabilistic framework presented here can be applied to project future coastal flood hazards under the effects of SLR and storm climatology change for any TC‐prone region. 

While tropical cyclone (TC) and heatwave (HW) compound hazard extremes are rare in the historical record, they have been recently emerging and are expected to become more frequent under future climate projections. Joint TC-HW hazards can exacerbate heat stress felt by residents, particularly in densely populated urban communities or areas suffering from storm-related power outages. The Princeton Urban Canopy Model (PUCM) has been used to evaluate heatwave conditions in urban environments, but has yet to be used to model joint TC-HW conditions. In this study, we model joint TC-HW hazards by adjusting the surface energy and water budgets of the PUCM to account for TC flood and extreme wind hazards. We investigate joint hazard interactions during Hurricane Laura (2020) using the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF) to simulate both Laura's wind field to drive subsequent hydrodynamic modeling of inundation and post-storm atmospheric conditions. The WRF and hydrodynamic modeling results are then used to drive the PUCM to assess the interaction of joint flooding, wind, and heat and their impacts on the city of Lake Charles in Louisiana. Results show that accounting for TC inundation up to a week after landfall can cause over 3°C reductions in daytime heat stress and 1.5°C increases in nighttime heat stress compared to simulations that ignore the presence of flooding. Accounting for defoliation from extreme TC winds can increase maximum nighttime heat stress by more than 4°C. 

Quantifying physical mechanisms driving sea-level change—including global mean sea level (GMSL) and regional-to-local components (that is, sea-level budget)—is essential for reliable future projections and effective coastal management1,2. Although previous research has attempted to resolve China’s sea-level budget from the 1950s3,4, these studies capture short timescales and lack the long-term context necessary to fully assess modern sea-level rise in southeastern China5—one of the world’s most densely populated regions with immense socioeconomic importance6. Here we show that GMSL followed three distinct stages from 11,700 years before present (BP) to the modern day: (1) rapid early Holocene rise driven by the deglacial melt of land ice; (2) 4,000 years of stability from around 4200 BP to the mid-nineteenth century when regional processes dominated sea-level change; and (3) accelerating rise from the mid-nineteenth century. Our results arise from spatiotemporal hierarchical modelling of geological sea-level proxies and tide gauge data to produce site-specific sea-level budget estimates with uncertainty quantification. It is extremely likely (P ≥ 0.95) that the GMSL rise rate since 1900 (1.51 ± 0.16 mm year−1, 1σ) has exceeded any century over at least the past four millennia. Moreover, our analysis indicates that at least 94% of rapid modern urban subsidence is attributable to anthropogenic activities, with localized subsidence rates often exceeding GMSL rise. Such concurrent acceleration of global sea-level rise and rapid localized subsidence has not been observed in our Holocene geological record. 

Institutions of higher education (IHEs) have great collective capacity to address major societal challenges. This was apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic, as academic institutions in the United States and across the globe quickly mobilized to protect their students and staff, help develop and administer vaccines and diagnostic tests, and provide trusted information to caregivers, the public and government decision-makers. The strains that Earth's rapidly changing climate places on the economy, the environment, and society call for an even greater exercise of this capacity (Leal Filho et al. 2023, Lippel et al. 2024). Such calls are not new. In 2006, the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) encouraged IHEs to “model ways to minimize global warming emissions” and “provid[e] the knowledge and the educated graduates to achieve climate neutrality.” Nearly 20 years later, many IHEs are broadly engaged in deepening climate knowledge and preparing students to develop and implement climate solutions. Academic researchers are developing innovative low-carbon technologies and improved methods to build climate resilience. Many of the 284 signatories to the ACUPCC are decarbonizing their campuses and participating in the dramatic, market-driven transformation of global energy systems. IHEs across the nation are working with partners in the public, private, and social sectors to disseminate climate knowledge and solutions. But the escalating scale and pace of the climate challenge, with extreme heat, floods, droughts, and fires battering campuses and communities, call for a more robust and better coordinated response. 

Coastal communities often address shoreline erosion through beach nourishment, adding externally sourced sand to widen beaches for recreation and property protection. While nourishment enhances beachfront property values, the need for periodic maintenance creates interdependencies where the actions of neighboring communities affect local shoreline dynamics. Using a coupled model of two neighboring communities, we examine the interplay between community nourishment decisions and the redistribution of nourishment sand. We find that the value a community places on wider beaches not only influences their propensity to nourish, but also their and their neighbors' nourishment efficiency and net benefits. Communities that nourish more frequently tend to have lower nourishment efficiency, as sand is redistributed alongshore, benefiting less‐active neighbors at their expense. A 20‐year New Jersey case study confirms that communities that nourish more have lower nourishment efficiencies, including instances where less wealthy communities nourish significantly more, enabling wealthier neighbors to enjoy higher efficiencies—suggesting that such dynamics may already be shaping real‐world coastal outcomes. In future scenarios, we simulate the effects of rising sand costs and accelerated erosion due to sea‐level rise under coordinated and non‐coordinated planning methods, finding that less wealthy communities experience a higher risk of beachfront property loss under non‐coordination, exacerbating disparities in coastal management. These findings underscore the importance of inter‐community cooperation in optimizing economic and environmental outcomes in beach nourishment strategies. 

Decisions about how to respond to coastal flood hazards often involve disagreements over resource allocations. In the United States, large intergovernmental fiscal transfers have enabled rebuilding in areas that experience severe repetitive losses. This case study focuses on Ortley Beach, a barrier island neighborhood in Toms River, New Jersey, to examine the process of rebuilding after Superstorm Sandy in 2012 and competing visions for the future. A decade later, we conducted 32 key‐informant interviews—including residents and local, state, and federal officials—to examine how values, worldviews, and beliefs shape preferences for coastal risk reduction strategies. A central debate was whether public resources should support staying or leaving the island. Key concerns included the economic impacts of strategies on household and public finances, the effectiveness of strategies to mitigate future flood damages, and fairness in the distribution of costs and responsibilities. Conflicts emerged in how stakeholders framed their preferences. Local officials tended to hold more individualistic–hierarchical worldviews, weaker beliefs in climate science, and favored actions to protect high‐value properties to preserve the tax base while externalizing costs. In contrast, some residents and most state and federal officials held more community–egalitarian worldviews, stronger beliefs in climate science, and preferences for long‐term adaptation strategies to reduce risk, including property buyouts. Responding to the primary concern about economic impacts, we recommend enhancing individual and local financial resilience to climate and political shocks by diversifying municipal revenue streams, encouraging proactive risk‐based planning, exploring innovative insurance models, and better accounting for the long‐term costs of rebuilding. 

A common feature within coastal cities is small, urbanized watersheds where the time of concentration is short, leading to vulnerability to flash flooding during coastal storms that can also cause storm surge. While many recent studies have provided evidence of dependency in these two flood drivers for many coastal areas worldwide, few studies have investigated their co-occurrence locally in detail or the storm types that are involved. Here we present a bivariate statistical analysis framework with historical rainfall and storm surge and tropical cyclone (TC) and extratropical cyclone (ETC) track data, using New York City (NYC) as a mid-latitude demonstration site where these storm types play different roles. In contrast to prior studies that focused on daily or longer durations of rain, we apply hourly data and study simultaneous drivers and lags between them. We quantify characteristics of compound flood drivers, including their dependency, magnitude, lag time, and joint return periods (JRPs), separately for TCs, ETCs, non-cyclone-associated events, and merged data from all events. We find TCs have markedly different driver characteristics from other storm types and dominate the joint probabilities of the most extreme rain surge compound events, even though they occur much less frequently. ETCs are the predominant source of more frequent moderate compound events. The hourly data also reveal subtle but important spatial differences in lag times between the joint flood drivers. For Manhattan and southern shores of NYC during top-ranked TC rain events, rain intensity has a strong negative correlation with lag time to peak surge, promoting pluvial–coastal compound flooding. However, for the Bronx River in northern NYC, fluvial–coastal compounding is favored due to a 2–6 h lag from the time of peak rain to peak surge. 

Rapid global electrification is deepening cross-sector interdependence, fundamentally reshaping the resilience of energy systems in the face of intensifying climate extremes. While increased integration across energy generation, transmission, and consumption sectors can significantly enhance operational flexibility, it can also amplify the risk of cross-sector cascading failures under extreme weather events, giving rise to an emerging resilience paradox that remains insufficiently understood. This study examines evolving cross-sector interactions and their implications for climate resilience by analyzing global electrification trends and regional cases in Texas, integrated with global and downscaled projections of climate extremes. By identifying critical vulnerabilities and flexibility associated with increasing sectoral interdependence, this study highlights the necessity of adopting resilience-oriented, system-level strategies for system operators and policymakers to mitigate cross-sector cascading risks and maximize the benefits of electrification in a changing climate.