UCLA - University of California - Los Angeles

07/11/2025 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 07/11/2025 16:51

UCLA experts: Texas floods, the National Weather Service and disaster alerts

A week after flash flooding on Texas' Guadalupe River left more than 120 people dead and over 170 more missing, questions remain about how the tragedy developed, and how to prevent it or similar disasters from occurring again.

UCLA experts can discuss the importance of a well-funded National Weather Service to issue timely weather warnings and how federal funding cuts could impact the weather service. They can also explain the role of climate change in increasing flash flood events and the growing importance for cities, counties and local institutions to develop robust emergency plans for all kinds of climate-driven disasters, from floods to wildfires.

The importance of federal disaster relief

Horowitz, the executive director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA School of Law, is an environmental law expert who studies California and federal climate policy. She can address how federal, state and local governments respond to climate disasters. She can also speak to how changes to the federal workforce and the recent tax and spending bill could affect climate policy.

"For decades, Americans have relied on the federal government for help before, during and after disasters strike. Now, communities around the U.S. need more support than ever to help forecast and prepare for the growing number of climate-fueled disasters and then, when these tragedies strike, to help recover from them. This is precisely the wrong time to be politicizing federal disaster preparation and relief."

Email: [email protected]

Pillars to minimize disaster are weakening

Mullin is a UCLA political scientist focused on environmental politics. She is a UCLA public policy professor and faculty director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation. She focuses on factors shaping political responses to climate change and the U.S. partisan polarization about climate change, such as how Republican constituents' vulnerability to climate change could inspire climate investment. She can speak to the overlapping risk of climate-driven disasters and reduced public investment in disaster preparation and response.

"Floods are both common and potentially devastating. We have a playbook for reducing harm: It involves information, cooperation and advance preparation. All of these pillars are weakening at the same time that climate change is making storms more severe and deadly."

Email: [email protected]

'Expect flood deaths to rise amid mounting climate risks'

Pierce is a UCLA water researcher and faculty member in urban planning. He is director of UCLA's Human Right to Water Solutions Lab and co-director of both UCLA's Water Resources Group and UCLA's Luskin Center for Innovation. He can speak to how federal funding cuts to the National Weather Service threaten short-term forecasts and longer-term climate change projections, and the need to prepare for more frequent climate disasters.

"The recent cuts to the NWS will cause problems with accurate, timely and trusted urgent weather forecasts as well as undermine and under-inform long-term climate understanding. This will worsen the human and economic damage from fire and flood unpreparedness nationwide."

"I regret to say that I expect flood deaths to rise amid mounting climate risks and new underinvestment and disinvestment in life-saving warning systems. It's important to make sure people get information through channels that they trust and see. We should invest in that, and we're doing the opposite right now. So much of this is preventable."

"The intensity and frequency of extreme precipitation events are being accelerated by climate change. It is inherently difficult to accurately predict extremes. We were getting better through 2024, but now many of our best data sources, public officials and warning systems have been undercut if not cut entirely."

Email: [email protected]

'The NWS weather forecast was accurate.' Lack of protocols for action 'was the biggest failure'

Hall is a UCLA climate scientist, director of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and faculty director of UCLA's Sustainable LA Grand Challenge, which launched the Climate Wildfire Research Initiative in 2023. He can address the increasing climate-change-driven frequency of weather extremes like flash floods, the susceptible terrain of the Guadalupe River, issues related to the National Weather Service forecast and local emergency communication and parallels to the urban fires in Los Angeles in January.

"In a warmer world with more water vapor in the atmosphere, these types of flash flood events are increasing. Warmer temperatures mean precipitation falls with greater intensity, and greater amounts, over a briefer time. This is a pattern of increases in extreme precipitation predicted by climate models, backed by basic physics and seen in the observational record."

"The NWS weather forecast was accurate. They correctly predicted that it could be a catastrophic flood, and they issued warnings. The weather service did its job. But there is a layer between producing a great forecast and actual action on the ground, which clearly didn't happen. Once the forecast was released, there were no protocols for ensuring the information reached the affected communities, and very little planning around what the triggers are for actions. I think that was the biggest failure."

"Much like wildfires, these flood events are shaped by terrain and location. The hydrology of the Guadalupe is very vulnerable to flash flooding. It doesn't allow for much of the water to infiltrate or absorb into soils, so most of the rainfall is immediately channeled into the river."

"There is a parallel with the LA fires, and many of the natural disasters that are hitting us. We keep encouraging development in places where risks to human life and property are already high and are increasing, without plans for how to mitigate those risks when the inevitable disaster strikes."

Email: [email protected]

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