While We Are Debating Vocabulary, Climate Change Is Roaring Onward (2025)

Earlier this month, flooding of epic proportions slammed communities from Arkansas to Kentucky to Tennessee.

Call it what you want: climate change or intensifying extreme weather. It is happening.

Areas such as western Kentucky and northwest Tennessee received up to 15 inches of rain, leading to river levels approaching or surpassing record highs. These are historic floods—some say of a magnitude that would only occur on average every 500-1,000 years.

The wrinkle, though, is that damaging floods in the Tennessee-Ohio river valley are not an anomaly.

• An even more catastrophic flood in May 2010 in middle Tennessee was characterized as a 1,000-year event. Unprecedented rainfall led Nashville to record a two-day total of 13.57 inches, leading to the Cumberland River cresting at 51.86 feet.
• On May 10–11, 2016, north central Tennessee experienced severe storms and flash flooding, with one county recording 6.21 inches of rain, leading to significant flooding of homes and businesses.
• In August 2021, central Tennessee faced severe flooding when a record-breaking 17 inches of rain fell within 24 hours in Humphreys County. This deluge led to devastating flash floods, resulting in 20 fatalities and extensive property damage. ​
• In September 2024, the remnants of Hurricane Helene stalled over the Tennessee Valley, causing catastrophic flooding. The storm resulted in 52 deaths and damages nearing $110 billion.

Climate Change, Everywhere, All the Time

Is the problem more frequent or higher magnitude floods? Short answer: we don’t know because the news about natural disasters is fleeting and the coverage less than synthetic. There is a much larger story to tell which is that extreme weather events are becoming normal (aka climate change). Without synthetic coverage of this phenomenon it is a very complex set of variables for the human mind to process, integrating flood, drought, fire and tropical storm events and their collective damage in space and time.

From 2018 through 2020, the Tennessee-Ohio river valley experienced its highest recorded rainfall, averaging about 51 inches annually. In 2020, the region recorded 70.36 inches, surpassing previous records. Not in the distant past, Hurricane Helene’s rainfall was increased by 10% due to climate change, leading to devastating inland flooding.

And it isn’t just the Tennessee-Ohio river valley that needs attention. All across America’s heartland in the vast Mississippi River basin, the situation isn’t any better, and the health of communities and the global economy are at stake. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), natural disasters (mostly water related) have accelerated in frequency and damage over the past four decades, the number and damage in 2024 alone on par with the entire decade spanning 1980-1989.

So what can we do about it?

Again, we seem to get caught up in the words. Words don’t matter as much as the observations. Extremes are more extreme and we need to adapt with action, not words. Regardless of what we call it, adaptation to intensifying extreme events needs coordination within states and among them. That latter piece–interstate coordination–will require leadership at the federal level and innovative financial instruments from the private sector that provide capital for states to collaborate on common adaptation goals.

For example, the fulcrum for flooding is the middle Mississippi River reach located between the confluence of the Missouri and Ohio rivers. Flooding in this reach involves three states with mainstem waterfront real estate–Illinois, Missouri and Kentucky–and countless others upstream in the Missouri, Ohio and Tennessee rivers. Because of this connectivity, adaptation projects upstream can yield local and downstream benefits. This kind of coordination can save billions of dollars in disaster response if done proactively and collaboratively.