Assessing exposure to climate change in U.S. munis

Cities and counties are bearing the costs of the sixteen billion-dollar disasters in the United States in 2017, raising concerns over the resilience of municipalities to the impacts of climate change and associated financial shocks. Credit rating agencies are increasingly integrating physical climate risk into their municipal rating criteria; however, they lack concrete metrics that compare and assess which municipalities are exposed to climate impacts. 

This report assigns and analyses local climate risk scores to provide comparable, forward-looking data to fill this gap. This report discusses an approach to measuring exposure to climate hazards and highlights cities and counties in the U.S. most exposed to the impacts of climate change. The report scores all 3,143 U.S. counties and the 761 cities over 50,000 in population and discusses regional trends and economic sensitivities that may exacerbate a municipality's vulnerability, looking at exposure to cyclones, sea level rise, extreme rainfall, heat stress, and water stress.