The District is already experiencing the impacts of climate change. Climate change refers to long-term changes in global temperature, precipitation, wind patterns, and other aspects of climate. These global changes have serious consequences for the District. In the past several years, the District has seen record-breaking extreme weather (like heat waves and snowstorms), higher tides caused by rising sea level, heavy rains and flooding, warmer average temperatures, and two to three times as many dangerously hot days than in decades past.
- 2024 - Climate Projections
Climate Ready DC 2.0
The Department of Energy and Environment (DOEE) and the Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency (HSEMA), are currently developing Climate Ready DC 2.0, an update to the original plan released in 2016. Climate Ready DC 2.0 will also serve as an update to the Climate Action goal of Resilient DC, originally published in 2019.
As part of this initiative, HSEMA and DOEE published a series of interactive web pages that describe the extreme weather the District of Columbia is facing and how the District is preparing for these changes:
Keep Cool DC
Keep Cool DC is the District’s extreme heat adaptation strategy. Extreme heat is a dangerous hazard that can pose serious health risks to people and is the leading cause of climate-related deaths nationwide. Summer temperatures are projected to continue increasing in years to come, so it is critical for the District to “keep cool” by reducing the drivers that increase temperatures and expanding strategies that protect residents from heat.
- 2022 - Keep Cool DC
- 2022 - District of Columbia Heat Sensitivity-Exposure Index (HSEI)
- 2022 - HSEI Methodology Report
- 2013 - Assessing the Health Impacts of Urban Heat Island Reduction Strategies in the District
Other Adaptation Initiatives
Flood Risk Reduction
- DOEE’s Flood Team manages the District’s floodplains and leads planning efforts to reduce flood risk, including planning for new neighborhood-scale blue-green infrastructure networks.
- The DC Flood Task Force was created in 2021 with 13 Task Force members and 15 consulting members to identify policies and projects to bolster flood readiness while equitably protecting the District’s residents and economy from the damage that floods can cause. This initiative resulted in 27 action plans.
- The District developed the Flood Risk Tool to help design professionals, developers, and consultants identify the potential flood impacts of a particular site.
Community Resilience Hubs
Climate Ready DC and Resilient DC call for the District to support community resilience hubs.
Community resilience hubs are community owned and operated facilities that provide information and services that build resilient communities before, during, and after emergency events.
Ivy City Climate Resilience Strategy
DOEE worked with the Ivy City community to create a Climate Resilience Strategy to reduce the risk of flooding and extreme heat. The strategy will includes the design of a network of projects to reduce flooding and extreme heat while also providing additional benefits for the community, such as improved park space, more shade and greenery, safer streets, and better air quality.
Resilient Design Guidelines
In 2021 the District released Resilient Design Guidelines. This document provides a methodology for assessing the vulnerabilities of existing or proposed buildings and numerous best practices to reduce risks.
Affordable Housing Resilience and Solar Assessment Tool
In 2019 DOEE created a tool to assess climate hazards to the District’s affordable housing stock and to gauge the potential for solar and battery storage. Enterprise Community Partners, New Ecology and the National Housing Trust developed an analysis tool and tested it on 20 affordable housing properties across the District. The tool is now available for public use:
World Health Organization Health & Climate Change Urban ProfileOther Climate Adaptation Efforts
In 2022, the World Health Organization (WHO) analyzed the impacts of climate change on the health of District residents and summarized their findings in a report.
