The climate in Texas is changing due to global warming and rising trends in greenhouse gas emissions. As of 2016, most area of Texas had already warmed by 1.5 degrees since the previous century because of global warming.

Texas is expected to experience a wide range of environmental impacts from climate change, including rising sea levels, more frequent extreme weather events, and increasing pressure on water resources.

Texas was ranked second by GDP across the U.S. in 2020 and had a fast growing economy. According to U.S. Energy Information Administration, a large portion of Texas economic growth from 2005 to 2016 came from conventional energy production.

 Although Texas has a long history of conventional energy production (e.g., petroleum and natural gas), the renewable energy industry has also been rapidly growing in Texas. Solar industry jobs have been increasing and wind farms have been built in West Texas in recent years.

Considering the advantages such as sunny weather, flat land and friendly business climate, Texas has high potential to develop more renewable energy in the future. In addition, there are emerging local and regional actions to address climate change across Texas. For example, Austin, Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio initiated Climate Action Plans in recent years.

Emissions and energy

In the U.S., Texas was ranked first in terms of total carbon dioxide emissions in 2017 and total energy production in 2018. As of February 2020, Texas’s energy mix included 18,705,000 kWh natural gas, 4,823,000 kWh coal, 3,548,000 kWh nuclear and 8,317,000 kWh renewables.

Half of the energy consumed in Texas was from refineries and petrochemical plants. Texas accounted for 41% of crude oil production, 25% of natural gas, and 31% of refining capacity, and had some of the highest potential for sustainable energy production, producing 28% of wind power for the United States.

Climate change impacts

Climate change is expected to have a wide-spread and significant impacts on Texas. Extreme hot days is expected be more frequent due to the increasing average temperature. With higher temperature, there could be decreasing relative humidity and increasing evapotranspiration.

Therefore, the degree of aridity would rise and even longer and more severe droughts could happen. There will be less available water resources under climate change and water scarcity can be exacerbated by the rapidly growing water demand due to fast urbanization in Texas.

Additionally, sea level rise along the Texas coastline is likely to be greater than the projected global sea level rise (i.e., 1-4 feet) to the end of this century, which makes the coastal region more susceptible to storm surges.

Extreme weather events like hurricanes might be more intense which can make much larger losses and threaten the local residents. There is also an increasing trend of both frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation with light or normal rains less likely to happen in the future, which could lead to higher soil moisture stress in Texas.

Extreme Weather

Overall, the amount of precipitation on extremely wet or snowy days is likely to decrease in winter and increase in summer. Storms with heavy rain are expected to become more extreme, causing flooding. The frequency of extremely hot days in summer is also expected to increase because of the general warming trend.

Many arid areas in Texas will likely enter desertification or lose its productivity for activities like livestock. In 2020, high temperatures and lack of rainfall led to a drought with D3 (extreme) and D4 (exceptional) categories in Texas as well as many other Western and Central states.

The Western/Central Drought and Heatwave (event name) lasted through the months of June to December and resulted in 45 deaths as well as an estimated cost of 4.5 billion dollars. In February 2021, Texas experienced terrible snowstorms and wide-range unexpected power outages that was uncommon in history, which might caused by climate change based on related researches.

Hurricane Harvey

In August 2017, Hurricane Harvey caused unprecedented damages across Greater Houston which made it rank right after Hurricane Katrina as the second most destructive storm in the U.S. history.

Numerous studies in attribution science (i.e., a relatively new study field in which scientists study the attributions of extreme weather events) were conducted to explain the role of climate change during Hurricane Harvey in Texas.

It was found that around one fifth of total precipitation during Hurricane Harvey as well as the extremely enlarged chances of the observed rainfall in part of Houston during the event could be attributed to anthropogenic climate change.

In addition, a quantitative attribution analysis was conducted to study Harvey’s extreme precipitation by using the Advanced Research Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF-ARW) model. The results from a series of downscaling simulations indicated that around one-fifth of the total extreme precipitation over southeast Texas during the event could be attributed to climate warming that happened after 1980.

Moreover, the impacts from urbanization and climate change to flooding in Houston during Harvey was investigated and the model simulation results indicated that climate change could elevate the peak streamflow by one-fifth. It was also found that the influence of climate change on flooding can be significantly amplified by the fast-expanding urban areas around Houston.

Coastal changes

Sea level is rapidly rising in many parts of the Texas coastal region because of both sinking land due to groundwater pumping and climate change. More storm surge events are expected to happen along the coastal region.

These changes and more extreme hurricanes indicate that not only Texas’s coastal infrastructure including public infrastructure, fossil fuel infrastructure , and other housing infrastructure will be endangered but also the residents’ life will be threatened.

In addition, the coastal ecosystem is also expected to be at risk due to the potential change of salinity gradient in coastal wetland areas.

Water resources

There are 15 major river basins lying partly or entirely within Texas. Unless warmer climate are coupled with a strong increase in rainfall, water resources could become more scarce in Texas.

In some parts of Texas, increased rainfall could mitigate these effects, but also could contribute to localized flooding. Additionally, climate change could give rise to more frequent and intense rainfall, resulting in flash flooding.

Surface water

In a warmer and drier climate condition, open water evaporation is expected to be enhanced which can lead to the shrink of lakes, rivers, and streams as well as loss of reservoir storage.

Meanwhile, the increasing extreme weathers and the widely varied Texas’ weather make it more challenging for the local water resources managers and regional water planners to manage the available surface water resources.

Groundwater

In general, Texas groundwater storage is projected to decrease due to the declining groundwater recharging rate under climate change. A warmer and drier climate can lead to larger evaporation as well as less water for recharging groundwater aquifers especially in Western Texas where aquifers were already under significant pressure.

Meanwhile, in a warmer climate, drier soil due to increasing evaporation is expected to lower the efficiency of agricultural irrigation, which might increase the groundwater pumping for irrigation. Furthermore, to feed the rapidly growing population in Texas, the potential stress on groundwater can have negative impacts on aquifer yield and surface water resources. Therefore, the aridity and water scarcity is very likely to be exacerbated across Texas in the future.

By the end of this century, the Edwards Aquifer is expected to experience obvious decrease (around 20% – 30%) in recharge while the water demand would rise significantly in this region due to the fast population growth, which could leads to unprecedently reduced streamflow at local spring system.