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THE US COASTLINE is expected to experience up to a foot (30 centimeters) of sea-level rise by the year 2050 because of climate change, making damaging floods far more common than today, a US government study has said.
The Sea Level Rise Technical Report combined tide gauge and satellite observations with climate modeling from the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to make projections for the next 100 years.
It updates a 2017 technical report, providing new information on how tide, wind and storm-driven water levels affect current future flood risk.
The 111-page study predicted sea levels along the coastline will rise 10-12 inches between 2020 and 2050 – as much rise over a 30-year period as the previous 100-year period of 1920 to 2020.
Specific amounts vary regionally, mainly due to land height changes.
“This new data on sea rise is the latest reconfirmation that our climate crisis – as the President has said – is blinking ‘code red,’” said Gina McCarthy, National Climate Advisor, in a news release.
“We must redouble our efforts to cut the greenhouse gasses that cause climate change while, at the same time, help our coastal communities become more resilient in the face of rising seas.”
The report also found that the sea level rise will drastically increase the rate of coastal flooding, even without storms or heavy rainfall.
“By 2050, moderate flooding – which is typically disruptive and damaging by today’s weather, sea level and infrastructure standards — is expected to occur more than 10 times as often as it does today,” said Nicole LeBoeuf of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which led the report that was co-authored by half a dozen agencies.
Moderate floods that now occur every two to five years would happen multiple times in a single year.
Higher sea levels are caused by the melting ice sheets and glaciers and the expansion of seawater as it warms, and are linked to higher global temperatures.
About two feet of sea level rise is thought increasingly likely between 2020 and 2100 because of greenhouse gas emissions seen to date, the report said.
But failing to curb future emissions could cause an additional 1.5 to five feet of rise, for a total of 3.5 to seven feet by the end of the century.
Above 5.5 degrees Fahrenheit (three degrees Celsius) warming might cause much higher sea level rise because of the potential for rapid melting of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, but the precise level is uncertain because of current model limitations.
Expanding monitoring through satellite tracking of sea levels and ice sheet thickness will be critical to improving models and helping inform adaptation plans, the report said.
“For businesses along the coast, knowing what to expect and how to plan for the future is critical,” said Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo.
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Yeah and my CSPE book from 2010 said Galway would be underwater by 2025
@Vestigial: Sure tis still 3 years in it
@Vestigial: It often is. Someone could do well selling snorkels to cyclists there.
In 2050 when all these predictions fail to materialise (Just like the predictions made in the late 90s for 2020) can we all get our carbon taxes refunded?
@LaoisWeather: we were told in national school in the 80′s the same tripe! If it was true all costal towns and cities in the country would be like Venice by now not to mind 2050… TAX plot follow the facts, not the “science”!
@Colm Dromey: except the science shows that sea levels have risen and warned and costal towns are subjected to more flooding. Ice caps are melting , temperatures have risen all at an excelerated rate coral reefs have died and natural resources like the bloody Amazon forest are being consumed faster than the earth can reproduce them all since the late 1800s and the industrial revolution. By the way….why do you think Venice is becoming submerged?
@Rmaybe: because the wooden piles Venice palazzos are built on are sinking. This has been happening since the 1940s
@Colm O’Leary: Florida as getting increasingly flooded with higher water levels.
@Colm Dromey: And I remember loads of cliffside houses from childhood, all of which have since followed their back gardens into the sea because of coastal erosion. Sure even a rise of a foot of water is an enormous amount to manage, when you think about it spread out and adding to high tides. Besides that, the salt water seeps into freshwater aquifers and will make port cities uninhabitable. Check out this video on why Indonesia among other countries are moving their capital city.
https://youtu.be/t9p1bS1ThwY
@Colm O’Leary: To be fair, I’m convinced that the funding to preserve Venice was mainly hived off without being used to stabilise its foundations, but corruption and profiteering is nothing new.
The good news just keeps flooding in these days.
@Dave Johnston: Get out!
@Football in the Groin: Where to?
@Dave Johnston: WaterWorld, bring your tomato plants!
2050 will a great year all projections will come to pas by
2050 according to all the doom and gloom experts and when when nothing much happens they will move them all 2100 ya think
“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future…” Yogi Berra
So it’s the us going to sink,? Cos I think water finds its own level, no mention of any other country??
@Caroline Mullin: probably because it was a study focusing on America. Also sea level heights are not the same worldwide, water does not “find it level” at least not when oceans are concerned. It depends on land mass and ocean currents.
have your say