Study - Incidence Of Small-Scale Coastal Flooding In Louisiana Will Double Every Decade As Seas Rise
The small floods that submerge roads and sometimes enter homes along Louisiana's coast could become more than an occasional headache. A new study suggests that the frequency of "nuisance flooding" around the Gulf of Mexico will double every decade thanks to small rises in sea level.
In lower latitudes, the flooding will be worse. The tropics, including South America and Africa, will experience a doubling of extreme flooding due to sea level rise, said Sean Vitousek, lead author of the study published in the Scientific Reports journal this week.
On the Louisiana coast, hurricanes, rather than sea level rise, will continue to pose the biggest flood danger. The same is true for the Caribbean Sea and the East Coast. "But the smaller floods are something to worry about, especially as they happen with more frequency," said Vitousek, a coastal hazards researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Nuisance flooding can degrade drainage and sewer systems, contaminate drinking water supplies, damage buildings and disrupt transportation and commerce. Decades ago, it was powerful storms that caused such problems. "But due to sea level rise, more common (storm) events are now more impactful," wrote National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists in a 2015 report on nuisance flooding. The agency said small coastal floods have been happening two or three times more frequently than just 20 years ago.
EDIT
http://www.nola.com/environment/index.ssf/2017/05/sea_level_rise_flooding.html#incart_river_index
