NOAA - East, Gulf Coast Cities Should Prepare For 30-60 cm Above High Tides 30X Annually By 2050
LONDON ? Oceanographers have just identified the US coastal regions likely to experience 30 days or more of “nuisance” flooding every year. And the answer is that most of the American coast will experience high waters that are 30-60 cm above local high tides, at least 30 times a year. Nuisance flooding means just that ? somewhere between an inconvenience and modest damage. But climate change, and its attendant sea-level rise, will make them much more frequent, and possibly more damaging.
William Sweet and Joseph Park, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), report in the journal Earth’s Future that sea level rise has accelerated from 1.7 mm a year in the last century to 3.2 mm a year in the last two decades, and flooding events that were once extreme could become the mean. The oceanographers wanted to establish what they call “regional tipping points” – places where extra high waters would wash across streets and promenades normally above water and start to do so frequently.
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And they warn that Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore and many other places along the Atlantic Coast, Galveston and Port Isabel in the Gulf of Mexico, and San Francisco Bay and San Diego along the Pacific Coast will all see a lot more seawater in city streets. “Coastal communities are beginning to experience sunny-day nuisance flooding, much more so than in decades past,” said Dr Sweet. “This is due to sea level rise.
“Unfortunately, once impacts are noticed, they will become commonplace rather quickly. We find that in 30 to 40 years, even modest projections of global sea level rise – 1.5 feet by the year 2100 – will increase instances of daily high tide flooding to a point requiring an active and potentially costly response.
Ed. - emphasis added.
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http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot.com/2015/01/scientists-report-that-many-cities-near.html
