A study released Monday found sea level rise along the southeastern US coast It has accelerated rapidly since 2010It raises fears that the homes of millions of Americans in cities across the South will be at risk of flooding in the coming decades.
“It’s a window into the future,” Sonke Tangendorf, assistant professor of river-coastal science and engineering at Tulane University and co-author of the study, which appeared in Nature Communications, told the Washington Post.
That paper and another Published last month in the journal Climate Sea levels along the Gulf Coast and South Atlantic have risen by an average of 1 centimeter per year since 2010. That translates to nearly 5 inches over the past 12 years, and is twice the rate of average global sea level rise. rise during the same period.
Recent hurricanes to hit the Gulf Coast, including Michael and Ian in 2018, found a Journal of Climate study. Blamed in the deaths of 109 Floridians Last year – due to high sea levels caused the most severe damage.
“Water levels associated with Hurricane Ian were extremely high due to the combined effect of sea level rise and storm surge,” Jianjun Jianjun, a climate scientist at the University of Arizona and editor of the journal Climate Study, told the Post.
Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) show that the water level in Lake Pontchartrain, an estuary bordering New Orleans, is eight inches higher than it was in 2006. Houston, Miami, and Mobile are among other cities threatened by the oceans in the region. , Alas.
The centimeter-per-year rate is much faster than experts expected, and is in line with predictions made by the end of the century, Dagendorf said. High-tide flooding — when tides bring water onto normally dry land along the Gulf Coast and Southeast coast since the turn of the century, according to NOAA. Records for high tide floods have been destroyed in recent years. The city of Bay St. Louis, Miss., experienced three days of high tide flooding in 2000. For 22 days in 2020.
The study, by scientists from the University of Miami, NOAA, NASA and other agencies, which has not yet undergone peer review, Found it Southeast sea level rise is “30%-50% of flood days in 2015-2020”.
“In low-lying coastal areas, a rise in background sea level of even a few centimeters could break regional flood boundaries and lead to coastal flooding,” the study says.
