A Foot or More of Sea Level Rise by 2050

While many Republicans continue to deny the reality of climate change, Senators Manchin and Sinema  block the Build Back Better bill with its climate change funding, and mindless suburban voters in places like Virginia Beach, Chesapeake and Alexandria voted for the ignorance embracing GOP triumverate in last November's Virginia elections, a sobering report by NOAA and other agencies confirms that (i) climate change is real and (ii) America's coastal areas are facing at least a foot increase in sea level within the time span of new residential mortgages.  With this sea level rise will come more flooding, disruption of port facilities - which will impact right wing voters in the heartland through supply chain issues - and the erosion of property values.  The silver lining? If action is taken a far worse future in the second half of the century can be avoided.  This, of course, will require political courage, planning and large amounts of money not to mention acceptance that climate change is real.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the report and its findings.  Here are excerpts:

The shorelines of the United States are projected to face an additional foot of rising seas over the next three decades, intensifying the threat of flooding and erosion to coastal communities across the country, according to a report released Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Human-caused climate change, driven mostly by the burning of fossil fuels, has accelerated global sea level rise to the fastest rate in more than 3,000 years. The report by NOAA and other federal agencies — updating a study from 2017 — predicts that ocean levels along U.S. coasts will increase as much by 2050 as they did over the past century.

This amount of water battering the coasts “will create a profound increase in the frequency of coastal flooding, even in the absence of storms or heavy rainfall,” NOAA said.

“We’re unfortunately headed for a flood regime shift,” said William Sweet, an oceanographer at the NOAA National Ocean Service and the nation’s top scientist on sea level rise. “There will be water in the streets unless action is taken in more and more communities.”

[T]he NOAA analysis gives decade-by-decade projections for sea-level rise for all U.S. states and territories over the next 100 years. Advances in ice sheet modeling and better observational data allowed the authors to give more definitive near-term projections than ever before, Sweet said.

Even if the world takes swift action to curb carbon emissions, he said, the trajectory for sea level rise “is more or less set over the next 30 years.”

Kristina Dahl, a principal climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said research she and colleagues have done suggest that 10 to 12 inches of sea level rise by 2050 would put roughly 140,000 homes at risk of “chronic inundation,” or flooding every other week on average.

Already, she said, high-tide flooding in places such as Charleston, S.C., has quadrupled in frequency since the 1970s. Other regions, from Louisiana to New Jersey to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, have wrestled with flooding that has become more common and costly.

Looking ahead to the end of the century, the amount of planet-warming pollution people release into the atmosphere could mean the difference between sea levels stabilizing at about two feet above the historical average or surging by almost eight feet, NOAA reports.

“This report is a wake-up call for the U.S., but it’s a wake-up call with a silver lining,” NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad told journalists in a teleconference Tuesday. “It provides us with information needed to act now to best position ourselves for the future.”

[A]s surging seas raise the level of high tides, communities from the Gulf Coast and the Pacific Northwest to the beaches of Hawaii and the barrier islands of North Carolina increasingly suffer from “sunny day” floods, when saltwater bubbles up from storm drains and spills into streets without a drop of rain.

“What we are trying to communicate to folks is these are real-life impacts that will influence their day-to-day decision-making,” Sweet said.

Coastal communities must start planning for regular inundation, scientists warned, especially in places where coastal development and sinking land compound the risks of sea level rise.

Storm and wastewater systems may need to be upgraded to cope with the influx of seawater. Homes and important infrastructure located within the new upper bounds of high tides might have to relocate.

The consequences could go beyond floods. Saltwater threatens to infiltrate coastal aquifers, affecting water quality and sterilizing farm fields. The septic systems used in many coastal communities won’t be able to safely handle waste as water tables rise.

Ports could see severe damage, said NOAA National Ocean Service Director Nicole LeBoeuf — disrupting supply chains and raising costs even for people who live hundreds of miles from coastlines.

While Tuesday’s report makes clear that a certain amount of sea level rise is essentially guaranteed based on the world’s past emissions, Dahl said that reality only underscores the importance of reducing greenhouse gas pollution.

“The fact that there’s this locked-in sea level rise is not a reason to throw up our hands and say there’s nothing we can do about this, because there absolutely is,” she said. “This decade we’re in right now is one of the most consequential decades for our climate future.”

That is because only by acting rapidly to reduce global emissions can the world limit Earth’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) compared with preindustrial levels — the most ambitious goal of the Paris climate agreement.

If nations fail to hit that target, she said, it risks destabilizing the Antarctic ice sheet and creating conditions for catastrophic amounts of sea level rise in the future.

Reide Corbett, dean of Integrated Coastal Programs at East Carolina University and executive director at Coastal Studies Institute, said the NOAA report is important because it so clearly and definitively details a real-world threat posed by climate change.

“We need to make people understand this isn’t just a bunch of scientists talking and arm-waving. This is really happening, and it’s happening on time scales that matter to the individual,” said Corbett, who was not involved in the study.

“If we’re talking about 2050 — for someone buying a house today, that’s within the range of their mortgage.”

For Corbett, who lives on the flood-prone Outer Banks of North Carolina, the prospect of sea level rise is deeply personal. Just last week, he said, beach erosion caused a house in nearby Rodanthe to collapse into the sea.

He hoped the NOAA findings will spur vulnerable communities to invest in adaptation measures — restoring ecosystems that help hold back floodwaters, rerouting roads and bridges to steer away from the most vulnerable spots. In some cases, he said, communities will have to make hard decisions about what places are worth protecting and when it’s time to retreat.

“We need to really start working through these challenging conversations now,” he said. “Not right after the next storm, but before.”