Rapidly rising sea level and the future of our coasts
A new report by Climate Central presents the potential impacts due to flooding from projected sea-level rise on coastal communities around the world. This is based on its new digital elevation model called Portfolio Analysis Tool (PAT). The results are useful for planning, but even before it was released Boston and New York City had already taken actions to plan and mitigate sea-level rise impacts, and Florida recently appointed its first Chief Resilience Officer. Other coastal communities, large and small, would do well to follow those examples and consider the future presented in the Climate Central report.
There are a few undeniable truths about our current situation that underscore the need to act. First, sea level is rising, and it is rising at an accelerating pace in many locations. We can see this in the observational record provided by tide gauges up and down our coasts, as well as in the projections generated by any number of computer models. Second, the exact amount and rate of rise is both difficult to predict and highly variable depending on any number of local and regional factors.