Posts tagged noaa

No Road Map For Coastal Communities: NOAA Study Predicts Sea Levels Will Rise A Foot By 2050

Blog Planet

As the debates over beach nourishment, shoreline armoring and managed retreat create a deafening din in coastal communities, a report by researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration landed last week with an even louder thud.

In the next 30 years, the United States is expected to see as much sea level rise as it has over the last century, the report says. For many coastal communities, that means the water will come up 10 inches to 1 foot, on average, by 2050 — and, by 2100, up to 7 feet, though the report noted that these long-term estimates are less certain.

“This new data on sea rise is the latest reconfirmation that our climate crisis — as the president has said — is blinking ‘Code Red,’” National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy said in a press release. “We must redouble our efforts to cut the greenhouse gases that cause climate change while, at the same time, help our coastal communities become more resilient in the face of rising seas.”

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Slipping Away: Homeowners, Officials Buy Time As Escalating Effects Of Climate Change Threaten East End

Blog Planet

For centuries, the world has known one type of refugee: those who leave their homes behind due to war, violence, conflict or persecution, often risking their lives in the pursuit of safety.

In recent years, the definition has unofficially expanded.

Consider Hurricane Katrina, a natural disaster that forced 1.5 million people from their homes in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi — about 40 percent of whom never returned.

In Alaska, residents of a small, eroded seaside village are planning to move what’s left of it to safer ground inland — a project that will cost over $100 million, but sea level rise, stronger storms and melting permafrost have left them no choice.

In Siberia, a thawing permafrost there has been called a slowly detonating “methane time bomb” that can be seen from space.

Last August, Death Valley, California, set a world record for the hottest reliably measured temperature in Earth’s history — for the second consecutive year — while, paradoxically, scientists link the cold snap that hit Texas last February to a warming Arctic that has weakened the polar vortex, allowing frigid air to reach farther south.

More than 3 inches of rain pounded New York City last summer during Hurricane Ida, resulting in its first-ever flash flood emergency. And, last month, dry conditions fanned what started as a grass fire into the most destructive blaze in Colorado state history — burning over 1,000 houses to the ground and displacing 35,000 people, many left without a home to return to, now that the dust has settled.

According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, based in Geneva, Switzerland, 30.7 million people across 145 countries and territories were displaced due to catastrophic weather disasters in 2020 alone. The people left in their wake are now known as “climate refugees.”

On the East End, local environmental experts fear that some East End homeowners could land among them, if the effects of climate change continue to escalate.

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