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Study Projects a Surge in Coastal Flooding, Starting in 2030s

In the mid-2030s, every U.S. coast will experience rapidly increasing high-tide floods, when a lunar cycle will amplify rising sea levels caused by climate change.

High-tide floods – also called nuisance floods or sunny day floods – are already a familiar problem in many cities on the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported a total of more than 600 such floods in 2019. Starting in the mid-2030s, however, the alignment of rising sea levels with a lunar cycle will cause coastal cities all around the U.S. to begin a decade of dramatic increases in flood numbers, according to the first study that takes into account all known oceanic and astronomical causes for floods.

Led by the members of the NASA Sea Level Change Science Team from the University of Hawaii, the new study shows that high tides will exceed known flooding thresholds around the country more often. What’s more, the floods will sometimes occur in clusters lasting a month or longer, depending on the positions of the Moon, Earth, and the Sun. When the Moon and Earth line up in specific ways with each other and the Sun, the resulting gravitational pull and the ocean’s corresponding response may leave city dwellers coping with floods every day or two.

“Low-lying areas near sea level are increasingly at risk and suffering due to the increased flooding, and it will only get worse,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “The combination of the Moon’s gravitational pull, rising sea levels, and climate change will continue to exacerbate coastal flooding on our coastlines and across the world. NASA’s Sea Level Change Team is providing crucial information so that we can plan, protect, and prevent damage to the environment and people’s livelihoods affected by flooding.”

“It’s the accumulated effect over time that will have an impact,” said Phil Thompson, an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii and the lead author of the new study, published this month in Nature Climate Change. Thompson pointed out that because high-tide floods involve a small amount of water compared to hurricane storm surges, there’s a tendency to view them as a less significant problem overall. “But if it floods 10 or 15 times a month, a business can’t keep operating with its parking lot under water. People lose their jobs because they can’t get to work. Seeping cesspools become a public health issue.”

Why will cities on such widely separated coastlines begin to experience these higher rates of flooding at almost the same time? The main reason is a regular wobble in the Moon’s orbit that takes 18.6 years to complete. There’s nothing new or dangerous about the wobble; it was first reported in 1728. What’s new is how one of the wobble’s effects on the Moon’s gravitational pull – the main cause of Earth’s tides – will combine with rising sea levels resulting from the planet’s warming.

In half of the Moon’s 18.6-year cycle, Earth’s regular daily tides are suppressed: High tides are lower than normal, and low tides are higher than normal. In the other half of the cycle, tides are amplified: High tides get higher, and low tides get lower. Global sea level rise pushes high tides in only one direction – higher. So half of the 18.6-year lunar cycle counteracts the effect of sea level rise on high tides, and the other half increases the effect.

The Moon is in the tide-amplifying part of its cycle now. However, along most U.S. coastlines, sea levels have not risen so much that even with this lunar assist, high tides regularly top flooding thresholds. It will be a different story the next time the cycle comes around to amplify tides again, in the mid-2030s. Global sea level rise will have been at work for another decade. The higher seas, amplified by the lunar cycle, will cause a leap in flood numbers on almost all U.S. mainland coastlines, Hawaii, and Guam. Only far northern coastlines, including Alaska’s, will be spared for another decade or longer because these land areas are rising due to long-term geological processes.

The researchers uncovered these tipping points in flood numbers by studying 89 tide gauge locations in every coastal U.S. state and territory but Alaska. They created a new statistical framework that mapped NOAA’s widely used sea level rise scenarios and flooding thresholds, the number of times those thresholds have been exceeded annually, astronomical cycles, and statistical representations of other processes, such as El Niño events, that are known to affect tides. They projected results to 2080.

Ben Hamlington of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California is a co-author of the paper and also the leader of NASA’s Sea Level Change Team. He notes that the findings of the new study are a vital resource for coastal urban planners, who may be focused on preparing for extreme events rather than more high-tide floods.

“From a planning perspective, it’s important to know when we’ll see an increase,” Hamlington said. “Understanding that all your events are clustered in a particular month, or you might have more severe flooding in the second half of a year than the first – that’s useful information.” A high-tide flood tool developed by Thompson already exists on the NASA team’s sea level portal, a resource for decision-makers and the general public. The flood tool will be updated in the near future with the findings from this study.

Posted

Democrats to Propose a Border Tax Based on Countries’ Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Senators will introduce a plan on Monday to tax iron, steel and other imports from countries without ambitious climate laws.

WASHINGTON — Democratic lawmakers on Monday will make public a plan to raise as much as $16 billion annually by imposing a tax on imports from China and other countries that are not significantly reducing the planet-warming pollution that they produce.

The tax would be levied regardless of whether Congress passed new laws to reduce emissions created by the United States. It would be designed to be approximately equivalent to the costs faced by American companies under state and federal environmental regulations.

Experts said a border carbon tax would almost certainly provoke America’s trading partners and could create serious diplomatic challenges ahead of United Nations climate negotiations set for November in Glasgow.

But Senator Chris Coons of Delaware and Representative Scott Peters of California, Democrats who intend to announce the plan on Monday, said American companies deserved protection as the Biden administration moved forward with aggressive policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions caused by burning fossil fuels.

“We must ensure that U.S. workers and manufacturers aren’t left behind and that we have tools to assess global progress on climate commitments,” Mr. Coons said.

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Posted
  On 7/18/2021 at 3:01 AM, Willfully Horn said:

Arctic Circle is already recording 118 F degree days (and summer is just heating up)
 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.livescience.com/amp/arctic-circle-siberia-hot-day-2021.html

 

This sounds unusual, and bad. Is this bad?

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Definitely bad, but not as bad this hack of a writer made it seem in the title:

  Quote

On the summer solstice (June 20 — the longest day of the year) two European Union satellites recorded a scorching temperature of 118 degrees Fahrenheit (48 degrees Celsius ) on the ground in Arctic Siberia.

This isn't quite a new heat record; as a post on the EU's Copernicus satellite website noted, this egg-boiling temperature was detected only on the ground in Siberia's Sakha Republic, while the region's air temperature (the temperature people would actually feel while walking around) was a toasty 86 F (30 C).
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The facts are startling enough (100 F air temp same day last year) - I don't know why they have to go "Fox News chyron"-style bullshit in their stories. 

Posted
  On 7/18/2021 at 3:01 AM, Willfully Horn said:

Arctic Circle is already recording 118 F degree days (and summer is just heating up)
 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.livescience.com/amp/arctic-circle-siberia-hot-day-2021.html

 

This sounds unusual, and bad. Is this bad?

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Here's the bad part:

 

  Quote

However, that's still an anomalously high temperature for the Arctic Circle — and one that could exacerbate the region's melting permafrost, which is the only thing preventing ancient caches of greenhouse gases from reentering Earth's atmosphere, according to Gizmodo.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Posted
  On 7/30/2021 at 4:57 PM, hookem2010 said:

We suck...

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We do suck. And we sort of suck here at home. Deforestation of the Amazon is bad. But the deforestation of America was also bad but that happened before we had the technology to take photos from satellites for before and after pics. Maybe we should be teaching critical environmental theory in our schools. Just speaking about the history of Ohio, settlers were encouraged to cut down trees and grow crops. They built mills, and canals to make it easier to move their produce to the coast to be shipped back to England. It was very profitable for everyone involved.

I hate the deforestation of the Amazon and think we should do whatever we can to stop it. But I also think we should acknowledge our own transgressions and try to do something to repair the mistakes of our past. We should plant more trees. When I die, I’d like to be cremated, have someone dig a hole, dump my ashes into it, and plant a tree there. That would make me happy.

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Posted
  On 7/19/2021 at 5:48 PM, bolverk said:

Democrats to Propose a Border Tax Based on Countries’ Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Senators will introduce a plan on Monday to tax iron, steel and other imports from countries without ambitious climate laws.

WASHINGTON — Democratic lawmakers on Monday will make public a plan to raise as much as $16 billion annually by imposing a tax on imports from China and other countries that are not significantly reducing the planet-warming pollution that they produce.

The tax would be levied regardless of whether Congress passed new laws to reduce emissions created by the United States. It would be designed to be approximately equivalent to the costs faced by American companies under state and federal environmental regulations.

Experts said a border carbon tax would almost certainly provoke America’s trading partners and could create serious diplomatic challenges ahead of United Nations climate negotiations set for November in Glasgow.

But Senator Chris Coons of Delaware and Representative Scott Peters of California, Democrats who intend to announce the plan on Monday, said American companies deserved protection as the Biden administration moved forward with aggressive policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions caused by burning fossil fuels.

“We must ensure that U.S. workers and manufacturers aren’t left behind and that we have tools to assess global progress on climate commitments,” Mr. Coons said.

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the EU is doing thing, looks like:

https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/eu-proposes-worlds-first-carbon-border-tax-some-imports-2021-07-14/

Posted
  On 7/30/2021 at 9:27 PM, WhatTheBuck said:

When I die, I’d like to be cremated, have someone dig a hole, dump my ashes into it, and plant a tree there. That would make me happy.

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I used to think something similar, but after having read about "green burials" or "conservation burials" a few years ago, I've been thinking about requesting that option to feed the soil.

http://www.orderofthegooddeath.com/resources/natural-burial#1

https://www.us-funerals.com/green-burial-directory/#.WTXS_xiZP-Y

Posted
  On 7/30/2021 at 9:27 PM, WhatTheBuck said:

We do suck. And we sort of suck here at home. Deforestation of the Amazon is bad. But the deforestation of America was also bad but that happened before we had the technology to take photos from satellites for before and after pics. Maybe we should be teaching critical environmental theory in our schools. Just speaking about the history of Ohio, settlers were encouraged to cut down trees and grow crops. They built mills, and canals to make it easier to move their produce to the coast to be shipped back to England. It was very profitable for everyone involved.

I hate the deforestation of the Amazon and think we should do whatever we can to stop it. But I also think we should acknowledge our own transgressions and try to do something to repair the mistakes of our past. We should plant more trees. When I die, I’d like to be cremated, have someone dig a hole, dump my ashes into it, and plant a tree there. That would make me happy.

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To be fair, we have reforested a fuck ton of the clear cuts we had from the 1800s and early 1900s (thank you CCC) and also have much more sustainable forestry practices now than what is happening in Brazil. 
 

Slash and burn agriculture is a 2nd/3rd world technique that is just devastating. 

  • Like 3
Posted
  On 7/30/2021 at 5:01 PM, Willfully Horn said:

I saw a meme suggested that the only feasible option is to somehow substitute nuclear for all our power needs NOW.

We have fucked up so completely.

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I’ve accepted this. Gaia is going to find a balance. I don’t think it’s fixable at this point from our end. 

  • Like 1
Posted
  On 7/30/2021 at 10:02 PM, bolverk said:

I used to think something similar, but after having read about "green burials" or "conservation burials" a few years ago, I've been thinking about requesting that option to feed the soil.

http://www.orderofthegooddeath.com/resources/natural-burial#1

https://www.us-funerals.com/green-burial-directory/#.WTXS_xiZP-Y

Expand  

I definitely want to be cremated. I think the custom of burying a body in the earth is silly and a waste of land. Does a green burial involve a permanent plot with a gravestone? I’d rather be buried at sea. There was a time in my youth when I wanted to be cremated and, instead of my ashes feeding a tree, I wanted them to be mixed with soil and have someone grow a pot plant in it. Then, after it was harvested and dried, I imagined all my friends smoking it in remembrance of me. But that’s really not practical. 

Posted
  On 7/30/2021 at 10:07 PM, Biff Tannen said:
I’ve accepted this. Gaia is going to find a balance. I don’t think it’s fixable at this point from our end. 

Oh Gaia, if that's your name,
Treat you like dirt, but I don't want to blame.
Oh Gaia, the wind heals the fire and blows the ash away.
Posted
  On 7/31/2021 at 12:52 AM, WhatTheBuck said:

I definitely want to be cremated. I think the custom of burying a body in the earth is silly and a waste of land. Does a green burial involve a permanent plot with a gravestone? I’d rather be buried at sea. There was a time in my youth when I wanted to be cremated and, instead of my ashes feeding a tree, I wanted them to be mixed with soil and have someone grow a pot plant in it. Then, after it was harvested and dried, I imagined all my friends smoking it in remembrance of me. But that’s really not practical. 

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image.gif.2b0e1f539c76954e967b1306845d5e5a.gif

 

or

 

image.gif.a91689845c5d38e0b5c7503d2af9e2fd.gif

 

Posted

More finding out:

 

Greenland experienced 'massive' ice melt this week, scientists say

 

  Reveal hidden contents


https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/greenland-experienced-massive-ice-melt-this-week-scientists-say-2021-07-30/?taid=61046151ca93a4000184e467&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=trueanthem&utm_source=twitter

Posted
  On 7/31/2021 at 8:18 AM, Willfully Horn said:

More finding out:

 

Greenland experienced 'massive' ice melt this week, scientists say

 

  Reveal hidden contents


https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/greenland-experienced-massive-ice-melt-this-week-scientists-say-2021-07-30/?taid=61046151ca93a4000184e467&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=trueanthem&utm_source=twitter

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Cornyn would say that's happening because it's summer.

Posted
  On 7/31/2021 at 12:52 AM, WhatTheBuck said:

I definitely want to be cremated. I think the custom of burying a body in the earth is silly and a waste of land. Does a green burial involve a permanent plot with a gravestone? I’d rather be buried at sea. There was a time in my youth when I wanted to be cremated and, instead of my ashes feeding a tree, I wanted them to be mixed with soil and have someone grow a pot plant in it. Then, after it was harvested and dried, I imagined all my friends smoking it in remembrance of me. But that’s really not practical. 

Expand  

Well, that's one way to get a smoking hot body again....

Posted
  On 7/30/2021 at 10:07 PM, Biff Tannen said:

I’ve accepted this. Gaia is going to find a balance. I don’t think it’s fixable at this point from our end. 

Expand  

Which is really the scary thing. The Earth has been through meteors, volcanism, ice ages, mass extinctions... The planet will ultimately be fine.

Us? Not so much. Failure to address the climate issue ultimately comes down to human ignorance, short sightedness, and hubris.

  • Like 1
Posted
  On 8/1/2021 at 10:36 PM, gmr548 said:

Which is really the scary thing. The Earth has been through meteors, volcanism, ice ages, mass extinctions... The planet will ultimately be fine.

Us? Not so much. Failure to address the climate issue ultimately comes down to human ignorance, short sightedness, and hubris.

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And I believe this is our destiny. I don’t think we will be fully wiped out. At least I hope not. But I do think billions could die. Oh well. Gotta learn somehow. 

Posted
  On 8/1/2021 at 10:36 PM, gmr548 said:

Which is really the scary thing. The Earth has been through meteors, volcanism, ice ages, mass extinctions... The planet will ultimately be fine.

Expand  

Ultimately the planet will probably get extinguished when the sun becomes a red giant.

Posted
  Quote

These indicators suggest that the AMOC is running out of steam, making it more susceptible to disruptions that might knock it out of equilibrium, said study author Niklas Boers, a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.
 

If the circulation shuts down, it could bring extreme cold to Europe and parts of North America, raise sea levels along the U.S. East Coast and disrupt seasonal monsoons that provide water to much of the world.

 

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/08/05/change-ocean-collapse-atlantic-meridional/

Posted
  On 8/9/2021 at 3:48 PM, Biff Tannen said:

Man.  It really does seem like we are just charging headlong into disaster.  I can't fathom getting enough people on board to stop these changes.

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Oh that disaster is on the horizon. There’s no stopping it either. Humanity had a decent run. Might as well live it up. 

Posted (edited)

There have been 7 global extinction events. 1 is occurring now do to human induced land use/changes. 
 

1 was the meteor strike that donked off the dinosaurs (although there is a pretty robust debate among paleontologists about whether the dinosaurs were already in decline due to changing global climate).

5 were just straight up climate change.  There is absolutely a scenario where humanity does not make it through AGW.  Something in the CO2/N2 cycle gets out of whack and 98% of life dies within a few millennia. 
 

It would be darkly ironic if we are the first galactic species to get though Fermi’s Paradox, only to cook ourselves off our home planet. 

Edited by Bateshorn
Posted

This is never popular on a Texas board, and I'm not going to argue it.  But if you feel helpless about it all, maybe personal change is the one thing you can control.  Reduce your meat consumption, folks.  Not telling you to go vegan.  But maybe try a meatless Monday or two, and go from there.  Maybe in the long run it makes no difference.  But maybe in your life it helps you feel like you're actually doing something to help.  

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Posted (edited)
  On 8/9/2021 at 5:27 PM, Bateshorn said:

There have been 7 global extinction events. 1 is occurring now do to human induced land use/changes. 
 

1 was the meteor strike that donked off the dinosaurs (although there is a pretty robust debate among paleontologists about whether the dinosaurs were already in decline due to changing global climate).

5 were just straight up climate change.  There is absolutely a scenario where humanity does not make it through AGW.  Something in the CO2/N2 cycle gets out of whack and 98% of life dies within a few millennia

Expand  

Thankfully that still leaves plenty of time to get in a few more libtard jokes. Thats whats important. fucking hippies with their climate-this and climate-that. 

Edited by Blotto
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Posted
  On 8/9/2021 at 5:34 PM, MC Fresh Breath said:

This is never popular on a Texas board, and I'm not going to argue it.  But if you feel helpless about it all, maybe personal change is the one thing you can control.  Reduce your meat consumption, folks.  Not telling you to go vegan.  But maybe try a meatless Monday or two, and go from there.  Maybe in the long run it makes no difference.  But maybe in your life it helps you feel like you're actually doing something to help.  

Expand  

This is one of the more underrated ways to help and the amount of water, land, and yes, methane that is used and created purely for livestock is astonishing.  There were never meant to be this many cows, chickens, and pigs on this planet.

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Posted
  On 8/9/2021 at 5:47 PM, Biff Tannen said:

This is one of the more underrated ways to help and the amount of water, land, and yes, methane that is used and created purely for livestock is astonishing.  There were never meant to be this many cows, chickens, and pigs on this planet.

Expand  

For that matter, I'm pretty sure there were never meant to be this humans on this planet ...

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Posted (edited)

 

  Quote

 

Humans have pushed the climate into ‘unprecedented’ territory, landmark U.N. report finds

U.N. chief calls findings ‘a code red for humanity’ with worse climate impacts to come unless greenhouse gas pollution falls dramatically

 

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/08/09/ipcc-climate-report-global-warming-greenhouse-gas-effect/?itid=hp-top-table-main

Edited by elfenix


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