COASTAL CHALLENGESSinking Land Increases Risk for Thousands of Coastal Residents
One in 50 people living in two dozen coastal cities in the United States could experience significant flooding by 2050, according to new research. The study projects that in the next three decades as many as 500,000 people could be affected as well as a potential 1 in 35 privately owned properties damaged by flooding.
One in 50 people living in two dozen coastal cities in the United States could experience significant flooding by 2050, according to Virginia Tech-led research.
Published in Nature, the study combines satellite-obtained measurements of sinking land, also known as subsidence, with sea-level rise projections and tide charts to provide a new comprehensive look at the potential for flooding in a combined 32 cities along the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf coasts. The study projects that in the next three decades as many as 500,000 people could be affected as well as a potential 1 in 35 privately owned properties damaged by flooding. The study also highlights the racial and socioeconomic demographics of those potentially affected.
“One of the challenges we have with communicating the issue of sea-level rise and land subsidence broadly is it often seems like a long-term problem, like something whose impacts will only manifest at the end of the century, which many people may not care about,” said lead author Leonard Ohenhen, a graduate student working with Associate Professor Manoochehr Shirzaei at Virginia Tech’s Earth Observation and Innovation Lab. “What we’ve done here is focused the picture on the short term, just 26 years from now.”
Other increases compared to current estimates include:
· Between 500 and 700 more square miles of land flooded
· 176,000 to 518,000 more people affected
· 94,000 to 288,000 more properties exposed with an estimated value of $32 billion to $109 billion
“The whole purpose of this paper is to provide data to support decisions,” Shirzaei said. “Every city, every county has a flood resiliency plan in place. They are required by law to create that. But it’s likely nobody has received the entire picture until this study, which creates probably the first comprehensive picture of what’s happen in the not-too-distant future.”
Collaborators on the study include:
· Chandrakanta Ojha of the India Institute of Science Education and Research in Punjab, India
· Sonam Sherpa, a former Ph.D. student at Virginia Tech and a postdoctoral scholar at Brown University
· Robert J. Nicholls of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom
