At more than a dozen tide gauges spanning from Texas to North Carolina, sea levels are at least 6 inches higher than they were in 2010 — a change similar to what occurred over the previous five decades.
In December, Charleston, S.C., saw its fourth-highest water levelsince measurements began in 1899. It was the first time on record that seas had been that high without a hurricane.
The average sea level at Charleston has risen by 7 inches since 2010, four times the rate of the previous 30 years.
Jacksonville, Fla., where seas rose 6 inches in the past 14 years, recently studied its vulnerability.
Galveston, Tex., has experienced an extraordinary rate of sea level rise — 8 inches in 14 years.
For this analysis, The Post relied on tide gauge data, which reflects the rise in sea level and sinking of land. Satellite data, which solely measures the height of oceans, was used for global measurements.
The number of high-tide floods is rapidly increasing in the region, with incidents happening five times as often as they did in 1990, said William Sweet, an oceanographer for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The increase in tidal flooding isn’t just from SLR/CC. Subsidence has also been a major and possibly larger factor in some of these same areas:
Regions with the highest land subsidence in the United States are mainly located along the East and Gulf Coast
Analyzing land subsidence rates in large coastal cities, Bekaert and his colleagues found Houston has the fastest peak subsidence rates — about 17 millimeters (0.67 inches) per year from 2014 to 2020 — in the United States. Other research showed parts of Houston lost over 3 meters in elevation in certain areas since 1917.
Land subsidence in the Houston-Galveston area is largely caused by groundwater withdrawals.
Parts of New Orleans are also experiencing high rates of sinking, due to both human-induced and natural processes. Research showed that rates are highly variable across the city, ranging from 150 to 500 millimeters (6 to 20 inches) over the past 20 years.
While Houston and New Orleans are notable subsiding locations, other places in the Gulf also experience high rates. In a large area north of Tampa Bay, subsidence rates have been clocked at up to 6 millimeters (0.24 inches) per year, about twice as much as global sea level rise, from 2015 to 2020 due to groundwater pumping.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/05/30/land-sinking-us-subsidence-sea-level/
Great thread and topic, Larry!
I have covered a different, crisis level aspect to pumping ground water out that impacts more areas inland but this impact along the coasts which is causing the land to SINK much faster than the oceans are rising is extremely serious.
The REAL crisis-draining groundwater
Started by metmike - Nov. 2, 2023, 4:31 p.m.
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/100242/
Another huge problem that this causes:
Subsidence linked to extraction of groundwater and natural gas, and weight of buildings pressing into soft ground
Some of this subsidence resulted from pumping out groundwater for water supplies or for natural gas, but New York and other cities are sinking under the sheer weight of their buildings pressing into soft ground.
It is a complex situation, in which there are a number of factors at play. After the great ice sheets melted at the end of the ice age, the ground has also been gradually tilting, with northern areas that were under the ice rising upwards while southern areas that were ice-free tilting downwards.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-glacial_rebound
A model of present-day mass change due to post-glacial rebound and the reloading of the ocean basins with seawater. Blue and purple areas indicate rising due to the removal of the ice sheets. Yellow and red areas indicate falling as mantle material moved away from these areas in order to supply the rising areas, and because of the collapse of the forebulges around the ice sheets.
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https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/glacial-adjustment.html
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https://www.carbonbrief.org/melting-glaciers-drove-21-of-sea-level-rise-over-past-two-decades/
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-ocean-heat-content
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tjMs4RbERw
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-020-0008-8#article-comments
Sea level variability increasingly contributes to coastal flooding and erosion as global sea levels rise, partly due to the thermal expansion of seawater, which accelerates with increasing temperature. Climate model simulations with increasing greenhouse gas emissions suggest that future sea level variability, such as the annual and interannual oscillations that alter local astronomical tidal cycles and contribute to coastal impacts, will also increase in many regions. Here, we present an analysis of the CMIP5 climate model projections of future sea level to show that there is a tendency for a near-global increase in sea level variability with continued warming that is robust across models, regardless of whether ocean temperature variability increases. Specifically, for an upper-ocean warming by 2 °C, which is likely to be reached by the end of this century, sea level variability increases by 4 to 10% globally on seasonal-to-interannual timescales because of the nonlinear thermal expansion of seawater. As the oceans continue to warm, future ocean temperature oscillations will cause increasingly larger buoyancy-related sea level fluctuations that may alter coastal risks.
SOME OTHER DAY, THEY'LL THINK: "OHHHH... WE SHOULDA NEVER PUT ALL THOSE HEAVY WINDMILLS IN THE OCEAN"....OR... "WOW! WE BETTER START A WHALING SPORT, THERE'S TOO MANY WHALES, THE "AQUARIUM" ISN'T AS BIG AS WE THOUGHT" ...OR..."WE NEED TO GET ALL THOSE HEAVY SUBMARINES OUT!"...OR... "LET'S JUST HAVE AN OPEN FISHING SEASON WITH NO LIMIT ON ANY TYPE, UNTIL WE GET THE WATER LEVEL DOWN."...OR... THE BEST ONE, YET... "LET'S DRILL GIANT HOLES & PIPE IT INTO SPACE ~ ELON CAN FIGURE OUT HOW TO DO THAT." "PROBLEM SOLVED...WE'RE SO SMART! " LOLOLOL