Category: NC_CN Water_SLR_CN

He and his sister purchased the four-bedroom waterfront home in August for $550,000. With its airy rooms, two levels of decks and stunning Atlantic views, Patricelli envisioned it as an ideal spot to welcome friends and family after two years of an isolating pandemic. After the season’s last renters departed, he and his relatives had planned to host a Thanksgiving gathering in the home.

A new discovery deep beneath one of Antarctica’s rivers of ice could change scientists’ understanding of how the ice flows, with important implications for estimating future sea level rise.

One major flood can bring an entire community to its knees. Three devastating floods in three years is almost unfathomable, but that’s what some parts of Houston went through between the Memorial Day flood of May 2015, the Tax Day flood of April 2016, and the mind-numbing Hurricane Harvey floods of August 2017. Harvey dumped more rain on the contiguous United States than any other hurricane on record.

I have spent much of the past decade at the soggy edges of this country listening to the people whose homes and businesses flood worse and worse year after year as tides rise higher and storms become stronger. While I still haven’t gotten over the shock of hearing someone describe what it’s like to lose a home or a loved one, another story, submerged in this trauma, has started to surface.

All scientist Erin Pettit could see when she looked at the satellite photos of the ice shelf in front of the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica was the giant crack that stretched across most of the image.

On Monday, the Federal Emergency Management Administration, or FEMA, announced a new pot of funding for victims of flooding in four states that got pummeled when Hurricane Ida slammed into the Gulf Coast last August and moved inland up through the Northeast in remnants. Starting April 1, the agency will open up $60 million in flood assistance grants to Louisiana, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, with $40 million of that money earmarked for Louisiana — a state that’s home to six of the 20 most at-risk counties in the country for flooding. New Jersey will receive $10 million, and Mississippi and Pennsylvania will get $5 million apiece.

The climate crisis has taken root. The United Nations’ latest climate report explains how deep this worldwide problem is embedded.
Closer to home, another report published last month is equally alarming, for the present and future of southern New England. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s 2022 Sea Level Rise Technical Report warns that the United States will see as much sea-level rise, about a foot, in the next three decades as it did during the entire previous century.

The county in California most at risk from sea level rise is San Mateo, with nearly 100,000 people — half residents of color — living just three feet above the high-tide line. If climate models prove correct, rising seas threaten billions of dollars of homes and businesses, and hundreds of contaminated sites could harm residents if flooded.

Natural disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes and wildfires – all made worse by the climate crisis – have something in common: they disproportionately cripple poor, Black and minority communities. Dozens of studies demonstrate how climate-aggravated natural disasters and pollution hurt minority communities in ways that barely touch wealthy white communities. There’s a very clear divide between those who are causing climate change, and those who are bearing the brunt of it. Ultimately, the floods, storms and fires will come for all of us, but it’s going to hit some of us sooner and faster, while doing more damage. If we really believe we are all in this fight against the climate crisis together, then we are going to have to fold climate justice into our efforts.

Sea levels around the United States will rise up to a foot over the next 30 years due to climate change, as much as they have risen in the previous century, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) projected in a report on Tuesday.