SEA LEVEL RISE & FLOODING
NASA says that seas have risen since 1992 by 3 inches, with some locations rising more than 9 inches, and anticipates an unavoidable rise of several feet in the future.
Caused by four main factors, of which two are global (ice melting and warming waters that expand) and two are local (a slowing Gulf Stream and sinking land), the amount and speed of sea level rise varies by location.
The consequences are staggering, creating more dangerous and powerful hurricanes and storm surges, and resulting in more intense and frequent flooding, and devastation to coastal communities. In the United States, almost 40 percent of the population live in relatively high-population-density coastal areas, where sea level plays a role in flooding, shoreline erosion, and hazards from storms. You might be surprised to learn of the creation of ghost forests.
You might also want to watch a 4-part PBS series Sinking Cities which takes a look into how four cities (Miami, London, Tokyo, & New York) — all at particular risk — are adapting.
Flood Factor has a fascinating site where you can explore your flood risk by entering an address.
By Brady Dennis
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…
By Matthew Siegfries & Others
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.
By Bob Henson
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…
By Elizabeth Rush Photo: Leslye Davis , The New York Times
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…
By Alejandra Borunda
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…
By Zoya Teirstein Photo: Warren Faidley , Getty Images
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…
By Frank Carini
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…
By Ezra David Romero Photo: Beth LaBerge , KQED
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…
By Ali Velshi
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…
By Steve Gorman Photo: Rick Wilking / Reuters
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…
By Jianjun Yin Photo: Matt McClain / Getty Images
A new report led by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warns that the U.S. should prepare for 10-12 inches of relative sea level rise on average in the next 30 years. The…
By Robin George Andrews Photo: Peter Fisher , National Geographic
When a mysterious series of temblors emanated from the uninhabited South Sandwich Islands, scientists all over the world found themselves scratching their heads in confusion.
04/18/22
The sea level trends measured by tide gauges that are presented here are local relative sea level (RSL) trends as opposed to the global sea level trend. Tide gauge measurements are made with respect to…
03/02/22
Global sea level has risen between 6 and 8 inches (15-20 cm) over the last 100 years. About one third of the increase is due to the thermal expansion of ocean water as it has…
10/31/21
Greta is known for her famous speeches before world leaders. She recently spoke at COP 26 where delegates from around the world are charged with fulfilling goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework…
10/19/21
This animation shows how global sea levels have risen more than 80 millimeters (3.15 inches) over the past three decades, which is like covering the U.S. in about 4 meters (about 13 feet) of water…
09/01/21
Sea level rise is caused primarily by two factors related to global warming: the added water from melting ice sheets and glaciers and the expansion of seawater as it warms. The first graph tracks the…
03/21/21
A new Climate Central sea-level-rise analysis identifies the assisted living and nursing homes at risk in five states. Experts say waiting to evacuate during storms is not the answer.
10/06/20
Surging Waters: Science Empowering Communities in the Face of Flooding is a report produced by AGU, a global not-for-profit scientific society dedicated to advancing the Earth and space sciences for the benefit of humanity.
06/12/20
This story map illustrates historical hurricane tracks, strike frequency, and potential areas of coastal flooding and inundation from storms by combining the National Hurricane Center’s (NHC’s) hurricane strike dataset.
06/11/20
This NOAA-sponsored website is focused on helping communities address coastal issues and has become one of the most-used resources in the coastal management community. The dynamic Digital Coast Partnership, whose members represent the website’s primary…
06/10/20
The mission of ASFPM is to promote education, policies and activities that mitigate current and future losses, costs and human suffering caused by flooding, and to protect the natural and beneficial functions of floodplains -…
03/28/20
Sea level rise is a slow-moving threat, but it demands immediate action. Global heating creates extreme hazards that cause significant harm to people, homes, infrastructure, and the environment. In California, we are already facing many…
02/05/20
This year’s flooding across the Midwest and the South affected nearly 14 million people, yet the full scale of the slowly unfolding disaster has been difficult to fathom. To visualize just how extensive it was,…
11/18/19
By the end of this century, as many as 13 million people in the United States will see their homes affected by sea level rise. Millions more who live, work, or travel through coastal or…
10/29/19
People truly need to understand the causes of sea level rise and the impact it has on our communities. By working together, we can develop smart solutions to protect against this ever-growing problem. Our communities can make…
10/01/19
Flood iQ covers the East coast and the Gulf coast, and visualizes your risk of sea level rise flooding today and up to 15 years in the future. It is a web based application created…
09/11/19
Find a ton of information here on sea level, including news & features, a data analysis tool, a virtual earth system laboratory, and more.
09/10/19
Climate Central's flagship sea level project allows you to search or navigate interactive maps to see areas below different amounts of sea level rise and flooding — down to neighborhood scale — matched with area timelines of…
03/21/19
Flooding in the United States (U.S.) has cost over $1 trillion in inflation adjusted dollars since 1980 and represents more than 63% of the cost associated with all billion dollar or more natural disasters.1 It…
By Duy Linh Tu and Julian Lim 01/27/22
After Hurricane Ida slammed into the Louisiana coast in August 2021, it took more than 100 lives and cost billions of dollars in damage. To some here, the storm was just one more justification for…
By NOAA Photo: Coastal County Snapshots 01/18/22
A major update to a popular NOAA tool used to inform planning and decision-making in coastal communities is now online. Coastal County Snapshots, available on NOAA’s Digital Coast platform, turns complex data into easy-to-understand charts,…
By Sarah Kaplan Photo: Peter Davis/British Antarctic Survey 12/13/21
Scientists have discovered a series of worrying weaknesses in the ice shelf holding back one of Antarctica’s most dangerous glaciers, suggesting that this important buttress against sea level rise could shatter within the next three…
By Trishla Ostwal Photo: Patrick Bloodgood , USACE 12/06/21
Virginia’s Tangier Island is rapidly disappearing. Rising sea levels are exacerbating erosion and flooding, and could make the speck of land in the Chesapeake Bay uninhabitable within the next few decades. For years, island residents,…
By Samantha Harrington Photo: Cody Pfister 11/05/21
From ghost forests to sinking farmland, coastal salt marshes are rapidly shifting as the oceans rise. The Local Motives team, Nate Murray and Cody Pfister, traveled to New Jersey and Maryland to understand the impact…
By Janae Morris Photo: Getty Images 10/31/21
Rising sea levels paired with recent storm surges have been causing faster than usual erosion on Hawaii’s beaches and shorelines. "The coastal issues that are related to climate change are sort of the canary in…
By Ben Geman and Andrew Freedman 10/12/21
Nations’ follow through — or lack thereof — on pledges made at the coming UN climate summit will help determine the long-term fate of tens of millions of people living in coastal mega-cities threatened by…
By Sabrina Shankman 10/12/21
In its lifetime, Boston Common has seen grazing cattle, public hangings, and protests against slavery and wars. It has seen visits from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Pope John Paul II and the…
By Darryl Fears and Lori Rozsa Photo: Gerald Herbert/AP 10/01/21
As FEMA prepares to remove subsidies from its flood insurance, a new assessment says 8 million homeowners in landlocked states are at risk of serious flooding because of climate change
By Bob Henson 09/16/21
How do you convince people and officials in charge to expect the unexpected? That question has come into the spotlight in recent weeks after two deadly yet highly contrasting U.S. flash flood events.
By Christopher Flavelle Photo: Brandon Dill , The New York Times 08/26/21
The floods that killed at least 20 people in Tennessee last weekend arrived with shocking speed and force — seemingly a case study of the difficulties of protecting people from explosive rainstorms as climate change…
By Rosanna Xia Photo: Carolyn Cole , Los Angeles Times 08/20/21
In a year marked by record-breaking wildfires, extreme heat and unprecedented water shortages, California lawmakers say there’s another — seemingly distant, but just as urgent — climate catastrophe the state cannot afford to ignore: sea level rise.
By Andrew S. Lewis Photo: Davin Oktar Yalkin , The New York Times 08/12/21
From a satellite’s point of view, New Jersey’s barrier islands barely register, like fine white bones pulled from a body of green, separated by a vascular tissue of wetlands and shallow bays.
08/09/21
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change. The IPCC was created to provide policymakers with regular scientific assessments on climate change, its implications and potential…
By Pat Brennan Photo: Aileen Devlin 08/09/21
NASA’s Sea Level Change Team has created a sea level projection tool that makes extensive data on future sea level rise from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) easily accessible to the public –…
08/09/21
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change. The IPCC was created to provide policymakers with regular scientific assessments on climate change, its…
By Rachel Ramirez 07/30/21
Greenland is experiencing its most significant melting event of the year as temperatures in the Arctic surge. The amount of ice that melted on Tuesday alone would be enough to cover the entire state of…
By Tina Casey 07/28/21
As Plastic-Free July draws to a close, the looming ocean plastic crisis is still growing by the day. However, there is light at the end of the tunnel. A new scientific study indicates that solutions…
By Lydia MCMullen-Laird 07/26/21
Last week, search crews reached the bottom of the rubble at the Champlain Towers condo building site in Surfside, Florida, where at least 98 people perished due to a deadly collapse in June. The exact cause is still unclear,…
By Eugene Robinson Photo: Mason Trinca , The Washington Post 07/22/21
We are fiddling while the world burns. And floods. And chokes. And maybe even careens past some kind of unforeseen climate change tipping point that will make what are now extreme weather events devastatingly commonplace.
By Melissa Eddy and Steven Erlanger Photo: Gordon Welters 07/18/21
With more than 160 dead across the region, the receding waters revealed extensive damage as well as deep political divides around how far and fast Germans should go to stem carbon use.
By Matt Simon 07/14/21
THINK BACK TO being a kid at the beach, building walls around your sandcastles. If you engineered those fortifications properly, the tide would come in and flow around your kingdom, before the walls eventually eroded away.…
By Amy Davidson Sorkin Illustration by João Fazenda 07/04/21
Sara Nir was in her ground-floor apartment in Champlain Towers South, in Surfside, Florida, at around 1 a.m. on June 24th when, as she told CNN, she heard loud knocking noises. She went outside to…
By Matt Simon Photo: Adek Berry/getty Images 06/29/21
An actual space laser is cruising 300 miles above your head right now. Launched in 2018, NASA’s ICESat-2 satellite packs a lidar instrument, the same kind of technology that allows self-driving cars to see in…
By Joshua Partlow and others Photo: Zack Wittman 06/26/21
The 12-story condominium tower that crashed down early Thursday near Miami Beach was built on reclaimed wetlands and is perched on a barrier island facing an ocean that has risen about a foot in the…
By Daniel Cusick Photo: Francis Chung/E&E News 06/16/21
We binya and ain gwine nowhey! De sea ain gwine be hiya den we." "We won't be leaving this land. We will rise and remain." — from Gullah/Geechee. The Gullah/Geechee Nation of the south Atlantic…
By Ann Carrns 06/11/21
This year’s hurricane season began early, with a named storm forming before the official start on June 1, and it is expected to be active. If you lack flood insurance, especially if you live near…
By Liza Gross Photo: George Rose/Getty Images 06/08/21
Farmers toil at the mercy of nature’s whims, which can prove particularly vexing in California. Even before climate change, bouncing between drought and deluge was routine in the Central Valley, the state’s richest farming region.…
By Editorial Board Photo by Brian Battaile/AP 06/06/21
Polar Bears struggling on thin Arctic ice is perhaps the most iconic image associated with climate change. Human-caused global warming is extreme near the poles, where the temperature is rising much faster than elsewhere. The…
By Associated Press Photo: Mark Lennihan/AP 05/19/21
Climate-change-triggered sea level rise added $8 billion in damage during 2012’s Hurricane Sandy, one of the United States’ costliest weather disasters, a new study says. During Sandy — a late-fall freak combination of a hurricane…
By Aisling Irwin Photo: Rish Agarwal / Unsplash 05/18/21
Governments who build defences against rising seas can actually increase their citizens' risk of being flooded—if they fail to take account of the 'safe development paradox," according to a flood defence expert. Professor Jeroen Aerts,…
By YCC TEAM Photo: David Stanley / Flickr 05/13/21
From La Guardia Airport in New York to Kansai International Airport in Japan, hundreds of coastal airports are at risk of flooding during extreme weather. And as sea levels rise, even more will be vulnerable.…
By Molly Taft Photo: Chris Larsen (AP) 05/05/21
If we keep on the path we’re on, Antarctica might be really, truly toast. A new study shows that the continent might hit a tipping point within this century if we don’t keep warming in…
By Jan Ellen Spiegel Photo: Ann Tihansky , USGS 04/22/21
People who live along the Atlantic seaboard are accustomed to dealing with environmental extremes: salt spray that can kill just about anything green; relentless wind that whips vegetation into Leaning Tower of Pisa shapes; sand,…
By Richard J. Sima Photo: Money, CC BY SA 4.0 04/22/21
Climate change is causing ice caps to melt and sea levels to rise. And rising sea levels threaten to drown coastal tourist destinations. To imagine this possible future—and spur action to combat it—the team at Money created…
By Borja G. Reguero 04/15/21
Habitats, such as coral reefs, can mitigate increasing flood damages through coastal protection services. We provide a fine-scale, national valuation of the flood risk reduction benefits of coral habitats to people, property, economies and infrastructure.…
By Matthew Fuchs and Brian Watts Photo by Tom Williams 04/13/21
Flooding is a growing problem across the U.S., from increasingly frequent and intense hurricanes and tidal flooding to seasonal inland events driven by more and heavier rains. As these disasters exact a mounting toll on…
By Michael W. Beck Photo illustration by Nicole Vas 04/11/21
The frequency of natural disasters has soared in recent decades. Total damage topped $210 billion worldwide in 2020. With climate change, the costs attributed to coastal storms will increase dramatically. At the same time, coastal…
By Leanna First-Arai Photo: Mario Tama , Getty Images 03/31/21
The Biden administration is adding a $2 trillion green jobs and infrastructure plan to the list of climate commitments announced in its first 100 days, but pinpointing who will foot the bill for damage caused by rising seas and…
By Christopher Flavelle Photo by Erin Schaff 03/14/21
Bobby Outten, a county manager in the Outer Banks, delivered two pieces of bad news at a recent public meeting. Avon, a town with a few hundred full-time residents, desperately needed at least $11 million…
03/08/21
Coastal populations are experiencing relative sea-level rise up to four times faster than the global average—according to new research from the University of East Anglia.
By Drew Kann Illustration: Renée Rigdon 02/22/21
Wildfires and hurricane-force winds produce stunning videos and headlines, but flooding is the most common and costly natural disaster in the United States.
01/25/21
Greenland’s melting glaciers, which plunge into Arctic waters via steep-sided inlets, or fjords, are among the main contributors to global sea level rise in response to climate change.
By Anuradha Varanas Photo by Bryce Bradford 01/22/21
The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) estimates that around 13 million Americans are living within a 100-year flood zone. But over the last few years, researchers have found that the government’s estimates are far…
By John Englander Photo: Kenneth & Gabrielle Adelman 12/14/20
Retreating from the coastline as sea level rises is one of the most sensitive topics. Homeowners, business leaders, bankers, and elected officials all want to put off the day of reckoning as long as possible.…
By Maya K Buchanan 12/01/20
The frequency of coastal floods around the United States has risen sharply in recent decades, and rising seas point to further acceleration in both tidal (or 'nuisance') and extreme floods in the years ahead (Sweet et…
By Zack Colman Photo: Josh Ritchie 11/30/20
With its lively parks and colorful bungalows, Hialeah, Fla., has been the gateway to the American middle class for thousands of Cuban immigrants. Hialeah was the place where home ownership, an unattainable goal under the…
By Rosanna Xia 11/29/20
Inside the state prison system’s Substance Abuse Treatment Facility in Kings County, David Cauthen has spent nearly five weeks on a hunger strike to protest what he sees as indifference and ineptitude by the California…
By Alex Brown 10/03/20
Along a shoreline that stretches farther than the combined length of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, waters driven by climate change have risen as much as 6 feet in less than a decade, washing away…
By John Englander 09/21/20
“Do I have 20 or 30 years before my property floods?” is a typical question I get at least once a week. The other day it was someone about a property in Ochlockee Bay, marked…
