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 Penelope Green Photo: Vanessa Leroy, The New York Times
Houses along Baxter Road on the island of Nantucket have always been precarious real estate: property at the edge of the world with a built-in expiration date. Baxter runs parallel to Sconset Bluff, a stunning…
By Brady Dennis Photo: AP
New research finds an estimated 25,000 properties in Louisiana could slip below tidal boundary lines by 2050. Florida, Texas and North Carolina also face profound economic risks.
By Chris Mooney Photo: Kerem Yucel/AFP
New research suggests the massive ice sheet is already set to lose more than 3 percent of its mass, even if the world stopped emitting greenhouse gases today.
By Judson Jones and Others
Dozens of residents at a nursing home in the Mississippi town of Brandon had to be evacuated on school buses Wednesday after a slow-moving system brought rain across the South Wednesday drenching central parts of…
By Elana Shao Photo: David J. Phillip, Associated Press
Up to 50 percent of the properties that were flooded in Harris County, Texas, during Hurricane Harvey might have escaped that fate in a world without climate change, scientists reported on Thursday.
By Kevin Hurler
the hottest and driest place in North America—was recently the site of an extreme bought of rainfall and subsequent disastrous flooding. This intense rainfall is rare, but was one of major thousand-year rain events that…
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said high tide flooding has become more common as sea levels rise and is affecting residents of coastal towns and states. Floods that used to only occur during large…
By Brady Dennis Photo: Ryan C. Hermens, AP
At one weather station in Fairbanks, Alaska, each hour of rainfall is about 50 percent more intense, on average, than it was a half-century ago. The Wichita area is experiencing rains about 40 percent more…
By Li Cohen Photo: NOAA
The nation's coasts are in trouble. After a year of record-breaking coastal flooding, a new report released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that it's going to get more frequent, more intense and…
By Tricia Fulks Kelley and Others Photo: Michael Swensen, Getty Images
Firefighters and National Guard crews have swarmed into eastern Kentucky after days of deadly flooding, rescuing by the hundreds people who found themselves trapped in the perilous water.
By Rick Rogers and Others Photo: Jon Cherry, The New York Times
One round of rainstorms after another blew through eastern Kentucky on Monday, deepening the misery of an already desperate region. Floodwaters again swallowed the roads that had recently reopened to allow emergency workers to scour…
08/02/22
Coastal communities in three locations along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts saw record high tide flooding last year — a trend that is expected to continue into 2023 and beyond without improved flood defenses, according…
07/18/22
As relative sea level rises, it no longer takes a strong storm or a hurricane to cause coastal flooding. High tide flooding occurs when sea level rise combines with local factors to push water levels…
07/12/22
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…
05/16/22
The phrases “climate change” and “sea level rise” nearly go hand in hand, particularly when discussed in coastal communities like Martha’s Vineyard. Many of the cliché images of global warming often involve the seas, whether…
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 Rick Childress and Others Photo: Arden S. Barnes, The Washington Post 07/29/22
People brought harrowing stories of survival Friday as they took shelter at a school that had become a refuge for those who lost everything when muddy water rapidly seeped into their homes. 10 steps you…
By James Bruggers Photo: Leandro Lozada, Getty Images 07/29/22
After three years in office, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has grown accustomed to holding media briefings on weather disasters. In February 2020, heavy rain caused flooding across Central and Eastern Kentucky, and mudslides in Eastern…
By Siladitya Ray 07/29/22
TOPLINE At least 16 people have died and several others remain missing after heavy rains caused severe flooding in eastern Kentucky, the state’s governor announced on Friday, in the latest extreme weather event that has…
By Elena Shao Photo: KMOX St. Louis 07/26/22
Floods can surge all year round, in every region of the world. But discerning the relationship between any given flood and climate change is no small feat, experts say, made difficult by limited historical records,…
By Bob Henson 07/11/22
Near-record-warm waters along the northern Gulf Coast will be turning up the burners on thunderstorm development near a stalled front. The likely result will be pulses of torrential rain, extending over much or most of…
By Jim Robbins Photo: David Goldman, Associated Press 06/19/22
The ominous gray clouds have vanished after deluging Yellowstone National Park with floodwaters over the weekend, leaving sunshine and blue skies as the park’s eponymous river and its tributaries recede. The weather would have been…
By Annabelle Timsit Photo: David Goldman , AP 06/19/22
Parts of Yellowstone will reopen to visitors Wednesday morning, after dramatic floods forced the national park to shut down last week. Entrances to the south loop of the park will reopen to a limited number…
Photo: Parker Manning , AP 06/14/22
A visitor from Indiana captured dramatic video of a waterfront house in Montana being swept away in a river as a torrent of rain combined with a rapidly melting snowpack caused a deluge of flooding…
By Leah Campbell Photo: Ericka Lugo 06/08/22
When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, the neighborhood of Hoffman Triangle was overwhelmed by 6 feet of water. But it doesn’t take a hurricane to make this wedge in the center of the…
By Eric Adelson and Others Photo: Joe Raedle , Getty Images 06/04/22
In Miami, drivers faced slashing rains and impassable streets that disrupted the city and surrounding areas throughout Saturday. The city’s fire department responded to several people caught in cars amid the rising waters, rescuing residents…
By Brady Dennis 05/13/22
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 05/05/22
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 04/15/22
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 04/11/22
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 Zhi Li and Others 04/06/22
Flash floods are largely driven by high rainfall rates in convective storms that are projected to increase in frequency and intensity in a warmer climate in the future. However, quantifying the changes in future flood…
By Raymond Zhong Photo: Noah Berger, Associated Press 04/01/22
Global warming is greatly increasing the risk that extreme wildfires in the American West are followed by heavy rainfall, a new study has found, highlighting the need for better preparations for hazards, like mudslides and…
By Alejandra Borunda 03/29/22
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 03/23/22
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 03/23/22
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 02/23/22
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 02/19/22
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 02/17/22
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 02/16/22
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 02/15/22
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.
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…
