If I understand correctly it's mainly the effect of the moon's nodal precession [0] in combination with climate-change induced rising sea levels.
I am curious about its effects on non-US coastal cities as well (also personally, as I happen to live in one). Hopefully it will be repeated/extended in the future.
As the average temperature increases, it seems reasonable to expect the rate of melting, thus sea level rise, increase. Add to that highly nonlinear effects like the "clathrate gun", and a continuing linear increase in sea level seems highly non-obvious
Warm temps push more water to the atmosphere so its not linear in terms of sea level rise. You'd expect more ice to melt but you might also see more snow, glaciers growing.
Nope, I'd expect the current trend of glaciers and icecaps melting to continue or accelerate. And for rainy seasons to get more severe. As they have been.
Because the article is about 2030 and unless the rate of sea level rise accelerates significantly in 9 years that means sea level will be about 36 mm higher in 9 years. And it is hard for me to see how 36 mm higher sea level will flood much of anything, so it seems that the moon wobble will do most of the heavy lifting if we compare the situation today to the predicted situation in 2030.
> Is there any evidence to suggest that the sea level will completely stop rising today?
Consider the mass of 36mm integrated over the area of our oceans. That mass has been converted from solid to liquid. What was once rigid is now a veritable loose canon. The effect of tidal forces is to concentrate that mass towards the moon -- so the amplitude of flooding caused by a lunar wobble should be expected to be greater with more liquid water available to participate. I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the impact of that rise.
If current tides are putting you within 30cm of danger, then you're already flooding frequently from sea storms. Tides aren't the danger when living on the coast, wind that pushes water is.
Probably look at places that already have flooding on king tides.
San Diego, Newport Beach, seal beach, motto bay, etc. I think a lot of the stuff on sf bay is built on piers high above the highest tides.
Yeah San Diego is a weird example - most of our coastal property is relatively high up.
A quick Google of "king tides flooding San Diego" shows a couple news articles mentioning National City and Imperial Beach, so your suspicions are probably correct - it's the flatter places down south that everyone forgets exist.
Sadly the Dutch have their own problems now and probably need to focus all of their efforts on their own coastline like the rest of us, unless you think they can export "an integrated approach, in which all stakeholders are involved in finding solutions for climate change issues" to other countries like the U.S. that are "more individualistic." https://www.pbs.org/wnet/peril-and-promise/2019/07/dutch-bar...
> And after 2000 years of trying to hold back the sea, the Netherlands are finally high and dry. No longer living with the constant threat of a cataclysmic flood, they're free to turn their energies toward outward expansion. They immediately spread out and claim the newly-exposed land.
Low Countries have this problem since centuries back, yes? Dikes, pumping, other options have mitigated issues. It is the developing country needing to worry, those with out money for these.
The author worked really hard to avoid mentioning climate change, but then there's this at the bottom of the article:
> "Global sea level rise will have been at work for another decade. The higher seas, amplified by the lunar cycle, will cause a leap in flood numbers on almost all U.S. mainland coastlines, Hawaii, and Guam," a NASA news release stated.
So in next decade we can blame the moon instead of admitting the flooding could be caused be climate change?
The word "climate crisis" in the article is a hyperlink to their dedicated climate change section with a constant stream[1] of articles about climate change.
... Although I would count myself amongst the first to be happily surprised if climate change as a problem has reached enough "mindshare" and currency that a reference to the "crisis" inmediately brings "climate change" to mind. And it might have, and I am just out of the mainstream lately :)
> "The new national survey by Pew Research Center, conducted April 20 to 29 among 13,749 U.S. adults, including 912 Gen Z adults, finds a majority of Americans (64%) say efforts to reduce the effects of climate change need to be prioritized today to ensure a sustainable planet for future generations, even if it means fewer resources for addressing other important problems; far fewer (34%) say climate change should be a lower priority, given other important problems facing Americans today."
> The author worked really hard to avoid mentioning climate change, but then there's this at the bottom of the article:
Well of course. The subject at hand is not climate change but a cyclical change in tides related to the moon. It should go without saying that things that effect of the tide is separate from to any other change in sea level, such as a storm surge or climate change.
Not everyone that doesn't begin and end with a sermon about climate change is a climate change denier.
The second sentence of the article makes it clear that the moon's natural cycle combined with climate change will create an unprecedented flood risk.
No one should write articles for unbelievers. They are not unbelievers because they don't have access to enough facts. They're unbelievers for reasons of emotion, identity, contrarianism, stupidity, etc.
This appears to be the article being discussed. Figure two and reference 30 give numbers for the magnitude of the 18 year variation due to moon wobble. In St Petersburg, Florida, it's a 4.7 cm variation. Other parts of the world can experience up to a 30 cm variation of high tide variation.
So basically it's definitely something to account for with the linear rise of sea level due to climate change, with some years being worse relatively to others.
Thank you for posting the original paper. Figure 2 has a great depiction of the effect. That 4.7 cm variation, because it cycles every 18 years, can increase or decrease the effects of inherent sea level rise: at a minimum of the cycle, an expected sea level increase of 8.9 cm instead ends up only being 4.1 cm; but by the next decade, an expected increase of 9.4 cm surges to a peak high tide of 14.1 cm higher than before.
One main takeaway is this effect occurs at different times around the world–within the US, different states will experience flooding in different decades. Federal mitigation efforts can be focused on regions that would be impacted first. However, by the 2030s, most seacoasts will be flooding at least on occasion due to extreme high tides.
The other effect predicted is, per year, the extreme high tide days will cluster together within a month or so in each region. They mention this because policy or planning for these types of extreme events usually think about it in terms of single isolated events, but this model predicts short “seasons” of extreme tides. Future mitigations should take that into account.
No problem, this article is being shared on other news sites now. And it's genuinely confusing to me why the original nature article isn't linked, or why Figure 2 isn't shown in any of them. The figure speaks for itself and even looks very nice. I don't understand reporting on scientific news.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 106 ms ] threadI am curious about its effects on non-US coastal cities as well (also personally, as I happen to live in one). Hopefully it will be repeated/extended in the future.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_precession#Nodal_prece...
Sea level rise since 1995 has averaged 3.4 mm per year[1].
Is there an expectation that this will accelerate significantly? or is a change in 30mm expected to contribute significantly to flooding?
[1]: https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/sea-level/
Because the article is about 2030 and unless the rate of sea level rise accelerates significantly in 9 years that means sea level will be about 36 mm higher in 9 years. And it is hard for me to see how 36 mm higher sea level will flood much of anything, so it seems that the moon wobble will do most of the heavy lifting if we compare the situation today to the predicted situation in 2030.
> Is there any evidence to suggest that the sea level will completely stop rising today?
No.
Just first google result 2* C warming would be ~10cm and reading the effects of that sounds pretty bad.
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/1/19/1690840...
A quick Google of "king tides flooding San Diego" shows a couple news articles mentioning National City and Imperial Beach, so your suspicions are probably correct - it's the flatter places down south that everyone forgets exist.
And how to keep inland areas below sea level, pumped dry reliably.
https://what-if.xkcd.com/53/
> And after 2000 years of trying to hold back the sea, the Netherlands are finally high and dry. No longer living with the constant threat of a cataclysmic flood, they're free to turn their energies toward outward expansion. They immediately spread out and claim the newly-exposed land.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Holocene_sea_level_rise
https://theconversation.com/ancient-aboriginal-stories-prese...
> "Global sea level rise will have been at work for another decade. The higher seas, amplified by the lunar cycle, will cause a leap in flood numbers on almost all U.S. mainland coastlines, Hawaii, and Guam," a NASA news release stated.
So in next decade we can blame the moon instead of admitting the flooding could be caused be climate change?
> "The rapid increase will start in the mid-2030s, when a lunar cycle will amplify rising sea levels caused by the climate crisis..."
CNN does not have an anti-science agenda.
1. https://www.cnn.com/specials/world/cnn-climate
(The wording remains oblique though ...
... Although I would count myself amongst the first to be happily surprised if climate change as a problem has reached enough "mindshare" and currency that a reference to the "crisis" inmediately brings "climate change" to mind. And it might have, and I am just out of the mainstream lately :)
https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2021/05/26/gen-z-millenn...
Informative :)
Well of course. The subject at hand is not climate change but a cyclical change in tides related to the moon. It should go without saying that things that effect of the tide is separate from to any other change in sea level, such as a storm surge or climate change.
Not everyone that doesn't begin and end with a sermon about climate change is a climate change denier.
At least it gives the period of the lunar cycle -18.6 years, and we're at the peak right now.
What is the scale of this effect? If I normally have a 7 meter tidal range, will I be getting a 9 meter range? Or just a 7.01 meter range?
No one should write articles for unbelievers. They are not unbelievers because they don't have access to enough facts. They're unbelievers for reasons of emotion, identity, contrarianism, stupidity, etc.
This appears to be the article being discussed. Figure two and reference 30 give numbers for the magnitude of the 18 year variation due to moon wobble. In St Petersburg, Florida, it's a 4.7 cm variation. Other parts of the world can experience up to a 30 cm variation of high tide variation.
So basically it's definitely something to account for with the linear rise of sea level due to climate change, with some years being worse relatively to others.
One main takeaway is this effect occurs at different times around the world–within the US, different states will experience flooding in different decades. Federal mitigation efforts can be focused on regions that would be impacted first. However, by the 2030s, most seacoasts will be flooding at least on occasion due to extreme high tides.
The other effect predicted is, per year, the extreme high tide days will cluster together within a month or so in each region. They mention this because policy or planning for these types of extreme events usually think about it in terms of single isolated events, but this model predicts short “seasons” of extreme tides. Future mitigations should take that into account.
EDIT: Actually axios linked to the original article, so good for them https://www.axios.com/nasa-moon-wobble-coastal-flooding-c462...
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