Sea Level Rise: Prepare for Our Changing Shoreline
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TED Talk (TEDxCharleston, 2016), discussing Sea Level Rise with NOAA references (CanVis, Sea Level Rise Viewer, NOAA News, Tides and Currents)
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Sea Level Rise: Prepare for Our Changing Shoreline
Editor's Notes
- Real estate is all about location, location, location. And if you live on or even near the water, I’d think about selling, now, now, now, because the sea is coming, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. Sea level rise. It doesn’t normally make the news, especially in an election year, but its starting to because coastal flooding is up at our doorsteps more and more often. Remember the story of Noah and all that water? He devised a plan for a rising sea, and it worked out pretty well. He did have a good advisor though. All you have are maps, tide gauges and anxious data nerds like me. My work centers around something called lidar, a magic box of lasers we put on a plane to get elevation values. Values we then use to find out where the sea will affect first. I look at beaches, rivers, estuaries and coastal cities all over the country to document change… and business is good… ‘cause change is the only constant. But the first step of preparing for our changing shoreline is simply showing people Sea Level Change is real. I’m not talking about climate change and I don’t really care if you do or don’t believe in that. What I’m talking about is easily measurable, natural and been around for millennia. It’s also something I will still be talking about to my 2-month old son when he’s my age.
- This is the Charleston Battery, at the tip of a coastal city that’s basically centered around the tides. Even when I go to the beach, I check the tide schedule because there’s nowhere to walk at high tide. When I go to the Battery, I don’t bother, ‘cause I know its safe because of that seawall… for now. A wall that’s been constantly repaired for the last 300 years, otherwise this part of town wouldn’t even exist. But soon, it won’t be enough to protect these Million Dollar Views.
- Across town, over on Morrison Dr for you locals and a busy 4 lane street for you others, there is a less protected part of the city where high tide routinely comes up and over the road. The HIGHEST tides, on the sunniest of days, what are called “nuisance floods”, actually make this are dangerous and sometimes impassable. In the background, do you see that an elementary school, where’s the seawall to protect that? These nuisance floods are just a sign of a rising sea, a glimpse into our future. In 2020, just 4 years away, Charleston will have 30 nuisance floods, that’s 2 per month! And by 2050, based on what we are doing now… we will see one every-other-day. It’s not just Charleston either: Seattle, San Francisco, Miami, Savannah, Norfolk, even Washington DC miles upriver from the Ocean are all taking notice. I look at sea level rise like the wind bending a tree; after many storms that tree starts to lean but eventually that lean becomes normal. Today high tide is sometimes a flood, but soon it will be the normal.
- And we can measure how our normal is changing. This is a chart showing the Charleston Harbor tide gauge. This shows a little over a foot of rise here in just 100 years. And THREE FEET in some places in the world in just one century, and recent studies show the rate is actually increasing. Sure the tides fluctuate daily but we can see a gradual increase over time with some idea of where it’s headed next. Sea level change is not new, it’s been around far before humans built condos on the beach and seawalls in our cities.
- This is Charleston from an aerial view. There’s our school up north, the Battery down south and that little star is us, at the CharlestonMusicHall. Using elevation as a guide, we can see what 1 foot of rise will look like. And we see that we lose most of our wetlands, our green infrastructure, and the other effects are hidden behind our hardened shoreline, thanks to our gray infrastructure: like roads, buildings, ports and seawalls. But at 2 ft, we hit our first tipping point. We start lose some of our city and water actually starts coming up and around the Battery and a historic part of Charleston is underwater all the time. At 3 feet, we’re too late and only drastic plans make any sense. We’re dry here but the rest of the peninsula is much smaller because where the blue stops is now our new normal shoreline.
- This is inevitable, just like death and taxes. And it’s a hard sell to those who don’t believe, think this is nonsense or worse, don’t care because they expect not to be here later. Sure, all places have dangers but this one we can see from a few feet away and can surely avoid it! But it looks like we are moving in the opposite direction on that because we are moving closer to the sea yet the sea is moving closer to us! And at some point it’ll be cheaper to MOVE away than to constantly fight the sea. But our culture believes we can engineer our way out of anything but I side with Mother Nature because she begs to differ.
- Two barrier islands here in Charleston, Sullivan’s and Isle of Palms, were actually once a single island just like this one. This is Fire Island in New York following a storm. It split “naturally”. We see inlets breaching all the time but soon these effects will be further inland. Natural change is real… we just need to change too. So it’s all a gamble of when… not if… and I’m not a gambling man. When I bought a house, I bought inland where I’m certain I can complete my 30-year mortgage. I don’t want to lose my house to a tide? A mortgage on the beach is expensive, even after the house is gone.
- Can you imagine driving to work in 1 foot of water every day? What about 3 feet? At that point, trade your car in that boat you’ve wanted because it’ll be easier to get around anyway. And this is just going to be the new normal… and even worse when an April shower comes through.
- Something we all need to do is to TELL THE WORLD that this is REAL, that’s the first step… spread the news there is a slow moving danger, just as serious as any hurricane, coming our way. Coastal flooding is just a sign and selling your house doesn’t sound so crazy after all. If an area is flooding half of the year, maybe we shouldn’t live there just as a PRECAUTION.
- Humanity’s greatest strength has always been its ability to adapt but capability to adapt comes only from awareness so let’s do just that. Let’s use Noah as an example and start preparing people for our changing shoreline.