[ad_1]
During the summer In 2017, the tide rose to historic highs again and again in Honolulu, with records that remained 112 years higher than ever. Philip Thompson, director of the Center for Maritime Studies at the University of Hawaii, wanted to know why. “Where is this from?” he asked. “How often will that happen? Is this our window to the future?”
What Thompson and a team of researchers has found that the future has arrived. The summer of the 17th saw the reality of the water reaching Honolulu and other coastal communities. Studies, published in June Natural Climate Change, found that higher and more frequent tides will reach a turning point in the 2030s, especially on the West Coast and the Hawaiian Islands, “labeled as”disturb floods“plain.
“There are already recurring impacts in several areas of the east coast,” Thompson says. “By the mid-2030s, these other areas will be quickly caught up. Then it goes from being a regional problem on the East Coast to a national problem, where most of the nation’s coasts are regularly affected by high tide floods.”
How regular? The study, which brings together researchers from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shows that flooding on sunny days will accumulate in the fall, creating a nightmare for cities and businesses. Streets will be impassable, cars will be damaged in parking lots and stormwater systems will be tightened. In addition, tidal floods also pollute local waterways, including those that bloom algae that produce oil, gasoline, metal traces, and nitrogen. oxygen depleted dead zones.
Thompson points out that high tide floods are subtle, damaging a community that suffers thousands of cuts, or, in this case, tens of days a year when they get to work or food purchases become problematic or impossible. “If it’s happening 10 or 15 times a month, it becomes a problem,” he added. “A company can’t keep its parking lot running under water. People lose their jobs because they can’t get to work. Those impacts can accumulate quickly.”
The research adds to the growing research into the variables that cause higher tides. As sea level rises, high tide floods vary from place to place. Factors that exacerbate flooding on sunny days include local landslides, the effects of the El Niño, a slowdown in the Gulf Stream on the Atlantic coast, water temperatures, and ocean turbulence.
Although the moon’s “rocking” has played a role in the floods, it’s not new, and the label is misleading. It’s the moon not rocking; Its angle to the Earth’s equator changes as it orbits, first reported in 1728. The cycle requires 18.6 years. Half of that time it suppresses the tides and increases them in the other half. The impact is particularly great in places where there is only one or predominant high tide in a single day, as in a large part of the West Coast.
While the angle of the moon is rising at high tide, rising sea levels have not been significant enough in some places to exceed flood thresholds. That will change in the next cycle of 2030, the study concluded. Higher sea levels, along with another lunar cycle, will provide a nationwide jump in high tide floods, starting with what Thompson and researchers call the “turning year”.
These years will change from place to place due to local variables. This means that La Jolla is likely to experience 15 days of high tide flooding in 2023, 16 days in 2033 and 65 days in 2043. In Honolulu, two days of flooding in 2033 and 2043 in 2043 will be projected. In St. Petersburg, Florida, the jump is from seven days in 2023 to 20 days in 2033 and then in 2043 to 2043.
[ad_2]
Source link
