G
lobal sea level has been rising over the past century, and the rate has increased in recent decades. In 2014, global sea level was 2.6 inchesabove the 1993 average—the highest annual average in the satellite record (1993-present). Sea level continues to rise at a rate of about one-eighth of an inch per year.
Higher sea levels mean that deadly and destructive
storm surges push farther inland than they once did, which also means more frequent
nuisance flooding. Disruptive and expensive, nuisance flooding is estimated to be from 300 percent to 900 percent more frequent within U.S. coastal communities than it was just 50 years ago.
The two major causes of global sea level rise are thermal expansion caused by warming of the ocean (since water expands as it warms) and increased melting of land-based ice, such as glaciers and ice sheets. The oceans are absorbing more than 90 percent of the increased atmospheric heat associated with emissions from human activity.
Is sea level rising?
The streets of Annapolis, Md., now flood about 40 times a year at high tide. Even the owners of property that is significantly inland may need flood insurance as the sea's level continues to rise.
Sea levels are rising and climate scientists blame global warming. They predict that higher seas will cause more coastal flooding through this century and beyond, even in places that have normally been high and dry.
But mapping where future floods will strike has barely begun.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency maps where people are at moderate or high risk of flooding. Most people with property in hazardous areas — where the annual risk of a flood is one in a hundred or more — are required by law to buy federal flood insurance from FEMA's National Flood Insurance Program.
But FEMA's insurance maps are based on
past patterns of flooding. Future sea level rise — which is expected to create new, bigger flood zones — is not factored in.
So some communities are doing the mapping themselves. Like Annapolis, the state capital of Maryland.
Mapping Coastal Flood Risk Lags Behind Sea Level Rise
States and local communities are hiring people to do their own risk mapping. The treasonous fat senile old orange clown has effectively shut down the Federal Government as an organization that protects the American Citizen.