Tag: flooding

Virginia Beach Restricts Real Estate Development in Bold Sea Level Rise Plan

The city council in Virginia Beach, Virginia, voted this week in favor of a bold new plan to combat sea level rise and intense storm flooding. The city, which is in an area that already experiences climate change-driven flooding, requires developers to take more stringent steps to plan for flooding from sea level rise and strong storms.

Under the new plan, the city is calling on developers to design projects that handle 20 percent more rainfall than the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts for the region. As the earth’s atmosphere continues to warm, climate experts predict more storms with downpours capable of flooding. The city is also requiring developers to replace the methods they’re now using to predict where stormwater runoff will go with more accurate Environmental Protection Agency software.

The city’s plan also includes provisions that require new construction projects to accommodate flooding due to sea level rise predicted between now and 2085. Hospitals and other critical infrastructure will have to be built to handle 3 feet of sea level rise. Non-critical structures will have to cope with 1.5 feet of higher seas.

Acting City Manager Tom Leahy told The Virginia-Pilot that replacing old regulations with the new plan now will save the city money tomorrow. “The more we develop under the old standards, the more we’re going to have to fix down the road,” he said.

Virginia Beach’s investment in these regulations and other steps to combat flooding from sea level rise, storm surges and rainstorms is expected to save millions of dollars each year. The city says some federal funding will be needed to cover the cost of the new projects.

Virginia Beach’s pro-active approach to climate change related flooding is commendable. Many major coastal cities are allowing expensive development with little thought to the impending threat and the cost to future generations.

This brings up an important point for real estate buyers: Just because a coastal community allows development doesn’t meant it is immune to flooding. Always perform due diligence to find out if a property of interest experiences flooding or is likely to experience flooding during the period you intend to own it. Also consider the fact that flooding can result in higher carrying costs for maintenance, taxes and insurance and it may cause the property value to decline.

Can We Rely on Mangroves to Provide a Line of Defense against Sea Level Rise Flooding?

One of the greatest challenges involved in combatting sea level rise flooding is finding solutions that will stand the test of time. Some coastal communities have been seeking natural solutions, such as sand dunes, wetlands and native vegetation, to hold back ever-higher tides and storm surges. Planners recognize the ability of natural ecosystems to self-regulate and adjust to sea water as it exerts pressure to march inland.

In the U.S., some southern Atlantic and Gulf Coast communities have been including mangroves in their action plans. They’re counting on the thick, leafy forests that thrive in shallow coastal waters to not only absorb and store some of the carbon released into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels that’s driving global warming but to act as a buffer against storm surges and higher tides. They also hope to benefit from the mangroves ability to capture sediments and build land when the seas are trying to erode it away.

The idea sounded great until a recent study led by Macquarie University in Australia found that unless humans reduce the release of greenhouse gases, the seas will soon rise at a faster pace than the mangroves can accommodate. With sea level rise accelerating, due to ocean expansion and the ever-quickening pace of ice melt in Greenland and Antarctica, the mangroves could start to disappear within the next thirty years.

Unfortunately, real estate alone won’t pay the price when mangroves are gone. Mangroves provide a valuable nursery for birds, fish and other organisms. Their loss will endanger whole ecosystems.

More Powerful Storm Surges and Sea Level Rise Flooding Force Charleston, SC, to Ponder Its Future

Charleston, South Carolina, a densely developed peninsula surrounded by creeks and rivers that pour into the ocean, has reached the point where sea level rise flooding and the threat of ever more powerful storm surges threatens its very existence. The title of a recent article in The Post and Courier sums up the situation quite succinctly: “Charleston faces an existential choice: Wall off the rising ocean or retreat to higher ground.”

As the city celebrates its 350th year, the Army Corps of Engineers released a proposed plan to see it through 50 more. The Corps is calling for the construction of an 8-mile protective wall around the core peninsula along with pumps to help keep the city dry. Additional infrastructure improvements, such as raising flood-prone roads and clearing spaces to store water after heavy rains, may also be needed. The project would cost an estimated $1.75 billion with locals responsible for $600 million of the tab.

As with many other cities considering massive projects to protect valuable coastal real estate from inundation, funding for the proposed project is a major sticking point that has only been made worse by the budget-busting coronavirus pandemic.

Some residents see Charleston’s historic value and ability to draw 7 million tourists a year as reason alone to mount an aggressive effort to save it. They’re concerned that if they don’t get started soon, flooding will diminish the city’s value.

On the other hand, The Post and Courier article by Chloe Johnson hints that some residents exhausted from past floods are considering moving out. And at least one academic worries that the wall will give people a false sense of security that might result in increased investment in the peninsula. Andy Keeler, a climate expert at Eastern Carolina University, told the paper that this can result in a more painful economic collapse when sea level rise and storm surges eventually defeat the man-made defenses.

The Army Corps of Engineers estimates that without the wall and other improvements, Charleston will lose half of its historic structures to flooding by 2075. Real estate buyers and owners in Charleston and other coastal cities and towns confronting similar challenges need to consider the costs and benefits of proposals to rein in the water — and the potential that projects will never be built — when deciding how to react to the growing threat of sea level rise flooding and more powerful storm surges.

Challenges Facing Southeast Florida — Ground Zero for Sea Level Rise Flooding — Described in Exhaustive BBC Report

With its low elevation and proximity to lots of water on all sides and underfoot, Southeast Florida is clearly ground zero for sea level rise flooding. The BBC recently published an exhaustive report on the current status of sea level rise in the region — that includes the Florida Keys all the way north through Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach — and the challenges of controlling the inundation. The report makes fascinating required reading for anyone investing in residential and commercial real estate in coastal areas that are threatened by surging tides.

The BBC report, written by Amanda Ruggeri, is full of fascinating facts about sea level rise. Among them:

  1. Current predictions are that sea level could rise by up to 10 inches in the region by 2030 and 5 feet by 2100.
  2. Each additional inch of sea level rise can have a substantial affect on coastal real estate.
  3. The region has more people at risk from sea level rise than any other state, and Miami, specifically, has more financial assets at risk than any other major coastal city in the world.
  4. Cities in the region are already making changes to infrastructure to address sea level rise flooding, including raising roads and seawalls and installing hundreds of tidal valves and pump stations.
  5. Despite the efforts to hold back the sea, experts recognize that they will not be able to save every property and neighborhood from flooding.
  6. Every community faces different challenges. Governments, homeowners, business owners, taxpayers, insurers, developers, engineers and planners are going to have to work together to decide how to address sea level rise in their communities.
  7. Each community is an intricate puzzle where making a change to one piece of infrastructure, such as raising a segment of seawall or roadway, can lead to the unintended flooding of neighboring properties.
  8. Reaching consensus can lead to clashes over proposed solutions, costs, potential impacts and private property rights.
  9. Among the encouraging signs is that in the absence of federal and state leadership, county and local governments are forming regional partnerships to address sea level rise in a coordinated fashion.
  10. Among the discouraging signs is that finding funding sources for the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of projects needed to hold back the rising tides is difficult.

While the BBC report provides a broad, holistic view of how Southeast Florida is tackling sea level rise flooding, real estate buyers, owners and agents still need to invest time and effort evaluating how rising tides are impacting their properties and communities before making decisions. Sea level rise is already resulting in increased property maintenance costs, taxes, insurance and association fees in some areas. It’s also hurting the rate of property value appreciation and forcing extreme measures, such as road abandonment and property buy-outs.

As the polar ice caps continue to melt and the oceans expand due to global warming, these sea level rise is going to challenge more and more coastal residents.

Antarctica and Greenland Ice Melt Raised Sea Levels a Half Inch In the Last 16 Years — NASA Report

NASA scientists crunched data from satellite missions to determine that ice melt in Antarctica and Greenland over the last 16 years raised sea levels about half an inch. Put another way, the researchers said both locations contributed 5,000 gigatons of water to the oceans which is enough to fill Lake Michigan.

Ice melt and ocean expansion due to global warming are the primary contributors to sea level rise. Experts are concerned that the rate of melting is picking up pace. Helen Fricker, a glaciologist at the University of California-San Diego, told National Public Radio, “How much ice we are going to lose, and how quickly we are going to lose it, is a really key thing that needs to be understood, so that we can plan.”

There are two main forces driving the melting in Antarctica and Greenland. In Antarctica, warming oceans are melting floating ice shelves, which is allowing land based ice to flow into the ocean. In Greenland, warmer atmospheric temperatures are melting ice and creating run-off. At the same time, the warmer air is also causing glacial ice to calve off and fall into the ocean.

If all the ice melted in Greenland alone, scientists estimate global sea levels would rise 23 feet. Fricker told NPR, “There’s a lot of infrastructure and airports and people that live right on the ocean, and these people are going to feel the effects of sea level rise that’s resulted because the ice sheets have melted.”

Fifty-year Floods to Become Daily Events if Climate Change and Sea Level Rise Aren’t Curbed

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Hawaii released a study this week that concluded once-in-a-lifetime floods will become daily events in most U.S. coastal areas by the end of this century if climate change and sea level rise aren’t brought under control.

The study, published in Scientific Reports, said low-lying cities such as Miami, New Orleans and Honolulu will be especially vulnerable to the increasingly higher tides and storm surge generated by ever-stronger tropical storms. In addition, the researchers said beach and cliff erosion will make coastal areas more vulnerable to higher tides than they already are.

Sean Vitousek, a US Geological Survey scientist, told The Guardian, “If future sea-level rise causes once extreme but rare floods to occur frequently then … this may render some part of the US coastline uninhabitable.”

Greenland’s Ice Sheet Melts at Record Rate in 2019, Scientists Worry the Weather System that Caused it will Double the Rate of Sea Level Rise

Scientists published a study today that concluded that Greenland’s ice sheet melted at a record rate last summer due not just to the heat generated by general global warming but because of a high pressure area that brought lots of sunshine and warmer days to the region.

The researchers analyzed weather data and found that Greenland experienced 63 summer days ruled by the high pressure system, which is double the normal 28 days of high pressure logged between 1981 and 2010. This fueled the loss of 600 billion tons of water, which is estimated to contribute up to .06 inches of sea level rise globally.

The scientists worry that past predictions for the rate of ice sheet loss in Greenland did not take into consideration the impact high pressure areas could have on the rate of melting. If it speeds up, coastal areas with millions of inhabitants and trillions of dollars worth of real estate could be inundated a lot sooner than expected. Marco Tedesco, a researcher at Columbia University who led the study, told Reuters: “We’re destroying ice in decades that was built over thousands of years. What we do here has huge implications for everywhere else in the world.”

Greenland and Antarctica are home to the world’s largest ice sheets. If all the ice in Greenland melted, sea levels would rise by up to 23 feet.

Researchers say the study on high pressure and accelerated ice melt is further evidence that humans need to reduce the burning of fossil fuels to save coastal communities.

Sea Level Rise Scientists Plan to Retreat from Vulnerable Research Facility in New Jersey

Sea level rise flooding isn’t just a problem for coastal governments or real estate owners, it’s also a challenge for research scientists.

According to a NJSPOTLIGHT report, researchers at the Rutgers University Marine Field Station, located in the middle of a marsh near Tuckerton, New Jersey, are seeking a federal grant to enable them to work inland. The researchers are eager to move because sea level rise-driven flooding frequently inundates the only access road and puts the facility itself at risk.

Lisa Auermuller, who works at the field station, told NJSPOTLIGHT reporter Jon Hurdle that retreat is the right thing to do considering that their mission is to study the impact of rising seas on coastal communities. “How long can you keep telling people that they need to pay attention to this when we’re not paying attention to it ourselves?” she asked. “We need to be leading by example.”

NASA: Greenland and Antarctica Ice Melt Speeding Up Sea Level Rise

NASA reported this week that Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets are melting six times faster than they did in the 1990s, a development that could have a severe impact on coastal real estate.

NASA scientists published their statement on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory website in response to a study by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that showed Greenland and Antarctica combined lost 6.4 trillion tons of ice in three decades. “Unabated, this rate of melting could cause flooding that affects hundreds of millions of people by 2100,” according to NASA.

Researchers used observations from 11 satellite’s that monitor Greenland and Antarctica ice loss to arrive at their disturbing conclusion. They calculate that the meltwater has raised global sea level by .7 inches. This doesn’t sound like much, but it can have a significant effect on coastal populations. “Every centimeter of sea level rise leads to coastal flooding and coastal erosion, disrupting people’s lives around the planet,” said Prof. Andrew Shepherd, a scientist at the University of Leeds.

Ice melt isn’t the only factor fueling sea level rise. Ocean heating and expansion and the melting of smaller land-based glaciers also contribute to higher seas.

Coronavirus Failures Reveal the Same Shortcomings Found in Federal Climate Change and Sea Level Rise Responses

Some leaders, almost exclusively conservatives, in the federal government call it a hoax or fake news. They refuse to acknowledge its existence and eliminate personnel and programs that could provide an effective response. When they should be mounting an effective response, they avert their eyes. Meanwhile, the problem grows worse each and every day.

This narrative is as true for the coronavirus, a threat that’s growing exponentially, as it is for climate change and sea level rise that, too, are growing worse each and every day. Both pose a real and present danger to public health and the economy. And both can only be brought under control by leaders who listen to scientists and implement plans based on their counsel.

The unfortunate thing in both cases, is that while the denialists and their supporters don’t take the problems seriously — and often obstruct and undermine those who do — for their selfish political and financial gains, the virus and the ever-warming planet continue to pose threats to life and property.

There is no mistaking that the failures that set back an effective, fact-based response to coronavirus, with costs that are playing out before our own eyes, are the same ones that are going to eventually catch up to us in climate change and sea level rise.

In the case of climate change and sea level rise, scientists are sounding a blaring warning alarm as is the planet. On a global basis, humanity is continually setting records for the burning of the fossil fuels that cause global warming, which in turns melts land-based ice and snow and causes the oceans to expand. The planet is responding by continuously breaking temperature records on land and sea and by increasing the frequency and intensity of weather disasters, such as droughts, floods and hurricanes. Many communities are also already being forced to make hard decisions as sea levels rise floods valuable real estate.

The lack of responsible and effective federal leadership that respects scientific facts is forcing state and local governments to draft and implement their own solutions. Just as in the case of coronavirus, the lack of federal leadership and the reliance on a patchwork response, puts everyone at-risk.

The lesson to be learned from coronavirus is that the world cannot afford national leaders who deny basic science. They put our lives, our livelihoods, our financial futures, and, ultimately, the only planet we’ll ever know at risk of total destruction. In the real estate world, we’re already seeing climate change and sea level rise flooding putting enormous stress on the flood insurance system, which could cause it to fail — an eventuality that would lock up the mortgage market and cause real estate values to plummet.

Unless we shove aside the climate change and sea level rise denialists and mount an aggressive national response to the roots of the problems now, the markets will most certainly start to collapse. The damage is sure to be much worse and longer-lasting than the damage now being inflicted by coronavirus.