Sea Level Science and Applications Support Coastal Resilience

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https://eos.org/features/sea-level-science-and-applications-support-coastal-resilience

By Nadya Vinogradova and  Benjamin Hamlington, Eos/AGU. 

Excerpt: Planetary warming is increasing the height, and thus the volume, of Earth’s ocean. Today, the ocean gains about 300 trillion gallons (almost 1,150 trillion liters) of liquid water every year. ...Spreading this volume over the ocean’s surface translates into about 3.4 millimeters of global mean sea level rise per year, a more familiar metric of climate change. As the rising ocean gradually encroaches on land, it increases the severity and frequency of flooding, threatening populated coastal communities, damaging property and infrastructure, posing risks to national security, and endangering coastal ecosystems and biodiversity. The ocean’s expansion will continue for millennia: ...we are already committed to a global sea level increase of 2–6 meters over the next 2 millennia [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2021]. ...even the single meter of sea level rise projected for major coastal cities by the end of this century would be life changing ...catastrophic for energy storage and distribution facilities located on coasts or at major inland ports...and would become unsustainable with frequent flooding and eventual inundation. ...In the early 1990s, NASA, together with national and international partners, pioneered the collection of direct, accurate measurements of ocean height from space, starting with the TOPEX/Poseidon ocean altimeter satellite. ...N-SLCT members combined data on tides and internal sea level variability with sea level projections to identify a potential rapid increase in high-tide flooding for much of the U.S. coastline by the mid-2030s.... ...an accompanying interactive tool, which lets users explore potential changes in future flooding at more than 90 coastal sites around the country, are provided via the NASA sea level portal.…

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