If your house sits along a coastline, you know you are in harm’s way and that, thanks to climate change, the odds against your home’s survival are growing by the day.
But if your property is inland, don’t think you’re entitled to be smug. As The New York Times’ Brad Plumer reported recently, a study published July 30 found that as oceans rise, powerful coastal storms, crashing waves and extreme high tides will be able to reach farther inland, putting tens of millions more people and trillions of dollars in assets worldwide at risk of periodic flooding.
If the world’s nations keep emitting greenhouse gases, and sea levels rise just 1 to 2 more feet, the amount of coastal land at risk of flooding would increase by roughly one-third, the research said. In 2050, up to 204 million people currently living along the coasts would face flooding risks.
“Even though average sea levels rise relatively slowly, we found that these other flooding risks like high tides, storm surge and breaking waves will become much more frequent and more intense,” said Ebru Kirezci, a doctoral candidate at the University of Melbourne in Australia and lead author of the study. “Those are important to consider.”
USA Today’s Doyle Rice wrote: “Floods that occur once every 100 years could now occur once every 10 years in 2100, the research showed, mainly as a result of sea-level rise.” The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Areas at highest risk, CNBC reported, include southeast China, Australia’s Northern Territory, Bangladesh, West Bengal, Gujurat in India, and the U.K. In our country, the threat is particularly acute for North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland.
This flooding could cause serious economic damage, Plumer wrote. The study found that people currently living in areas at risk from a 3-foot rise in sea levels owned $14 trillion in assets in 2011, an amount equal to 20 percent of global G.D.P. that year.
There are already signs that periodic flooding is wreaking havoc along coastlines. A July analysis from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found that high-tide flooding in cities along the Atlantic and Gulf Coast has increased fivefold since 2000, a shift that is damaging homes, imperiling drinking-water supplies and inundating roads.
Plumer pointed out that the new study’s authors acknowledge that theirs is a highly imperfect estimate of the potential costs of sea-level rise. For one, they don’t factor in the likelihood that communities will take action to protect themselves, such as elevating their homes, building sea walls or retreating inland. Nor did they account for any valuable infrastructure, such as roads or factories, that is at risk. A fuller economic accounting would require further research, Kireczi said.
The research is the latest evidence that forceful national action by our federal government makes economic sense. The likely losses are staggering. Most economists say that a tax on carbon emissions is the fastest, most efficient, and least expensive way to slow climate change. Please join us in urging Congress to take such action.