Side-by-side maps showing flood days due to seal level rise compared to days due to El Niño
(Left) Graphs of number of high-tide flooding days per year (gray line and dots) from 1960 through 2022 from NOAA tide gauges in Norfolk, Virginia (top), and Los Angeles, California, (bottom). The gray dashed line shows the long-term increasing trend (note the accelerating trend in Norfolk). The gray shading at the end of the time series indicates the likely range of values that would be predicted for 2023-24 based solely on extrapolating the long-term trend. The red shading indicates the official 2023-2024 Hide-Tide Flooding Outlook, which provides the ‘likely range’ of high-tide flooding days over the course of the year. The higher number of predicted flood days in the official outlook relative to the extrapolated trend reflects the expected effects of the predicted moderate-to-strong El Niño through the upcoming winter. (Right panel) Locations where El Niño influences annual high-tide flooding frequencies. Black dots represent locations with no statistically significant influence. Note that the El Niño influence varies slightly both spatially and through time, but not much--see previous NOAA High Tide Flood Outlook reports (listed in footnote 3). NOAA Climate.gov image, adapted form original by Billy Sweet.
This is a guest post by Dr. William Sweet and colleagues Dr. Greg Dusek, Dr. John Callahan, Analise Keeney, and Karen Kavanaugh with NOAA’s National Ocean Service who are advancing the science and services to track and predict coastal flood risk in the face of sea level rise.
Image: Road washed out by a flood. Source: U.S. National Park Service, photographer unknown, Public Domain.
In the midst of eye-popping summer precipitation in New England, the Deputy Commissioner at the New Hampshire Insurance Department, D.J. Bettencourt, encouraged New Hampshire residents to go out and buy flood insurance. An entire summer’s worth of rain fell in just a few hours, turning roads into rivers in New … [continued]
Lightning started the Cougar Creek Fire in Washington and it grew to be over 41,000 acres a month after it started. Photo by Bureau of Land Management.
A PNNL scheme to improve small-scale hydrologic infrastructure helps pinpoint local flood risks
New York City has a lot of concrete, and it’s not located in the desert. As a result, it’s got a problem with flooding, and the problem is only growing. One obvious solution to this problem is to get more soil and greenery in the Big Apple. But where? This … [continued]
If enacted, this bill will expand the requirements of Florida’s Sea-Level Impact Projection (SLIP) studies beyond the current coastal construction zone and into all areas threatened by current and projected sea level rise, not just in areas directly on the coast.
South Florida got some crazy, record-breaking rain and flooding last week. With natural disasters, come fuel crises, and in this case, there were massive fuel shortages in the South Florida region. You know who didn’t have any such problems? Electric car drivers. There’s plenty of anti-EV hype about “but what … [continued]
Warming Makes Droughts, Extreme Wet Events More Frequent, Intense Scientists have predicted that droughts and floods will become more frequent and severe as our planet warms and climate changes, but detecting this on regional and continental scales has proven difficult. Now a new NASA-led study (new study published in Nature … [continued]
Cyclone Gabrielle February 14, 2023 Image by Lauren Dauphin, Image courtesy of The Earth Observatory, NASA
Cyclone Gabrielle has been lashing New Zealand with strong winds and heavy rain in mid-February 2023, adding to what has already been an unusually wet start to the year. The latest round of extreme weather brought destructive flooding, storm surge, and landslides to the region. The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer … [continued]
Climate change is about extremes and adapting to those extremes. Brisbane experienced a 10-year drought from 2001 to 2011. During that time, washing your car was illegal and hosing down the driveway was punishable by social death. Neighbors dobbed in neighbors as our lawns turned brown and our flower gardens … [continued]
Another 54 people died in Pakistan in a 24-hour span earlier this week, bringing the official death toll of the extreme rains and flooding to 1,481. The unprecedented monsoon rains submerged one-third of the country — including much of the nation’s main agricultural region — and left 33 million homeless. … [continued]
