Where America's climate migrants will go as sea level rises

You can’t just eyeball these graphs and assume the trend is linear: https://tamino.wordpress.com/2019/10/09/sea-level-accelerati...

See also https://tamino.wordpress.com/2019/10/14/sea-level-accelerati...

I was looking for the same, it appears to come from (or be reflected) at least here:

https://cpo.noaa.gov/sites/cpo/Reports/2012/NOAA_SLR_r3.pdf

Where a SLR of 2m by 2100 is reported as an extreme scenario, presumably (but I can't find it in the text) with very low confidence. They give the following definition of the reasons for the low confidence rating, though: "Inconclusive evidence (limited sources, extrapolations, inconsistent findings, poor documentation and/or methods not tested, etc.), disagreement or lack of opinions among experts".

As a general observation, it's not that useful to look at single gauges. As glaciers melt, the land nearby rises because of the lower weight on it, which shows up as the sea level going down. This is besides all other kinds of geological activity that might be going on in a particular location.

[edit] Anyway to be more specific, there's a single Antarctic glacier with enough water to cause 0.5 meters of sea level rise, and a recent measurement shows it will melt in "decades, possibly more than a century." https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51097309

There's a major research initiative taking place right now into Thwaites Glacier, as unexpectedly fast melting is occurring. It's thought this is due to warm saltwater penetration underneath the glacier but other factors are being considered.

The issue with Thwaites Glacier is it has a tapered edge that generally resists thawing, but that widens out to a huge contact surface area once erosion by salt water progresses.

This glacier alone will cause a global sea level rise of three feet.

https://thwaitesglacier.org/

Most of your comment is flat-out false. That page shows current instantaneous sea level change; it doesn't show future predictions (except in, say, the paper linked at the bottom about predicted sea level change). Sea level rise is increasing each year and is projected to continue increasing faster each year, the rate dependent on how much CO2 we keep putting into the environment.

2m in sea level rise is roughly the current "intermediate" scenario, which would happen if the world made immediate and large reductions in CO2 emissions. That is, we're on track to be worse than that now.

Since I've seen this exact error on HN before (don't recall if it was you who made it or not): do you understand that giving the 2018 sea level rate change as "1.34 feet per 100 years" is NOT a prediction that the sea level will change 1.34 feet over the next hundred years?

Well, considering that global CO2 emission has been steadily increasing [1], and sea level rise tends to follow CO2 level, it's very unlikely that it will continue to increase linearly...

[1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...

Sure, the trend is “clearly” linear until it’s not. Hell a hockey stick chart is mostly two linear trends stuck together. A sigmoid is too.

NOAA says "most probably x", you turn that into "no more than x". That's not a fair and honest represntation of that the NOAA says.

>skewed somewhat by the fracking boom in America's oil shale country.

Isn't it extremely ironic, given the topic hand?

I would pretty much guarantee that wealthy areas like San Mateo will make the tax payer pay for dikes and stuff. Poor areas along the coast will be in trouble though.

What's interesting is that many of the tech offices are actually adjacent to the bay (eg. Facebook's Menlo Park campus, Google's Mountain View and Sunnyvale campuses, Microsoft and Amazon buildings, NetApp, etc.) and in floodable areas [0].

It's not clear whether those companies would invest in dikes or just move somewhere else, but I'd assume the former.

[0] https://msc.fema.gov/portal/search and search for "1 Hacker Way, Menlo Park, CA", "1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA" or "1170 Bordeaux drive, Sunnyvale, CA"

Optimistic of you to expect the Bay Area to build more housing anywhere.

Look at the people displaced by fires in the North Bay who now can't afford to live anywhere nearby.

The West Washington State coast is EXTREMELY rocky and hilly. Pike's Market is on the 5th? floor, alongside the main seattle incline. There's no reason that 6 ft change would displace any significant number of people in that area. It will possibly damage the puget sound port, which has been migrating slowly, for years. Ultimately a rise in sea level would combat the silt buildup that has been a recent issue for the Puget Sound.

Their map doesn't make any sense to me. They show no expected migration to really any of the cities in the midwest but somehow they expect a mass migration of people from Miami to rural western Kentucky?

> Counties in shades of pink and red will see higher-than-average migration

It may be that the extra migration doesn't impact that average comparted to less populous counties.

On the map shades of red indicate above average immigration. White is unspecified so some meaning of avaerage; not none, but average.

That said I have basically the same question. Why are cities not getting above average immigration? You noticed Chicago, I noticed Buffalo and Rochester, which are the #2 and #3 largest cities in NY.

According to the map, Midwestern cities are immune. Only random rural areas will experience an influx of people. In Ohio for example Columbus, Cincinnati, Cleveland all are white while middle of nowhere is red

Hilarious and wrong headed. Chicago is the largest city stateside (Toronto on the Canadian side) next to a Great Lake with the infrastructure and hinterland to support a large population. Fresh water supply is going to be critical in a climate crisis.

Yes. That map shows entire counties in blue if any point in the county would be flooded.

For almost all of coastal California, you don't have to go very far inland until you're way above sea level. LA looks flat, but go three blocks inland from the beach in Venice and you're up a few meters. The California coast is the shelf of a mountain range.

Florida, though, does have real problems. Most of the state is barely above sea level. And Miami is on permeable rock; sea walls won't help.

Here in NZ, we already see issues where storms and 'king tides' cause significantly worse outcomes when they coincide. As those king tides rise and penetrate further inland, these increased weather events are going to be much worse at the coast.

Also, Miami and Venice are on borrowed time.

> Less than 60 years later, in 1959, man landed on the moon.

That was 1969, or less than 70 years.

I'm in full agreement, but that idea isn't popular here, where I find folks a bit fatalistic. I understand why of course, assuming 'someone will solve it' takes the urgency out of the problem. We do need to take action, absolutely. But am I worried about sea level rise here in Florida? Not at all. There's just too much money at stake to throw our hands up and run. And I don't mean just here, or even the US... most of the world's wealth is on the coast.

Rivers and floodplains wouldn't be effected by the rising sea level. River systems get their water from precipitation not the sea. The only effect a sea level rise would have on a river system is the delta of the river would move further inland with the coast line.

However, one could argue there would be an increase in precipitation as less water is trapped in ice but that doesn't seem to be what many people are predicting. I say all this with the caveat that I am not very well read up on the science of all of this, I'm just going by what I have read in articles and what not.

No. Why should it? If the sea level rises two feet, how does it affect rivers that are, say, 100 feet above sea level? Or 500 feet? What's the cause and effect here?

The sea level rise is due to more water in the ocean. That doesn't translate into more water in a river, because water doesn't flow uphill.

A chunk of it is thermal expansion and the fact that CO2 is being absorbed in

I've heard most of the rising sea levels will come from thermal expansion of water, not melting ice.

Liquid water is notorious for having almost no thermal expansion, but the little bit it does have will be multiplied by the volume of the ocean, then divided by the surface area of the ocean, yielding the rough vertical rise.

Much of the Antarctic landmass is below sea level, if the Antarctic ice shield melted the continent would look like an archipelago. There is much water tied up in the Antarctic ice shield(well, it took 40 myr to accumulate, you get this much even in a cold desert), on average it's 2 km thick. The IPCC estimates that if it melts fully it would result in 50 m of sea level rise.

No because you'll get black mold growing that will spread throughout the structure.

Maybe in otherwise dry areas, but I doubt it.

Buyers and Lenders are in fact, colossal fools. People build in floodplains all the time.

Real estate prices are priced by mostly by current demand, not future oncoming disasters.

Much waterfront property is _already_ vulnerable (and expensive to insure) today, regardless of whether you believe in consensus climate science, due to storms and flooding in current climatic conditions. That house by the ocean is going to destroyed at some point, the only question is when and how.

Next you will tell me it's impossible for a major earthquake to strike San Francisco (or Tokyo), because then nobody would want to live there.

Most people don't buy real estate considering an 80-year time horizon. Even 40 years is often a bit of a stretch. I would guess that a lot of people only look 15-20 years into the future. Perhaps not a majority, but enough to keep waterfront property attractive and expensive.

That place of Obama's will probably be fine for his and his wife's remaining life, and the life of his children, and at least a good part of the lives of any grandchildren. He'll get his money's worth out of it.

I think it's because insurance policies are still supporting real estate in areas at risk.