According to an interagency report, sea level will rise by a foot by 2050 as per NASA
According to NASA, NOAA, the USGS, and other US government agencies, the rise in ocean height over the next 30 years might be comparable to the cumulative rise during the previous 100 years.
According to a new assessment by an interagency sea level rise task force that includes NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and other government agencies, coastal flooding would increase dramatically over the next 30 years due to sea-level rise. The Feb. 15 research, titled Global and Regional Sea Level Rise Scenarios for the United States, estimates that by 2050, sea level along US coastlines will rise 10 to 12 inches (25 to 30 cm) on average over current levels.
The research, which is an update to one published in 2017, forecasts sea level until 2150 and, for the first time, provides near-term projections for the next 30 years. These papers are used by federal, state, and local agencies to inform their preparations for anticipating and dealing with the effects of rising sea levels.
“This report supports previous studies and confirms what we have long known: Sea levels are continuing to rise at an alarming rate, endangering communities around the world. Science is indisputable and urgent action is required to mitigate a climate crisis that is well underway,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “NASA is steadfast in our commitment to protecting our home planet by expanding our monitoring capabilities and continuing to ensure our climate data is not only accessible but understandable.”
The task force based their near-term sea level rise forecasts on a better knowledge of how processes that contribute to rising seas, such as melting glaciers and ice sheets, and complex interactions between ocean, land, and ice, will affect ocean height. “That understanding has significantly advanced since the 2017 study,” said Ben Hamlington, a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and one of the update’s primary authors.
NASA’s Sea Level Change Team, led by Hamlington, has also developed an online mapping tool to visualize the report’s state-of-the-art sea level rise projections on a localized level across the U.S. “The hope is that the online tool will help make the information as widely accessible as possible,” Hamlington said.
Because of rising sea levels, the Interagency Sea Level Rise Task Force predicts an increase in the frequency and intensity of high-tide coastal flooding, sometimes known as nuisance flooding. It also warns that if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, global temperatures will climb, even more, increasing the chances that sea-level rise by the end of the century will exceed forecasts made in the 2022 update.
“It takes a village to make climate predictions. When you combine NASA’s scenarios of global sea-level rise with NOAA’s estimates of extreme water levels and the U.S. Geological Survey’s impact studies, you get a robust national estimate of the projected future that awaits American coastal communities and our economic infrastructure in 20, 30, or 100 years from now,” said Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, who directs the NASA Sea Level Change Team at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
“This is a global wake-up call and gives Americans the information needed to act now to best position ourselves for the future,” said NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad, Ph.D. “As we build a Climate Ready Nation, these updated data can inform coastal communities and others about current and future vulnerabilities in the face of climate change and help them make smart decisions to keep people and property safe over the long run.”
Building on a Research Legacy
The Global and Regional Sea Level Rise report incorporates sea-level projections from the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment, released by the United Nations in August 2021. The IPCC reports, issued every five to seven years, provide global evaluations of Earth’s climate and use analyses based on computer simulations, among other data.
A separate forthcoming report known as the Fifth National Climate Assessment, produced by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, is the latest in a series summarizing the impacts of climate change on the U.S., and it will, in turn, use the results from the Global and Regional Sea Level Rise report in its analysis. The Climate Assessment is slated to publish in 2023.
Researchers at NASA have spent years analyzing how the ocean will be affected by the changing climate on Earth. Their work includes forecasting how much coastal flooding American communities will face in the next ten years, assisting in the visualization of IPCC data on the global sea-level rise using an online visualization tool, and launching satellites that contribute data to a decades-long record of global sea surface height.
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