The Sea-Level Rise No One Thinks About: Rising Coastal Water Tables Filling With Seawater In American Southeast

[hatrack]

As climate change pushes seas to rise ever higher, shallow groundwater could become a more costly hazard across the Atlantic coast, particularly in South Florida where the water table sits just feet below the surface, according to a new study from the U.S. Geological Survey. Up to 70% of residents between North Carolina and Florida, and a trillion dollars in property, could be impacted by the end of the century with just over three feet of sea rise. South Florida represents the vast majority of that risk, with about 7 million people and $750 billion in property expected to face increasing risks as groundwaters rise, the study found.

“We often get fixated on overland flooding. It’s more dramatic. It happens during hurricanes,” said Patrick Barnard, a research geologist at USGS and lead author on the study. “But that water table is going to rise through time and it’s going to amplify those overland flooding impacts.”That means that in addition to fixating on elevations in low-lying South Florida, we also need to pay attention to the hidden water table.

EDIT

That last risk proved to be the greatest in South Florida, where impacts from groundwater are already being experienced, from failing septic tanks to more severe inland flooding. Until now, most studies and forecasts have focused on coastal flooding worsened by high tide and hurricane storm surges. That has helped steer resilience work to shorelines, where homes are being elevated, aging coastal pumps are being replaced and seawalls elevated. Yet rising groundwater remains a mostly uncalculated risk even as it compounds flooding from storm surges and heavy rainfall.

EDIT

The study also found that hardening shorelines to protect residents from flooding could have a downside – major beach loss. Historic rates of beach renourishment will likely do little to stop shores from migrating landward. Yet efforts to protect coasts with seawalls or other hard infrastructure will likely lead to an 80% loss of beaches with about three feet of sea rise. “This presents a challenge to coastal managers,” the study said: defend shorelines to protect residents and communities at the expense of beaches or allow shores to move and wrestle with the economic and social consequences of losing coastal communities.

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https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/climate-change/article297502608.html#storylink=cpy

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. Seashore condo owners: leopards are corroding your building's foundation & you don't even know it. . . . .nt

[Attilatheblond]

2. Too few people can, or even want to, connect dots. Thank you for posting this.

[2naSalit]

3. Thinking for oneself...

Is over-rated for these folks. They like being ostriches.

[Attilatheblond]

18. Ostriches get a bad rap. They aren't sticking their heads in the sand like magas do

The big birds are eating and observers misinterpreted. The big birds are smarter than magas

[2naSalit]

19. Good point...

I never really looked into the habits of ostriches, to be honest. I was guessing that they might be doing something like what I have seen many a grouse do, hide behind something that covers their eye yet the rest of their body is fully visible... long as they can't see you, you can't see them.

But I guessed wrong. Huh.

[Attilatheblond]

20. Not many even know what a grouse is, so you're ahead of the game!

I used to hang out a lot a the zoo when I lived in the city, so got time observing animals not from around here. Almost taught an orangutan how to work an old Argus 35mm camera. While we watch them, THEY are watching us.

[GPV]

4. I've been thinking about this for years. Yes,

it's worrisome.

[bronxiteforever]

5. Salt water finds a way. Apologies

to Jeff Goldblum.

A country at war with science and enraptured by conspiracy theories will eventually run into the facts. Some scientists say that our branch of hominids out competed others because we were flexible. What if that innate flexibility can be overcome by propaganda? I think it can and the last century and the present one are proof. Lose the ability to plan and accommodate nature and you will lose your life.

[hatrack]

6. "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over PR, for nature cannot be fooled".

Richard Feynman

[bronxiteforever]

7. Brilliant Feynman quote.

[Old Crank]

10. Sounds lilke a quote from a Pilot I knew

He had done some range extending modifications to a small plane. These added weight.
He said you can sometimes fool the FAA into certifying something. But you can't fool your wings.

The same here. You can't fool nature and physics.

[CaptainTruth]

13. Feynman was brilliant, one of my inspirations.

Loved his van, with his diagrams all over it.

[NoMoreRepugs]

8. Forget 'end of the century' - with Trumpism taking control of America that timetable is 20-30 years max IMO.

[Bluetus]

9. If we are privatizing FEMA, can we go on record now

to say, not a penny of Federal money to Florida to help them continue to maintain beachfront property that is going to be overrun with the climate change they have refused to act on. Let Mother Nature do what she is determined to do. Floridians will have had a century of warning, so I see no reason why anybody else should pay for losses when much of that property becomes unusable.

[Old Crank]

12. That will be great.

Make it so the FEMA charges are based on yearly risk factors and paid into it yearly by teh states based on risk.
Florida, Louisianna, Mississippi, and Texas will need income taxes just to pay the premiums.

[erronis]

15. Come on now. We know that those southern coastal states will expect the blue states to bail them out.

Again.

[Old Crank]

21. and Again and again, and.....

[erronis]

16. Guess we really don't have a choice. Eventually Mother Nature is going to get her way!

[Old Crank]

11. I read about that study where they brought in people from the Nederlands.

The problem south Florida has is that the ground fis porous with cracks and daults every where. Since water seeks its own level when the sea goes up so does the water table because they are connected. As the sea goes up it also intrudes into the fresh water aquifers. Raising a house won't help you if your water supply gets tainted with salt water. Basically south Florida is screwed. It is just a question of when the tipping point there hits.

Miami's water manager is doing what he can based on the political situation. But long haul he will loose. This would be the time to sell if you own there. The state government should be actively doing stuff to help people get out of the way but not with the GOP in charge.

[hatrack]

17. Most of the state sits on a big bed of karst limestone (think Swiss cheese with more fossils) . . .

So, yeah, good luck with those seawalls and everything.

[Attilatheblond]

22. Wonder if the City of San Francisco brought in experts like that

So much of the city is built on manufactured land. Have read that is at serious risk if another really bad quake hits there, but wondering what sea level rising might do to that created real estate.

[hunter]

23. Damming the Golden Gate would fix that.

[Old Crank]

24. The San Francisco area is different.

Even the parts built up with fill have solid bedrock under them. Marina, Foster City. That being said to protect from sea level rise you, at some point will have to put in levies or raise the coastline of the bay. Three feet won't be too bad but you will get salt water intrusion further up the two rivers which feed the area. Decisions on what to save and what to defend will have to be made. And should probably be being made now.
The real problem comes further down the the time line. Some scientists believe that we have baked in somewhere between 100 to 200 ft., or more of sea level rise based on ocean levels when there was this much CO2 in the air before. At 200 feet the vast majorityh of FL is gone. Most of NYC. Pretty much all coastal cities will be compleatly inundated. We have destroyed the world as we knew it. Us living now won't see it happen but our great grandchildren will have to live it.

[Botany]

14. Over 100,000 acres of ghost forests in New Jersey .... The salt water from the Atlantic is killing the coastal ...

…. White Cedar Forests.

'Ghost forests' threaten New Jersey's water, ecosystem
The state has lost over 100,000 acres of Atlantic white cedar.

A disturbing sight is growing in southern New Jersey's woodlands.

Acres of "ghost forests" have been popping up as an increase of saltwater in the soil has been killing what remains of the Atlantic white cedar trees that populate the area. The situation was part of a cycle where past climate change events, such as Superstorm Sandy, and logging created a situation where the soil lost its fresh water, according to experts.

"It's that it's been happening incredibly fast and that we have so little of this precious resource," Todd Wyckoff, the New Jersey State Forester, told ABC News Live.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/ghost-forests-threaten-new-jerseys-water-ecosystem/story?id=105206453