Effective inundation of continental United States communities with 21st century sea level rise

Abstract

Recurrent, tidally driven coastal flooding is one of the most visible signs of sea level rise. Recent studies have shown that such flooding will become more frequent and extensive as sea level continues to rise, potentially altering the landscape and livability of coastal communities decades before sea level rise causes coastal land to be permanently inundated. In this study, we identify US communities that will face effective inundation—defined as having 10% or more of livable land area flooded at least 26 times per year—with three localized sea level rise scenarios based on projections for the 3rd US National Climate Assessment. We present these results in a new, online interactive tool that allows users to explore when and how effective inundation will impact their communities. In addition, we identify communities facing effective inundation within the next 30 years that contain areas of high socioeconomic vulnerability today using a previously published vulnerability index. With the Intermediate-High and Highest sea level rise scenarios, 489 and 668 communities, respectively, would face effective inundation by the year 2100. With these two scenarios, more than half of communities facing effective inundation by 2045 contain areas of current high socioeconomic vulnerability. These results highlight the timeframes that US coastal communities have to respond to disruptive future inundation. The results also underscore the importance of limiting future warming and sea level rise: under the Intermediate-Low scenario, used as a proxy for sea level rise under the Paris Climate Agreement, 199 fewer communities would be effectively inundated by 2100.

Building Community Resilience Using Gain-Loss Framing to Nudge Homeowner Mitigation and Insurance Decision-making

“…For the hurricane sample, a total of 608 respondents (152 respondents in each condition) who currently live in one of the hurricane-prone states identified by the NOAA [45,46] were recruited. For the flood sample, a total of 620 respondents (155 respondents in each condition) who currently live in one of the flood-prone states identified by the NOAA [47,48]. For earthquake sample, a total of 612 respondents (153 in each condition) who currently live in California were recruited.…”

An Evaluation of Local Comprehensive Plans Toward Sustainable Green Infrastructure in US

“…We would expect that the greater appearance of stormwater risks (e.g., areas that encompass a high percentage of impervious surfaces and that contain floodplain, or are located near coastal areas) would lead to higher plan quality score. With the direct threat from sea level rise, coastal areas in the United States are also at risk from chronic, disruptive flooding events which is defined as flooding that occurs 26 times per year or more [60,61]. More crucially, annual hurricane season poses greater potential impact on coastal communities rather than inland communities.…”

Best Practices for Elevation-Based Assessments of Sea-Level Rise and Coastal Flooding Exposure

“…For large-area assessments (regional, continental, global), several choices are available for DEMs for the required topographic information to project potential impacts of increased coastal water levels, whether a simple inundation model is used or a more complex process-based or probabilistic model is employed. Previous research has demonstrated that the quality of data, and associated transformations, used for elevation-based assessments must be well understood and applied to properly model potential impacts (Gesch, 2009;Coveney and Fotheringham, 2011;Cooper et al, , 2015Gesch, 2013;Schmid et al, 2014;Dahl et al, 2017;Jones et al, 2017;West et al, 2018).…”