How severe has coastal flooding become due to climate change? This is what a recent study published in Communications Earth & Environment hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated the frequency of coastal flooding while challenging current methods being used to track such incidents. This study has the potential to help researchers, climate scientists, legislators, and the public better understand the impact of climate change on coastal communities and the steps that can be taken to mitigate them.
For the study, the researchers analyzed tide-gauge data obtained from Beaufort, Carolina Beach, and Sea Level in the State of North Carolina with the goal of challenging existing methods for gauging coastal flooding. Data regarding coastal flooding is typically obtained from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) High Tide Flooding threshold (HTF) and the National Weather Service’s minor flood threshold (NWS). In the end, the researchers found that these traditional indicators are inaccurate regarding their predictions of coastal flooding.
“These numbers were very different from what the HTF and NWS thresholds tell us based on water levels at tide gauges,” said Dr. Katherine Anarde, who is an assistant professor of coastal engineering at North Carolina State University and a co-author on the study. “In general, the thresholds drastically underestimated the number of floods. For example, when you subtract floods associated with extreme storms, we recorded flooding on 122 days in Sea Level. But if you looked at the data from the closest tidal gauge, the NWS threshold inferred that there were 31 days of flooding. And the HTF threshold inferred only nine days of flooding.”
Going forward, the researchers aspire to create and execute mitigation strategies for combating coastal flooding now that they are aware of the increased threat.
Image of a researcher obtaining coastal flooding samples from Carolina Beach, North Carolina. (Credit: Sunny Day Flooding Project)
What new discoveries about coastal flooding will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!