New Sea Level Projections Send Shock Waves
The announcements in Key West, Florida last week about rising sea level sent shock waves. At the annual meeting of the four southeast Florida counties, they raised the upper planning scenario for rising sea level, by another five inches over the coming century. As shown on their chart above, that brings the outlook for the year 2120 to 136 inches, just over 11 feet (3.5 meters).
Even looking ahead to the shorter 50-year planning horizon for construction – the year 2070 – the recommendation is 54 inches, 4 1/2 feet (1.4 meters). It will be difficult for many low-lying areas to adapt to that.
The committee (formally, the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact) is still working on the final wording, but did release the graph above. The story was featured in the New York Times sending “ripples” globally.
Eleven years ago, Palm Beach, Broward (Ft. Lauderdale), Miami-Dade, and Monroe (Florida Keys) Counties created this visionary task force to come up with a unified projection for sea level rise that would provide consistent guidance to the adjacent areas, spanning from Key West, up well past Palm Beach, the legendary location for the rich and famous.
Among the rationale for this new increased projection, was accelerating recent warming and ice-movement in Greenland and Antarctica. It is the growing potential for the rates to increase exponentially and abruptly that are causing the increased caution.
At the same conference, Monroe County made a related announcement that underscored the profoundness of the situation. Starting with a small low-lying island, Sugarloaf Key, an evaluation of the costs to keep the single access road above sea level was cost prohibitive. Detailed analysis showed it would cost more than a hundred million dollars in the next two decades to service a few dozen homes, which was financially infeasible.
The County was recognizing the reality of retreat. Reportedly, some affected homeowners accepted it as inevitable given the rising sea, while others were expectedly devastated and angry, even threatening legal action.
Stay tuned…. this is just the beginning.