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发帖数: 901 | 1 WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly 4 million people across the United States, from
Los Angeles to much of the East Coast, live in homes more prone to flooding
from rising seas fueled by global warming, according to a new method of
looking at flood risk published in two scientific papers.
The cities that have the most people living within three feet (one meter) of
high tide — the projected sea level rise by the year 2100 made by many
scientists and computer models — are in Florida, Louisiana, and New York.
New York City, often not thought of as a city prone to flooding, has 141,000
people at risk, which is second only to New Orleans' 284,000. The two big
Southeast Florida counties, Miami-Dade and Broward, have 312,000 people at
risk combined.
All told, 3.7 million people live in homes within three feet of high tide.
More than 500 US cities have at least 10 percent of the population at
increased risk, the studies said.
"Southeast Florida is definitely the highest density of population that's
really on low coastal land that's really most at risk," said lead author Ben
Strauss, a scientist at Climate Central. Climate Central is a New Jersey-
based group of scientists and journalists who do research about climate
change.
The studies look at people who live in homes within three feet of high tide,
whereas old studies looked just at elevation above sea level, according to
work published Thursday in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Research
and an accompanying report by Climate Central. That's an important
distinction because using high tide is more accurate for flooding impacts,
said study co-author Jonathan Overpeck, a scientist at the University of
Arizona's Institute of the Environment. And when the new way of looking at
risk is factored in, the outlook looks worse, Overpeck said.
"It's shocking to see how large the impacts could be, particularly in
southern Florida and Louisiana, but much of the coastal U.S. will share in
the serious pain," Overpeck said.
And it's not just residents of coastal areas who will be hurt by this, said
Sharlene Leurig, a senior manager for the insurance program at Ceres, a
Boston-based investment network. Most coastal areas get flood insurance from
the federal program and with more flooding, the program will have to spend
more and that will come out of all taxpayers' wallets, she said.
Sea level has already risen about 8 inches since 1880 because warmer waters
expand, Strauss said. In addition to the basic physics of ever-warming water
expanding, scientist say hotter climate will cause some melting of glaciers
in Greenland and western Antarctica that would then cause seas to rise even
more.
Flooding from Hurricane Irene last year illustrated how vulnerable coastal
places such as Manhattan are with a combination of storms and sea level rise
, Strauss said.
Using data from the latest census, Climate Central also has developed an
interactive system that allows people to check their risk by entering a ZIP
code.
Sea level rise experts at the U.S. Geological Survey and the National
Oceanic Atmospheric Administration who weren't part of the studies said the |
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