Sea level rise will flood hundreds of coastal cities in the near future, according to a report published Wednesday by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
More than 90 coastal communities, mostly in Louisiana and Maryland, are already battling chronic flooding and that number is expected to rise to 170 in less than 20 years. Nearly 670 coastal communities will face chronic inundation "by the end of the century," the report read, a number that includes "nearly 60 percent of East and Gulf Coast oceanfront communities as well as a small but growing number of West Coast communities."
Those communities include Cambridge, Mass., Oakland, Calif., Miami, and St. Petersburg, Fla., and four of the five boroughs in New York City. Cities in the San Francisco Bay area will flood by 2060, but rising seas will be less serious on the West Coast. The report says there might be enough time to prevent some of the flooding in certain areas, but it might be too late in small towns along Maryland's Eastern Shore, as well as Savannah, Ga., New Orleans, and Miami.
Chronic inundation is when 10 percent or more of usable, non-wetland area floods at least 26 times per year, according to the UCS.
"We are going to have to appreciate that we are at the front end of a climate change adaptation century," Erika Spanger-Siegfried, the report's co-lead author, said. "Our coasts face a certain amount of transformation with sea-level rise and a huge share of our population lives, and GDP is generated, on the coasts.
"And, as tens of communities turn into hundreds of communities, we are going to have to marshal federal resources to enable this change to unfold in a manageable way."
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