Rising sea levels are at an all-time high thanks to melting glaciers and the thermal expansion of the ocean, according to a new study led by the Australian National University and published this week in the journal PNAS.
Kurt Lambeck, the study's lead author, said sea levels have been rising steadily for the past 100 years and oceans are currently experiencing the largest surge than at any other time over the last
6,000 years, according to The Guardian. He said scientists have collected two decades of ancient sediment samples from Britain, North America, Greenland, and the Seychelles to try to make sense of how the rise in sea levels this time compares to those in the past.
"What we’ve seen is unusual, certainly unprecedented for these interglacial periods," he said. "All the studies show that you can’t just switch off this process. Sea levels will continue to rise for some centuries to come even if we keep carbon emissions at present day levels. What level that will get to, we are less sure about. But it’s clear we can’t just reverse the process overnight."
Rising sea levels are especially concerning for coastal cities like Miami, where the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a study that estimated that by 2030 Miami Beach will experience 45 floods a year, eight times the number it is
experiencing now, according to the Miami New Times.
By 2045, the same study is predicting that Miami Beach will flood 260 times — a 40-fold increase — meaning it will be underwater more than half of the year.
"No one wants to pay increased taxes or fees, but if people want to live here, we have to make these investments to do all the stuff that needs to be done so that we can stay habitable," former county commissioner Katy Sorenson, now a member of the University of Miami's Good Government Initiative, wrote in the report, the New Times noted.
In Boston last month, the local Urban Land Institute proposed an investment in a canal system through its Back Bay neighborhoods that could help the city adjust to an expected 7-foot rise in the sea level by the
end of the century, noted the Boston Globe.