Sub-Waterfront

CLICK TO ENLARGE MAP

Vancouver at High Tide

This map of Vancouver is from Robert A. Rohde's Global Warming Art and it shows regions that are most vulnerable to sea level rise. Leaky condos result from bad construction; flooding basements from bad site selection. 


Snippets from Global Warming Art:

---

• During the twentieth century, sea level rose 20 cm.
• Many model predictions still foresee a sea level rise of less than 1 additional meter by 2100.
• The likely scenarios for twenty-first century sea level rise due to unrestrained global warming remain less than 2 m.
• Regardless of the time scale involved, an analogy to the previous interglacial suggests that a few degrees Celsius of sustained warming can cause enough melting to raise sea level 4-6 m before the ice sheets reach equilibrium. This level of warming is likely to be achieved or even exceeded by 2100 in the absence of intervention to combat climate change, though as above, it would take far longer to realize the full sea level change.
• Since coastal regions tend to flat and the ocean's surface provides a calibration target for the radar system, one can usually expect that near shore elevations will be somewhat more accurate than the average.
• These maps don't include any information regarding tides, storm surges, or other coastal effects, they provide only a partial picture of how vulnerable a given terrain may be to sea level rise.
• One should view these maps as rough estimations of how sea level rise may affect coastal areas and not rely on them too heavily.
• The ultimate amount of flooding is highly uncertain.

Check out your own locale at Global Warming Art. See also the Google Sea Level Rise map produced by Alex Tingle that features a sea level rise input field.

My previous post on storm surges and tidal flat risk was "Attention Snow Birds".