A study published in Earth’s Future, states that, by the end of the century, most coastal locations will be at risk of flooding due to rising sea levels caused by climate change.
The higher waters will make, phenomena that today are considered unlikely, much more usual. So destructive storms and tides will be the order of the day.
The research conducted by the experts started by assessing the evolution of the rise in water levels over the coming decades, and read it in terms of the intensity of flooding phenomena that may be generated.
According to the forecasts of the research team, even if greenhouse gas emissions are moderate in 2040, by 2100 all coastal cities will be affected by extreme flooding every year. Events that in the current climate occur about once every 100 years.
But it will not be long before we start to see the first changes, in fact in less than 30 years, extreme floods instead of once every 100 years will start to occur once every 9/15.
As part of this experiment, they used over 300 tide gauges scattered around the world. They then extrapolated the trends and used them to estimate future extreme sea levels in light of two emission scenarios outlined by the IPCC, the one with steadily increasing emissions until 2100 and the median one with peak emissions in less than 20 years.
It is assumed that the patterns we have observed in the past will remain unchanged in the future, although many factors related to climate change are modulating these patterns and the stationarity of coastal flooding can no longer be taken for granted.
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