Southeast by Southwest – A Rain of Terror

  Yup, this is another blog focusing on the current impact of climate change – desertification vs flooding – in two major sections of the United States: Florida’s southern coastline and the parched southwestern breadbasket of the United States… in fact the entire western portion of the country from Montana on down into California. Setting the stage are these two diametrically different descriptions that form the basis of this discussion:

For the West (From Ian James writing about recent research in the February 15th Los Angeles Times: The extreme dryness that has ravaged the American West for more than two decades now ranks as the driest 22-year period in at least 1,200 years, and scientists have found that this megadrought is being intensified by humanity’s heating of the planet.

In their research, the scientists examined major droughts in southwestern North America back to the year 800 and determined that the region’s desiccation this century has surpassed the severity of a megadrought in the late 1500s, making it the driest 22-year stretch on record. The authors of the study also concluded that dry conditions will probably continue through this year and, judging from the past, may persist for years.

The researchers found the current drought wouldn’t be nearly as severe without global warming. They estimated that 42% of the drought’s severity is attributable to higher temperatures caused by greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere.

For the Florida Coast (from climate change author, Jake Bittle, writing for the February 15th FastCompany.com): A paper published last year in the journal Environmental Research estimated that sea-level rise between 2002 and 2017 increased the average annual commute time in Miami by 15 minutes, by blocking main arteries along the waterfront. In the worst-affected neighborhoods, where residential-neighborhood flooding created widespread delays, the disruptions lengthened commutes by more than four hours. The paper estimates that under the current flood landscape, about 14,000 commuters may be unable to reach their workplaces one or more times each year.

Several times a year, the residents of Miami’s Shorecrest neighborhood look out their windows to find that their streets are flooded. Again. The neighborhood sits on Miami’s Biscayne Bay, where sea levels are rising about an inch every few years, and it fills up with water during high tides. The sewage-laden water comes up through the storm drains, filling the streets, and rising up around the tires of residents’ cars, making it impossible to drive. If a tidal flood happens in the morning, commuters are out of luck—they either stay at home, or risk getting stuck in saltwater on their way downtown.

This phenomenon is known as ‘nuisance flooding,’ and it’s becoming more common in coastal cities as sea levels rise. The catastrophic consequences of climate change have become even clearer over the past few years as a succession of billion-dollar disasters have struck the United States. Yet, the commuting disruptions in cities like Miami show how the climate crisis will alter the patterns of everyday life as well. As driving to work gets harder and harder, the rising seas will devalue properties and imperil even those workers who live on high ground. In the absence of near-term infrastructure improvements like roadway elevation and climate-sensitive traffic planning, the flooding will worsen the gap between white-collar and blue-collar workers.

So let me look at these two phenomena today: Effectively, we are losing shoreline on both coasts. But on one side, some of the most productive American farmland is drying up and blowing away. On the other, we are watching some of the most valuable real estate in the nation slowly become uninhabitable. Florida’s woes are exacerbated by the massive water permeable limestone subsurface that is so overwhelmingly present in southern Florida. See also my December 19th On Educating Ron DeSantis, Governor of the Sinkhole State blog, which deals with the collapse and potential collapse of large buildings and the accumulation of sinkholes over a vast area.

The west had its moment of recent mega-storms and then… as days passed, as weeks passed… back to the new drying faster and faster normal. Driving up and down the western United States over the Christmas/New Year holidays, caught in the middle of that massive storm, I was deeply saddened by the miles and miles of charred remains of once verdant forests, the miles and miles of cropland and orchards lying fallow or with drying fruit and nut trees for lack of water. Food prices will continue to soar as these farms are unable to continue food production at former levels. Supply and demand.

James continues about the west: Wood cores extracted from thousands of trees enabled the scientists to reconstruct the soil moisture centuries ago. They used data from trees at about 1,600 sites across the region, from Montana to California to northern Mexico… The study, which was published Monday [2/14] in the journal Nature Climate Change, adds to a growing body of research that shows the American West faces major challenges as the burning of fossil fuels continues to push temperatures higher, intensifying the drying trend.

[Park Williams, a climate scientist at UCLA and the study’s lead author] was part of a team that published a similar study in 2020. At the time, they found the drought since 2000 was the second-worst after the late-1500s megadrought. With widespread heat and dryness over the last two years, the current drought has passed that extreme mark.

Some scientists describe the trend in the West as “aridification” and say the region must prepare for the drying to continue as temperatures continue to climb… Williams said the West is prone to extreme variability from dry periods to wet periods, like a yo-yo going up and down, but these variations are now “superimposed on a serious drying trend” with climate change… “The dice have been loaded so heavily toward drying,” he said.

For flood prone Florida (and other eastern states), cities are trying to find solutions for the future, but either the costs are insurmountable or the statistics are woefully out of date. Bittle continues on Florida and the east: Urban planners in cities like Miami designed the built environment of the waterfront according to their estimates of normal tidal cycles: If the water rises so high on the average day, the planners built streets and bulkheads a little higher. In many cities, though, these estimates are decades out of date: The sea level around Miami has risen about a foot over the past century, which makes a big difference in a city with many neighborhoods that sit just 3 or 4 feet above sea level…

This routine flooding has direct consequences not only for commuters’ quality of life, but also for their economic stability. Take, for instance, the gambling hub of Atlantic City. It sits on a shoreline barrier island, but many casino workers commute in from the mainland, driving 3 miles on roadways that are subject to frequent flooding when tides are high. As flood events become more severe, a large section of the gambling industry’s labor force will find itself shut out from work dozens of times a year. For workers who earn an hourly wage, or whose bosses aren’t forgiving about lateness, flooding could spell serious financial trouble…

“If we can’t raise roads above the height of adjacent property, we can put in drainage, and try and pump the water off the street faster, but that has limitations too,” says [Katherine Hagemann, resilience program manager for Miami-Dade County]. One option detailed in the county’s sea-level rise strategy is to “live with a little bit more flooding”—in other words, she says, to “make sure everything that’s important, like houses and fire stations, remains dry, and tolerate a little flooding” everywhere else. Employers would need to get more flexible about work attendance on flood days, and the city would need to invest in congestion relief on alternative routes, but a little expectation-setting could go a long way toward reducing the number of people who get stuck on waterlogged roads. This is America now. What will be like in ten years?

I’m Peter Dekom, and here’s the trillion dollar question each of us must face TODAY: how will life change for me given the realities of climate change?