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Short Wave

What Happens When The Tides Get Higher

Short Wave

NPR

Daily News, Nature, Life Sciences, Astronomy, Science, News

4.76K Ratings

🗓️ 13 April 2021

⏱️ 11 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

(Encore episode.) As sea levels rise from climate change, coastal communities face a greater risk of chronic flooding. Climate scientist Astrid Caldas and her colleagues have looked at where it's happening now and where it could happen in the future as the tides keep getting higher.

Follow host Maddie Sofia on Twitter @maddie_sofia. Email the show at [email protected].

Transcript

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0:00.0

You're listening to shortwave from NPR.

0:05.6

The Florida Keys, Annapolis, Miami Beach, all of these communities have been dealing with

0:11.4

a big problem.

0:13.3

Water that comes in with the tides and doesn't leave.

0:17.0

Saltwater seeping up through storm drains and over the sea won't.

0:20.6

Another high tide is closing some streets and threatening businesses.

0:24.1

A shocking announcement today that some roads and homes may be surrendered to the sea.

0:29.7

And that's because in a lot of places climate change has resulted in higher sea levels.

0:35.1

And with the sea level, higher high tide is going to be higher.

0:40.2

So it's going to reach farther in land and it's going to flood areas that it didn't flood

0:45.2

before because it's riding on a higher sea.

0:49.4

That's climate scientist Astrid call this and she calls this chronic inundation.

0:54.6

You can think of it as the steady, ongoing creep of water into a community, primarily

1:00.3

from high tides as opposed to flooding from storms.

1:04.6

Chronic inundation is inundation of at least 10% of a community usable land.

1:13.4

At least 26 times per year.

1:16.2

Which is more or less the two highest tides of a month.

1:19.8

So it's when 10% of the community is underwater?

1:23.2

At least 10% so it can be 50% can be 70%.

1:28.0

And some communities are already seeing very high numbers of inundation.

1:31.7

And inundating some parts either by an inch or by a foot, it doesn't matter because things

1:36.8

get the deteriorating infrastructure starts to get affected.

...

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