The report below filed by journalist William Joyce and broadcast on NPR’s All Things Considered is a stark warning of the effects of rising sea levels and other effects of global warming. This follows a report from last week that the Arctic is undergoing a heat wave and average temperatures last month were 45 degrees above average for the month of February causing massive melting of the polar ice cap.
Some of the worst flooding during this past weekend’s East Coast storm happened during high tides. Shoreline tides are getting progressively higher. A soon-to-be-published report obtained by NPR predicts a future where flooding will be a weekly event in some coastal parts of the country.
“The numbers are staggering,” says oceanographer William Sweet, at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Today’s storm will be tomorrow’s high tide,” he says, referring to how high coastal water rises. “A storm [such as we experienced] along the East Coast of the United States this weekend, that will be a high tide at some point in the future, whether that’s two or three decades or eight decades, we’ll see, but it’s coming.” Read more.
