Dutch sea level rise expert: Miami will be "the new Atlantis," a city in the sea

Jessica Weiss in Miami New Times: A few months after Hurricane Sandy bared down on New York, killing over 150 people and wreaking $65 billion in damage, federal leaders cried for help to make the Northeast more flood-proof. Dutch expert Henk Ovink answered. Ovink had helped make his homeland, where 55 percent of the country is extremely flood-prone, a world pioneer in preparing for sea level rise. ... So there's good cause to be worried when the Dutch expert says there’s no place in worse shape today than Miami. He’s begun calling the city “the new Atlantis,” after the legendary and beautiful island subcontinent that was submerged by the sea in one night.

“If we look around the world and take into account sea level rise and the increase of water related disasters, among the places in the world that have the most assets and investments at risk, Miami is leading that list,” Ovink tells New Times. “Miami will no longer be a land city, but a city in the sea.”

In recent years, scientists have repeatedly warned that South Florida’s coastal communities and barrier islands could be completely underwater in 100 years. Earlier this year, National Geographic published research on the projected cost of an extreme weather event in 2050. With so many buildings, roads and other infrastructure so close to sea level, Miami was number one on the list, with a projected loss of $278 billion dollars, followed by Guangzhou, China ($268 billion), and New York-Newark ($209 billion).

A first step is for leaders to recognize and talk about climate change.  “It’s scary that the state of Florida briefed staff not to talk about climate change,” Ovink says. “When you think about future risks and how to deal with them, that is not right approach. You have to address those issues and come up with a strategy. It's an opportunity.”

The problem, Ovink says, is that dozens of individual cities, like Miami Beach, are pursuing their own balkanized strategies rather than making a unified effort to find creative solutions. Government, businesses, NGOs and residents should plan together, Ovink says, and do more than just stop-gap efforts. In the very short term, ideas might include raising buildings, preventing ocean water from flooding freshwater aquifers, and installing pumps to stop city flooding. But long term efforts need to be more comprehensive....

Medieval manuscript of Calcidius' Latin translation of Plato's Timaeus, one of the main sources for the Atlantis legend. In the late sixteenth century, this manuscript belonged to Leiden University professor Daniel Heinsius who gave it to his son Nicholas. Nicholas, whose signature appears on the manuscript, was the librarian of Queen Christina of Sweden, whose collection came to the Vatican Library after her death.

Miami, the great world city, is drowning while the powers that be look away

Robin McKie in the Guardian (UK): ... "There has been a rise of about 10 inches in sea levels since the 19th century – brought about by humanity's heating of the planet through its industrial practices – and that is now bringing chaos to Miami Beach by regularly flooding places like Alton Road," says Harold Wanless, a geology professor at the University of Miami. "And it is going to get worse. By the end of this century we could easily have a rise of six feet, possibly 10 feet. Nothing much will survive that. Most of the land here is less than 10 feet above sea level."

What makes Miami exceptionally vulnerable to climate change is its unique geology. The city – and its satellite towns and resorts – is built on a dome of porous limestone which is soaking up the rising seawater, slowly filling up the city's foundations and then bubbling up through drains and pipes. Sewage is being forced upwards and fresh water polluted. Miami's low topography only adds to these problems. There is little land out here that rises more than six feet above sea level. Many condos and apartment blocks open straight on the edge of the sea. Of the total of 4.2 million US citizens who live at an elevation of four feet or less, 2.4 million of them live in south Florida.

...Miami and its surroundings are facing a calamity worthy of the Old Testament. It is an astonishing story. Despite its vast wealth, the city might soon be consumed by the waves, for even if all emissions of carbon dioxide were halted tomorrow – a very unlikely event given their consistent rise over the decades – there is probably enough of the gas in the atmosphere to continue to warm our planet, heat and expand our seas, and melt polar ice. In short, there seems there is nothing that can stop the waters washing over Miami completely.

It a devastating scenario. But what really surprises visitors and observers is the city's response, or to be more accurate, its almost total lack of reaction. The local population is steadily increasing; land prices continue to surge; and building is progressing at a generous pace. During my visit last month, signs of construction – new shopping malls, cranes towering over new condominiums and scaffolding enclosing freshly built apartment blocks – could be seen across the city, its backers apparently oblivious of scientists' warnings that the foundations of their buildings may be awash very soon....

An aerial photo of downtown Miami, shot by Averette, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons 3.0 license

Long-term predictions for Miami sea level rise could be available relatively soon

A press release from the National Science Foundation: Miami could know as early as 2020 how high sea levels will rise into the next century, according to a team of researchers including Florida International University scientist Rene Price.

Price is also affiliated with the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Florida Coastal Everglades Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site, one of 25 such NSF LTER sites in ecosystems from coral reefs to deserts, mountains to salt marshes around the world.

Scientists conclude that sea level rise is one of the most certain consequences of climate change. But the speed and long-term height of that rise are unknown. Some researchers believe that sea level rise is accelerating, some suggest the rate is holding steady, while others say it's decelerating.

With long-term data showing that global sea levels are steadily rising at 2.8 millimeters per year, and climate models indicating that the rate could accelerate over time, Price posed a question to colleagues: How soon will Miami residents know what sea levels will be in the year 2100?

"In Miami, we're at the forefront of sea level rise," Price says. "With the uncertainty in what we currently know, I was looking for information that could help us plan better for the long-term."

Price and a team of international researchers set out to answer the question. They analyzed data from 10 sea level monitoring stations throughout the world. They looked into the future by analyzing the past....

A FEMA image of a 2000 flood in Miami

Miami-Dade commissioners: We want county plans to consider sea-level rise

Patricia Mazzei in a bog at the Miami Herald: Is there a sea change of opinion among Miami-Dade County commissioners over the threat of climate change? A broad discussion on the county's dilapidated water and sewer pipes began Tuesday with Commission Chairwoman Rebeca Sosa exhorting staff to consider rising sea levels "in every detail" of the future development of infrastructure.

"We have seen what is happening in Miami-Dade County. We see that the state of Florida is placed on the map as one state that is in incredible danger because of the changes in climate and in weather," she said.

If planners don't take into account the threat as new projects get under way, she said, "We will be misspending that money, because we will have to come back and we will have to fix the infrastructure."

This is the same commission being sued by Biscayne Bay Waterkeeper, a clean-water advocacy group, over a federally mandated plan to spend $1.6 billion in sewer repairs because the advocates say the plan doesn't take into account rising sea levels....

A 2002 shot of the Miami skyline, shot by Towpilot, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Goodbye, Miami

Jeff Goodell in Rolling Stone: ...Even more than Silicon Valley, Miami embodies the central technological myth of our time – that nature can not only be tamed but made irrelevant. Miami was a mosquito-and-crocodile-filled swampland for thousands of years, virtually uninhabited until the late 1800s. Then developers arrived, canals were dug, swamps were drained, and a city emerged that was unlike any other place on the planet, an edge-of-the-world, air-conditioned dreamland of sunshine and beaches and drugs and money; Jan Nijman, the former director of the Urban Studies Program at the University of Miami, called 20th-century Miami "a citadel of fantastical consumption." Floods would come and go and hurricanes might blow through, but the city would survive, if only because no one could imagine a force more powerful than human ingenuity. That defiance of nature – the sense that the rules don't apply here – gave the city its great energy. But it is also what will cause its demise.

You would never know it from looking at Miami today. Rivers of money are flowing in from Latin America, Europe and beyond, new upscale shopping malls are opening, and the skyline is crowded with construction cranes. But the unavoidable truth is that sea levels are rising and Miami is on its way to becoming an American Atlantis. It may be another century before the city is completely underwater (though some more-pessimistic­ scientists predict it could be much sooner), but life in the vibrant metropolis of 5.5 million people will begin to dissolve much quicker, most likely within a few decades. The rising waters will destroy Miami slowly, by seeping into wiring, roads, building foundations and drinking-water supplies – and quickly, by increasing the destructive power of hurricanes. "Miami, as we know it today, is doomed," says Harold Wanless, the chairman of the department of geological sciences at the University of Miami. "It's not a question of if. It's a question of when."...

FEMA photo of a 2000 flood in the Miami-Dade area

Mumbai, Miami on list for big weather disasters

Seth Borenstein in the Northwest Herald via the AssociatedPress: Global warming is leading to such severe storms, droughts and heat waves that nations should prepare for an unprecedented onslaught of deadly and costly weather disasters, an international panel of climate scientists said in a new report issued Wednesday.

The greatest threat from extreme weather is to highly populated, poor regions of the world, the report warns, but no corner of the globe – from Mumbai to Miami – is immune. The document by a Nobel Prize-winning panel of climate scientists forecasts stronger tropical cyclones and more frequent heat waves, deluges and droughts.

The 594-page report blames the scale of recent and future disasters on a combination of man-made climate change, population shifts and poverty. In the past, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, founded in 1988 by the United Nations, has focused on the slow inexorable rise of temperatures and oceans as part of global warming. This report by the panel is the first to look at the less common but far more noticeable extreme weather changes, which lately have been costing on average about $80 billion a year in damage.

“We mostly experience weather and climate through the extreme,” said one of the report’s top editors, Chris Field, an ecologist with the Carnegie Institution of Washington. “That’s where we have the losses. That’s where we have the insurance payments. That’s where things have the potential to fall apart.

“There are lots of places that are already marginal for one reason or another,” Field said. But it’s not just poor areas: “There is disaster risk almost everywhere.”

An aerial shot of downtown Miami, shot by Towpilot, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Why the rush on Port of Miami deep dredge?

Dan Kipnis of the Biscayne Bay Regional Restoration Coordination Team writing in the Miami Herald: ...In Florida, 79 percent of our gross domestic product comes from coastal tourism; a healthy economy requires a healthy environment. Biscayne Bay, beaches, the Everglades, the Keys, reefs, fishing — these are the public coastal resources that started and support tourism in Florida. What kind of economy would we have without them?

...Public officials overlook recent and relevant scientific data, which could undermine their case that the deep dredging of Biscayne Bay can be prosecuted safely. The Port of Miami, Gov. Rick Scott’s office and the Florida East Coast Railroad have run sophisticated PR campaigns to sway the public, influence politicians and fool the media — overwhelming voices that counsel a more cautious, conservative approach.

Lobbyists and power brokers have convinced the powers-that-be, if we do not have the port dredged by 2014, when the Panama Canal expansion is scheduled for completion, the newest, largest container ships in the world will not stop in Miami because the shipping channel is too shallow.

This is simply not true. Many shipping sources and economists say that there is no guarantee that super post-Panamax container ships would have ever chosen to stop in Miami in the first place. Some geographically strategic ports on the east coast already have shipping channels at the required minimum depth of 50 feet. These ports are heavy on infrastructure such as rail and roads that the Port of Miami lacks. Shipping cost studies show that Miami is the least efficient place in the country to land cargo, being located at the extreme southern end of Florida. Basically, the longer you have to move cargo the less efficient and profitable it is....

ThePort of Miami, Wiukimedia Commons

Sea level experts convene in Miami

Jeff Burnside in NBC Miami: And you thought the down economy made it hard to sell your home? New scientific data says the sea is rising faster than anyone thought and under worst-case scenarios, much of Miami and South Florida could be under water by the end of the century, unless drastic measures are taken soon.

Some of the world’s leading experts on Arctic climate change are meeting in Miami this week to share the newest science and plot the course for future science. …[T]he cause of this slow, insidious rise in the sea level is coming from thousands of miles away at the Greenland ice sheet. Additionally, new data says the polar ice cap will be completely without ice during a summer within a few years, which compounds the problem under the Florida sunshine.

That is the heavy burden carried by the world’s top Arctic scientists studying the worsening crisis at the top of the world. So it's entirely relevant that they came to Miami, which lies only feet above sea level.

"So the combination of heavier development on the coast and rising sea levels coupled with hurricanes,” said University of Miami Rosensteil oceanographer David Kadko, “Even if they were not more destructive - and there are arguments that they will be more destructive because of climate change - will cause huge amounts of destruction of property and, of course, our insurance rates will go up."

…"It is hard to believe for me, in a time when we have such sophisticated technology where people have the facts that they choose to ignore the facts, and go with emotion and almost a faith-based reaction," said Peter Schloesser of Columbia University and chair of the conference organizing committee. "So in that sense it is clearly disappointing. At the same time, we have to overcome that and keep doing our work."…

Miami by satellite