Silicon Valley Will Bear Brunt Of Storms And Flooding As Oceans Inexorably Rise

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Statewide, $36.5 billion in property and 145,000 people are located on land less than three feet above the high tide line, with 90 percent in the San Francisco Bay and Delta. More than half of the total people affected are in San Mateo County alone, home to an international airport, major corporations including Facebook, Oracle and Genetech, and Stanford University. Residents in that county could experience floods reaching three feet above the high tide line every year by mid-century, according to the analysis.

“Sea level rise means more floods, reaching higher — and that’s already happening today, long before the threat of permanent submersion,” said Dr. Ben Strauss, study lead and Climate Central’s vice president for climate impacts, in a statement. “Northern California will likely break local records before most of the rest of the nation.”

Driven by global warming, sea levels have been rising because of the expansion of the water as it heats up and the unprecedented thawing of the massive Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Sea level is expected to rise by one foot by mid-century and about three feet by 2100.

“It’s not just gradual sea level rise [that’s a problem],” said Jeremy Lowe, a scientist who studies estuaries and wetlands with ESA. “It’s when we have a high tide and a storm and big waves in the Bay. That’s when we are going to have flooding and those events are going to be more frequent and they are going to affect us sooner.”

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http://www.climatecentral.org/news/sea-level-rise-floods-silicon-valley-17565?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+climatecentral%2FdjOO+Climate+Central+-+Full+Feed