Update on Sea-Level Rise Science; Economics & Sea-Level Rise; Flood Insurance; & More
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Sea-Level Rise Science: Future Projections Continue to Increase
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Future projections of sea-level rise (SLR) continue to increase as scientists struggle with the challenge of putting upper bounds on SLR projections; the difficulties of this work usually involve the evolving science surrounding rapid melting of the Antarctic Ice Sheet and the Greenland Ice Sheet. The recent paper Ice sheet contributions to future sea-level rise from structured expert judgment indicates that their “findings support the use of scenarios of 21st century global total SLR exceeding 2 m for planning purposes” because of the increasing likelihood of ice sheet instability and continued emissions growth. The Fourth National Climate Assessment (Ch. 2, Key Message 4) indicates that “global average sea level rise exceeding 8 feet (2.5 m) by 2100 is physically plausible, although its probability cannot currently be assessed.” The Tampa Bay region’s Climate Science Advisory Panel (CSAP) updated its “Recommended Projections of Sea Level Rise in the Tampa Bay Region” to use 8.5 feet as the highest possible bound. While the scientists acknowledged that they currently believe the probability of this level of rise to be “exceptionally low,” they also note that “emerging science that suggests there may be a new instability mechanism in the ice sheets that would lead to significantly higher melt rates,” and thus added the 8.5 feet as the upper bound. The update also indicated that “until the private and public sectors make meaningful efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the CSAP advises that local governments and regional agencies assess the likelihood of the three SLR scenarios using RCP 8.5, which models climate change without additional efforts to constrain emissions.”
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Sea-level rise may be part of why climate change is now ranked by risk managers world wide as the “top current risk” and the “top emerging risk” in a the 12th Annual Survey of Emerging Risks.
In "New Housing in at-Risk Zones: Speaking of Risks," Florida ranked third in a research report by Climate Central and Zillow that examined new home construction. The report notes 908 new homes--with a value of over $1 billion--were built in the “at-risk” zone; the “risk zone” in the report is conservatively defined as the area exposed to an average of at least one coastal flood per year in 2050 under the moderate emissions cuts known technically as Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 4.5, and under the median projections for sea-level rise corresponding to this emissions level as described in Kopp et al. 2017.”
Additionally, a 2018 report from the Union of Concerned Scientists found that “[w]ithin the next 30 years, roughly 64,000 homes in Florida . . . will be at risk of chronic flooding. Along the Florida coast, Miami Beach alone, with its iconic high rises located within steps of the beach, accounts for more than 12,000 of those homes.” However, with more than $500 million spent or planned to be spent in Miami Beach on elevating roads and seawalls and adding new pumps, Miami Beach would likely dispute this number. The report goes on to note that “the number of today’s homes that are at risk from sea level rise balloons to more than 1 million by 2100” in Florida.
And while Florida has challenges and a lot of the SLR work in the United States focuses on the eastern seaboard and Gulf Coast, they are not alone: despite the
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severity and incredible losses of the 2017 and 2018 wildfire seasons in California, United States Geological Survey research indicates that by the end of the century, SLR combined with storms will be the largest state disasters in California, affecting up to three times as many people as an analysis only considering SLR without storms would suggest.
Finally, the most recent report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on tidal flooding has come out. From the press release:
“Once communities realize they are susceptible to high tide flooding, they need to begin to address the impacts, which can become chronic rather quickly,” said William Sweet, Ph.D., an oceanographer for NOAA’s Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services and lead author of the report. “Communities find themselves not knowing what to expect next year and the decades to come, which makes planning difficult. Our high tide projections can play a vital role in helping them plan mitigation and other remedies.”
Sweet and his co-authors project that in 2019, the national high tide flood frequency is expected to double from the year 2000 across U.S. coastlines, with some regions seeing an even larger increase:
- the Northeast Atlantic could see a 140% increase,
- the Southeast could see a 190% increase, and
- the Western Gulf of Mexico could see a 130% increase.
El Nino conditions that are predicted to persist through 2019 are a factor which contribute to the increase, along with continued sea level rise.
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Economics & Sea-Level Rise
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More and more research and news articles focus on the economics of SLR, flooding, and disasters. Even before flooding is catastrophic, it can be economically painful. A news article detailing research published in Science Advances notes that economic impacts to local communities hurt.
Local governments increasingly are taking climate change and SLR into account when doing their own accounting, including when offering bonds to raise money for infrastructure. For example, a recent article in the Claims Journal noted that Miami Beach used two pages of its official bond offering to document climate change and the risks from hurricanes and sea-level rise and the efforts of Miami Beach to address the issues. The article further notes that “BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest asset manager, says that within a decade, more than 15 percent of debt in the S&P National Municipal Bond Index will come from regions that could suffer losses from climate change adding up to as much as 1 percent of gross domestic product annually.”
The economic toll of disasters keeps growing. An article in the Washington Post noted that recent annual taxpayer spending on disaster relief averages almost 10 times what it did 30 years ago after adjusting for inflation. But climate change is not the only driver: the growth of infrastructure and population in disaster-prone regions also drives the increase. The article quotes a former associate administrator of FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery as saying that “You’re seeing many more of these really
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bad disasters—the weather is intensifying—and people have really been allowed to build in places where they shouldn’t.” This statement echoes the theme my last newsletter's article (Where and How (or Whether?) We Rebuild After a Disaster) noting that we prefer to think about how we build rather than where.
The United States Government Accountability Office also recognizes increasing federal fiscal exposure from climate change risk in disaster in a June 2019 GAO study. and notes that "the federal government has not made measurable progress since 2017 to reduce federal exposure to climate change." In fact, one example of increasing federal exposure given for operation and maintenance of federal lands and facilities is the almost complete destruction of Tyndall Air Force Base here in Florida dn the estimated $3-4 billion to rebuild the base.
And some now assert that federal disaster money favors the rich. In “How Federal Disaster Money Favors the Rich,” Catherine Kling, an economist at Cornell University, said: "The whole idea of a benefit-cost analysis is actually very simple. It simply seeks to answer the question: If we do this project, is the total value from this project greater than the total costs?" The article continues that “means that protecting 10 families in $1 million houses has the same value as protecting 100 families in $100,000 houses.” Thus, “even if the approach is designed to avoid picking winners and losers, it ends up doing so anyway, favoring wealthier neighborhoods” by focusing on more valuable businesses and neighborhoods.
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In the last newsletter, an article discussed the challenges of water quality, sea-level rise, and septic systems versus wastewater. Florida is not the only state confronting this challenge. Southern Shores in North Carolina recently passed an ordinance that limits septic capacity for homes there. This was done in response to concerns that very large homes were being used for many transient guests, resulting in excessive nutrient output from septic systems that serve these homes. The new ordinance limits septic capacity and caps the overnight occupancy for vacation rentals at 14 people.
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The June 2019 GAO study cited earlier also called out federal fiscal exposure through the National Flood Insurance Program (about $21 billion in debt as of April 2019 despite recent congressional forgiveness of $16 billion of debt) and federal crop insurance (estimated to cost $80 billion over the next 10 years).
And flood insurance is not getting any cheaper. Many coastal residents are adapting not only to rising sea levels; they are also “Adapting to Rising Flood Insurance Premiums on the Coast.”
The article Not Trusting FEMA's Flood Maps, More Storm-Ravaged Cities Set Tougher Rules discusses how several places impacted by flooding disasters have voluntarily moved beyond FEMA minimum elevation standards under the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) and are moving to require higher elevations than the minimum "Base Flood
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Elevation" established in NFIP flood maps. An increasing number of jurisdictions are also requiring elevation of structures outside of the Special Flood Hazard Area (defined as the area impacted by a 1% annual chance flood). Larry Larson, senior policy advisor for the national Association of State Floodplain Managers commented that "If we regulate to the 500-year (risk) we are more apt to get closer what we call the 100-year but really now is more than that."
Despite a statutory mandate passed by Congress in 2012 to establish a Technical Mapping Advisory Council that was to submit a report to FEMA within one year to provide a report on how to use the "best available methodology to consider the impact of (I) the rise in sea level; and (II) future development on flood risk," NFIP flood maps do not yet incorporate this information.
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Flood Insurance Does Not Make You Whole . . . But It Helps. . . .
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The acting FEMA administrator, in a news article just weeks prior to the beginning of the 2019 hurricane season, emphasized that more people should have flood insurance and that FEMA "programs don't make you whole, and that's probably one thing that [FEMA] need[s] to say more often." Similarly, Acting Administrator Peter Gaynor said that local governments also need to do more to strengthen building codes. While building codes are, indeed, very important, Gaynor did not address the importance of where building occurs as discussed in my last newsletter.
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New Report Assesses Cost of Seawalls to Protect U.S. Communities from Sea-Level Rise
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Many people involved in coastal and sea-level rise issues were debating the value of a recent report on the purported costs of protecting coastal communities until 2040. The report included the estimated cost of protecting U.S. coastal communities from modest sea-level rise through the year 2040 by using seawalls.
The report is subject to some very fair criticisms: It arguably uses far too low a sea-level rise estimate (see article above) as the basis for its research. Additionally, the idea that all communities will build seawalls is wrong. First, many communities do not have the financial wherewithal to build such extensive seawall networks. Second, even if they have the money, in many places it would be too difficult--if not impossible--to get the permits to legally construct seawalls. Third, even with money and permits, many seawalls would probably need to be built on private property to ensure a comprehensive, continuous network. Fourth, and more specific to Florida, seawalls are of limited use due to our porous geology allowing water to move underneath seawalls. Fifth, seawalls can keep storm water inside even when they keep saltwater out, meaning that new or higher seawalls will often need pumps to avoid the seawall creating additional stormwater flooding.
Despite these and other potential criticisms of the report, one key take away message from the report is valid and important to get out to local governments and the public: the cost of sea-level rise impacts will be so high that very few local governments will have the financial ability to mitigate those impacts for very long. This reality should drive much of the work on coastal planning, sea-level rise adaptation, and infrastructure liability.
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New Article Examines Road Ownership & Maintenance in SE United States
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A new article in the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law presents an analysis of coastal communities in four South Atlantic states—Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina—that are currently facing questions about how to protect property and infrastructure as sea levels rise and flooding increases. The article distills the findings of an interdisciplinary research project funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (“NOAA”), Florida Sea Grant, Georgia Sea Grant, South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium, and North Carolina Sea Grant. It consists of a regional analysis comparing how tort and local government law can both further and hinder climate change resilience planning and climate adaptation efforts
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across these four states. Given that the federal government has offered little in terms of legislation, policy, or funding to direct or support climate adaptation activities, local efforts—and the litigation that inevitably results—are on the forefront of establishing the framework for defining adaptation policy more broadly and influencing the contours of tort and land use law. The article, therefore, fills an important research gap in existing climate change literature, as it discusses how increased flooding at the local level is putting pressure on traditional conceptions of government duties, immunities, and authorities. The article also uses roads as a case study to explore how sea-level rise is altering planning, maintenance, and funding for public infrastructure.
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Meetings on Resilience and Relocation
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March of this year presented two different forums on Washington, D.C. The first, organized by the Georgetown Climate Center, was the "Roundtable on Managed Retreat," which included almost 50 invitees. The Roundtable was designed to aid the Climate Center in development of a "Managed Retreat Toolkit." A few of the takeaways included that "managed retreat must be pursued proactively" and "managed retreat must identify and include investments in 'receiving communities.'" For the 9-page workshop summary, email Thomas Ruppert at truppert@ufl.edu.
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The second meeting was "An Uncommon Dialogue: Flood and Fire Resilience for Greater U.S. Security," organized by the Hoover Institution, the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, and the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars. The meeting represented the first of three planned meetings and focused most heavily on the legal and regulatory barriers to flood and fire resilience. A summary of the meeting noted the overlapping of several themes between fire and flood risk, such as education and disclosure of risk. On education, participants emphasized that public education on climate risks have tremendous benefits but are under-resourced and would benefit from community led discussion. For a copy of the summary from the organizers, please email Thomas Ruppert at truppert@ufl.edu.
June saw The Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York City offer
the conference "At What Point Managed Retreat?" from June 19-21. Unfortunately I was not able to make the conference, but organizers indicated that sessions were being recorded and would be made available on the conference website, which also includes the conference schedule. |
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