Miami faces and underwater future
The New Yorker
In Miami, the rising sea is already an ineluctable part of daily life. Everyone is affected—whether storm flooding forces a small-business owner to shut down for a few days (at tremendous cost), or daily tides hinder students commuting to school, or the retreating coastline forces people to abandon their homes.
There are other, less obvious, but equally troubling impacts. People’s increased contact with overflow water from urban canals and sewers is a significant health issue. Low-income communities of color—like Liberty City and Little Haiti—also face rising housing costs as residents seek higher ground. Some have started referring to this as climate gentrification.
With governor and legislators in denial, this tiny Florida town tries to adapt to climate change
Florida Center for Investigative Reporting
YANKEETOWN — While Florida state government bans the terms “climate change” and “global warming” in official business, this coastal fishing village of about 500 people and more water than dry land is being swallowed by the sea with almost no public attention or concern.
But town officials here are fighting back with some success.
Company hopes to capitalize on rising sea levels in Florida
Associated Press
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — From the frothy assault of the Atlantic Ocean to the placid trespass of the Lake Worth Lagoon, sea level rise is a mounting concern for South Florida property buyers who are turning to science, and private companies, for guidance.
The 3-year-old startup Coastal Risk Consultants was co-founded by the former director of Florida Atlantic University’s Center for Environmental Studies, and has amassed an advisory board of respected atmosphere experts from the University of Miami, Pennsylvania State University and Florida International University.
Jupiter, a Silicon Valley firm launched this year by entrepreneur Rich Sorkin to analyze the effects of climate change on individual properties, includes a Nobel Prize winner, a former leader at the National Science Foundation, and Todd Stern, the chief negotiator for the U.S. on the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.
The companies see a market in sea level rise consultation, but also other climate change-related challenges that traditional property inspectors and building codes don’t consider — hurricane storm surge, flooding rains and extreme temperature changes.
Scientists capture breaking of glacier in Greenland
Science Daily
A team of scientists has captured on video a four-mile iceberg breaking away from a glacier in eastern Greenland, an event that points to one of the forces behind global sea-level rise.
The resulting iceberg, broken off from Greenland’s Helheim Glacier, would stretch from lower Manhattan up to Midtown in New York City.
“Global sea-level rise is both undeniable and consequential,” observes David Holland, a professor at NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematics and NYU Abu Dhabi, who led the research team. “By capturing how it unfolds, we can see, first-hand, its breath-taking significance.”
This phenomenon, also known as calving (the breaking off of large blocks of ice from a glacier), may also be instructive to scientists and policy makers.
