MAYPORT, Fla. – Rising sea levels will put 20 percent of Naval Station Mayport underwater by 2050, according to a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The study, released Wednesday, says military installations along the East and Gulf coasts of the United States are at risk of losing land as sea level rise moves the high tide line inland in decades to come.
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The analysis, “The US Military on the Front Lines of Rising Seas,” found that coastal installations will experience more extensive tidal flooding and when hurricanes strike, deeper and more extensive storm surge flooding.
“We’re now at the front end of the changes that will occur, with some installations already dealing with flooding during extreme high tides,” said Erika SpangerSiegfried, lead author of the report and senior analyst in the Climate and Energy program at UCS. “Depending on how fast sea level rises in the second half of this century, tidal flooding will become a daily occurrence in some areas; that is, those places become part of the tidal zone as opposed to useable land. This also depends on how installations respond and whether they have the resources to adapt.”
The UCS study analyzed 18 East and Gulf Coast military installations—selected to be representative of coastal installations nationwide in terms of size, geographic distribution and military branch—for their changing exposure to flooding through the end of the century.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tide gauges from Portland, Maine to Pensacola, Florida were used to calculate the “intermediate” and “highest” sea level rise projections and the frequency of high tide flooding, and the NOAA SLOSH model was used to model storm surge.
Recent studies suggest that the highest scenario is increasingly plausible due to accelerating ice sheet loss.
The UCS analysis found:
- By 2050, half of the installations would experience 270 or more flood events per year -- up from just 10 events per year today -- under the intermediate sea level rise scenario. Nine installations (half of those analyzed) will likely experience daily floods under the highest scenario.
- By 2050, four sites -- Naval Air Station Key West, Naval Station Mayport, Fort Eustis at Joint Base LangleyEustis, and Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island -- stand to lose one-fifth or more of their land due to daily high-tide flooding under the highest sea level rise scenario.
- By 2070, half of the installations would experience 520 or more flood events annually -- the equivalent of more than one flood daily -- under the intermediate sea level rise scenario.
- By 2070, a Category 1 storm would produce storm surge flooding equivalent to a Category 2 storm today at 13 installations (more than two-thirds of those analyzed) under the highest sea level rise scenario.
- By 2100, eight installations (nearly half of those analyzed) would lose 25 percent or more of their land to rising seas under the intermediate sea level rise scenario and 50 percent or more of their land under the highest scenario; this is based on a highly conservative metric of daily high-tide inundation.
- By 2100, 10 installations (more than half of those analyzed) would experience constant flood conditions in currently flood-prone areas under the highest sea level rise scenario.
- By 2100, a Category 1 storm would produce storm surge flooding equivalent to a Category 2 storm today at 15 installations (more than three-quarters of those analyzed) under the intermediate sea level rise scenario.
“By 2050, most of these sites will see more than 10 times the number of floods they experience today,” said Kristy Dahl, UCS consulting scientist and report coauthor, who served as the lead analyst for the study. “In 2070, all but a few are projected to see flooding once or twice every day. Shockingly, these aren’t even the worst-case scenarios.”
More on the study, and results for individual military installations -- in Florida, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, North Carolina, New Jersey, South Carolina, Virginia and Washington D.C. -- can be found here.