Sea level rise

We are the Center for Integrated Coastal Research at the University of Central Florida.

Our center brings together a whole multidisciplinary range of people from scientists to engineers to policymakers, all interested in tackling the most challenging issues facing our coastline, such as sea level rise, hurricanes, ecosystem change, and coastal adaption.

Our mission is to bridge the gaps and not only to do the transformative science, but to really try and translate that science into information that can benefit society.

Throughout this podcast, we'll be speaking to leading experts from all around the world, researchers, practitioners and decision makers.

So I'm one of your hosts, I'm Ivan Haig.

I'm a professor here at the University of Central Florida, and I lead the Center for Integrated Coastal Research.

My research focuses on sea level rise, coastal flooding, extreme water levels, and the impact that that has on the coast.

Throughout my career, I've worked with many scientists, many engineers, many governments, and industry from all around the world.

Sea level rise is effectively permanent on human timescales, essentially because of the warming already that's locked into the mid and deep ocean, in addition to the melt that is happening with the ice sheets, whether that's Arctic, Antarctic and mountain glaciers.

Hello and welcome to the Overshoot Era podcast.

New name.

And so then there are some risks that we're facing, and the subject is to figure out what we do next.

And today on the podcast, I have Charlotte Love, who is the program lead for the Coastal Futures Resilience Initiative, CFRI, a program inside ARC at Renaissance Philanthropy, where I've also been doing some work lately.

And Charlotte's going to tell us about sea level rise and what we might potentially do about that.

Think of this as like a follow on episode to the previous one with Marianne Hagen talking about the Seabed Curtain Project.

That was about how could we potentially slow down a potential sea level rise from Antarctica.

Swim along with us as we explore what the future of coastal New Hampshire could look like.

Some quick background on the different people involved with Strawberry Bank's Sea Level Rise initiative.

Strawberry Bank identified this existential threat of flooding to their historic sites.

To help the museum solve this problem, Chapman Construction and Design, Placework, Horsley Witten Group, and Stimson Landscape Architects joined forces and came up with a plan.

So while we're being warned of the impacts, both happening and impending, no one in Australia has actually estimated how much this will cost us, until now.

The Climate Council has put out the Rising Seas, Rising Bills report, and Adjunct Professor Andrew Watkins from Monash University and the Climate Council joins me now to discuss it.

Professor, welcome to The Briefing.

Could you start by explaining to us why our seas are rising?

And ultimately, it, it, it really costs us all, even if the Commonwealth has to step in as an insurer of last resort and pay for things, and ultimately us as taxpayers, no matter where we live, will be paying for that as well.

Ultimately, the impacts upon insurance, upon, you know, council rates and so on, and, and indeed our, our tax is gonna be affected by the disasters we have in the future, no matter where we are.

Yeah, well, let's get to that, because that's what we're kind of talking to you about today is this, uh, Rising Seas, Rising Bills report that the Climate Council has put out.

So the figure that was crunched by the Climate Council is a cost of $855 billion in Australia alone by 2100.

The turquoise waters and white sands of the Gold Coast have long attracted Australians seeking a sea change.

But that proximity to the coast could come at a cost, according to the Climate Council's Rising Seas, Rising Bills report.

It projects that coastal flooding will cost Australia more than $855 billion this century, including property losses and land use damages.

The report also categorises the Queensland Gold Coast as the single most exposed urban area in Australia.

Increasing air and water temperatures.

decreasing water availability in some regions and seasons, increasing intensity and frequency of storm events, flooding, and sea level rise.

This report, part of the administration's efforts to support national climate change adaptation planning through the Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force and Strategic Sustainability Planning Process established under Executive Order 13514 and to advance the US Department of Energy's goal of promoting energy security, examines current and potential future impacts of these climate trends on the US energy sector.

It identifies activities underway to address these challenges and discusses potential opportunities to enhance energy technologies that are more climate resilient, as well as information stakeholder engagement, and policies and strategies to further enable their deployment.

Vulnerabilities in the U.S. Energy Sector Increasing temperatures, decreasing water availability, more intense storm events, and sea level rise will each independently, and in some cases in combination, affect the ability of the United States to produce and transmit electricity from fossil, nuclear, and existing and emerging renewable energy sources.

these changes are also projected to affect the nation's demand for energy and its ability to access produce and distribute oil and natural gas An assessment of impacts, both positive and negative, is necessary to inform forward-looking efforts to enhance energy security.

Significant findings include thermoelectric power generation facilities are at risk from decreasing water availability and increasing ambient air and water temperatures.

which reduce the efficiency of cooling increase the likelihood of exceeding water thermal intake or effluent limits that protect local ecology and increase the risk of partial or full shutdowns of generation facilities energy infrastructure located along the coast is at risk from sea level rise increasing intensity of storms and higher storm surge and flooding potentially disrupting oil and gas production refining and distribution as well as electricity generation and distribution Oil and gas production, including unconventional oil and gas production, which constitutes an expanding share of the nation's energy supply, is vulnerable to decreasing water availability given the volumes of water required for enhanced oil recovery, hydraulic fracturing, and refining.

What exactly is being addressed and changed in this project, especially around the landscape? From what it sounds like, there's a focus there.

The Sea Level Rise Initiative, which is the project that I'm heading up, has three components.

Stormwater management, which is the water on the surface.

Groundwater management, or upwelling, which is specific to each structure.