| Manu | Date: Monday, 26-July-2021, 3:47 PM | Message # 1 |
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| Moon ‘wobble’ and climate change could mean ‘double whammy’ of flooding in 2030s, NASA warns
By
María Luisa Paúl
In the coming decades, higher tides coupled with sea-level rise will cause U.S. coastlines to experience a “dramatic” uptick in flooding, a new NASA study finds.
By the mid-2030s, scientists project that there could be a “rapid” increase in the frequency of high-tide flooding in several parts of the country, according to the report published last month in the Nature Climate Change journal by the NASA Sea Level Change Team at the University of Hawaii.
“We’re going to have sort of a double-whammy,” William Sweet, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and author of the study, said Wednesday. “It means that coastal communities — unless they adapt and fortify — are likely to expect even greater flooding than they might otherwise.”
The increase in flooding is caused in part by the moon’s “wobble.” As it orbits Earth, the satellite’s angle relative to the equator changes over time. This phenomenon — spanning an 18.6-year period — influences how tides ebb and flow.
One half of this cycle subdues tides, making the high tides lower and the low tides higher. The second half amplifies them.
This latter part, combined with sea-level rise — a product of climate change — is what will lead to greater flooding in the next two decades, the study concludes.
Resd more/full article/source - https://www.washingtonpost.com/science....a-warns
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