Sean McPolin - The Mirror US
An ominous map showing the US cities most at risk of vanishing underwater has been issued, with two dozen at risk due to sinking land and rising sea levels.
Researchers from Virginia Tech have found 24 places are battling a combination of things which could see one in every 50 residents at risk. People along the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic seaboard have been told they're in a "danger zone", as well as those along the Pacific coast who aren't facing flood risks, but instead a "relatively modest, rock coast cliff retreat".
Miami is one of the locations which faces the highest risk, researchers have warned, with the south of Florida being told it could lose around 80,000 homes. This would cost an estimated $31 billion dollars and risk the lives or well-being of 122,000 residents. The study found more than 500,000 people in 32 major cities could be affected by flooding with a possible cost of $109 billion by 2050.
Virginia Tech's geochemist Leonard Ohenhen said: "One of the challenges we have with communicating the issue of sea-level rise and land subsidence broadly is it often seems like a long-term problem. Something whose impacts will only manifest at the end of the century, which many people may not care about. What we've done here is focused the picture on the short term. Just 26 years from now."
The scientists took three main sets of information for their analysis which first measured the sinking of coastal urban land masses between 2007 and 2020. Then they used this data to develop a predicted sea level rise and added it to the true rate of sea level rise which had been recorded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Lastly, authors of the new study used data from the 2010 US census to create "baseline estimates" of the total of people who would likely be impacted by the sea level rises and land sinking, as per MailOnline.
Researchers have created a map of at risk cities in the US from flooding and sinking land© Nature Ohenhen et al.2024
They found that along the Atlantic coast as many as 263,000 people from 163,000 properties were at risk of being impacted across a 370 square-mile space of landscape in Miami. The total financial impact on home-values by 2050 ranged up to $64 billion for the 11 east coast cities they examined.
Cities including New Orleans in Louisiana, Galveston in Texas and nine others have also been told they face incredibly high risks, with around 225,000 at risk of death, displacement or financial struggles from the hundreds of thousands of homes which could be affected.
Around 225,000 people in New Orleans in Louisiana and Galveston in Texas face risk of death, the study has warned© AFP via Getty Images
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The team, which included a Brown University scientist and some of the top minds from India and the UK, mainly focused on the damage to homes and economic risks. In the paper, they say: "The calculated exposure does not account for the value of critical infrastructure (such as airports, schools, hospitals, power plants, roads and railways) as well as economic hubs and landmarks."
The ten US Pacific coast cities examined by the new study faced significantly less risks than their Atlantic and Gulf counterparts and were told that by 2050 there would only be around 16 square-miles which faced serious risks. Under 30,000 people and 15,000 home properties are included in that warning.
Ohenhen explained that ethnic and economic minorities were most at risk in the areas predicted to be affected most by the rising seas and land problems. They explained: "That was the most surprising part of the study. We found that there is racial and economic inequality in those areas in that there was an overrepresentation of historically marginalized groups potentially impacted as well as properties with significantly lower value than the rest of the cities."
The US has already seen some worrying coastal flooding in recent years© Anadolu via Getty Images
The study found an alarming rate in which the sea is now rising. In the past 100 years figures have shown a rise of around 1.7 millimeters per year. However, during the early years of the 21 Century it has jumped to 3.1mm per year and is continuing to grow. Currently, the global mean rate of sea level rise is 3.7 mm per year.
The researchers warned: "Even if climate change mitigation efforts succeed in stabilizing temperature in the future decades. Sea levels will continue to rise as a result of the continuing response of oceans to past warming."
Study coauthor Manoochehr Shirzaei noted they hoped to help give these US coastal cities a map they will need to prevent the worst of the likely oncoming tragedies.
He said: "The whole purpose of this paper is to provide data to support decisions. Every city, every county has a flood resiliency plan in place. They are required by law to create that. But it's likely nobody has received the entire picture until this study. Which creates probably the first comprehensive picture of what's happening in the not-too-distant future."
