Some lucky homeowners will have beach front property.
Via SF Chronicle:
Coastal neighborhoods in several Bay Area cities are likely to face such frequent flooding from rising sea levels over the next century that residents will simply pack up and leave, according to a new study of the effects of climate change.
Every local county will be dealing with frequent inundation of its bay shoreline by 2100, according to a report issued Wednesday by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The group said its report and accompanying maps, published in the peer-reviewed journal Elementa, are the first nationwide effort to identify the point at which coastal communities face the no-win decision of having to flee or fight sea level rise.
“There have been a lot of great sea level-rise maps, but what’s been missing from these is a time frame,” said Kristina Dahl, one of the report’s authors and a climate scientist in San Francisco. “We want communities to understand how long they have not just until permanent inundation sets in, but when flooding gets so bad that it makes a place really unlivable.”
Already, more than 90 communities across the nation have hit a point of disruption that’s driving people away, the report said. Eighty more are expected to reach that threshold within 20 years if global warming continues at a moderate rate.
Seventy percent of these cities will be in Louisiana and Maryland, with none on the West Coast in the next two decades, the report said. Ocean levels are generally thought to be rising more slowly along the Pacific coastline.[…]
Larry Goldzband, executive director of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, which is spearheading a region-wide plan to adapt to rising seas, said there is still much to do.
“We’re not as prepared as we should be,” he said. “We’re in the midst of getting better prepared, and counties and cities are working hard on this.”
Goldzband said California has the advantage of time, with several decades before catastrophic levels of damage occur.
“Fortunately,” he said, “San Francisco doesn’t have to build a 20-foot wall on the Embarcadero tomorrow.”
HT: Kat