Do You Live in One of Those Future Waterfront Homes?
The River Will Rise. The Question Is Whether It Happens Slowly or Suddenly.
You don’t have to believe in climate change, man-made or not. Sea levels are rising. That’s just a fact. For the purpose of this exercise, it doesn’t matter why. Flat-as-a-pancake Florida is already feeling the effects. Just ask the beachfront homeowners over in St. Johns County.
But Green Cove Springs and the areas around it are also expected to flood, according to a new interactive sea-level rise viewer created by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA for short, pronounced like the guy with the ark).
According to the Climate Center of Florida State University, Florida sea levels are about eight inches higher than they were in 1950, and the rate of sea level rise is accelerating. Waters are expected to rise another six inches over the next 15 years, according to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers projections.
But that is the projected rise if the Pine Island Ice Shelf on the Amunsen Sea of Antarctica doesn’t collapse as it is now threatening to do. As Joshua Hawkins wrote in a June 21 article on the BGR tech and science news website:
That glacier holds back enough ice to raise sea levels by almost two feet. This shelf controls ice flow from the Pine Island Glacier, one of the world’s largest and fastest-changing glaciers…Scientists have previously reported that the Pine Island Ice Shelf is weakening due to two main problems. The first issue is enhanced thinning, resulting from the ice shelf melting into the sea. There have also been increases in “calving” events, which is when massive pieces of ice break off into icebergs. These issues could cause the shelf to collapse and raise sea levels immensely.
The estimated rise from such an event would be 1.6 feet, which when added to the routine projection of a half foot, would bring the total to just over two feet. That’s the setting used for all the flood maps accompanying this article, so you can see for yourself what will be underwater.
The good news is that many of those folks living on Buccaneer Boulevard in The Cove neighborhood of Green Cove Springs will have waterfront property, even though the waves will lap against backyards built up with fill. And those affluent types living at Bayard Point won’t need a gate to keep us out anymore; the neighborhood will be on an island.
Naturally for the peeps of Black Creek, the future is not so bright.
The only good thing about getting older is seeing all this stuff with your own two eyes… lived here since 1960 and seen hundreds of “events” but haven’t noticed any permanent rise. The river is essentially where it’s always been. Some events take a few houses that were too low to begin with.