Sea Level Rise: A Peek into the Future

As a native Texan and beach-lover, I spent many days and nights adventuring the island and city of Galveston, Texas with friends and family.  For my individual project in our MSEM GIS course, I plan to analyze the data NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, has provided regarding sea level rise to analyze its future impact on the island. Sea level rise is a real threat as climate change continues. In my future career, I would love to be a part of a team that collects the data required to inform the effective strategical management and city planning to adapt to our changing world. In this post, I present to you another dataset visualizing the phenomenon of sea level rise. NOAA, a U.S. Department of Commerce, is a scientific agency responsible for monitoring the world’s ocean and atmospheric conditions. This agency was formed 210 years ago, in 1807, and serves many purposes for the country, such as collecting and providing weather forecasts and warnings by the National Weather Service, regulating and managing fisheries and marine sanctuaries by the National Ocean Service and National Marine Fisheries Service, collecting environmental satellite data by the N, surveying land by the National Geodetic Survey, and many more. For more information regarding NOAA you can peruse their website: http://www.noaa.gov/.

The data NOAA provide are displayed in a visualizer (https://coast.noaa.gov/slr/) and show the area affected by sea level rise in terms of 0-6 feet in integral increments above mean higher high water (MHHW). MHHW means the average increase of sea level at high tide. NOAA explained they used high tide, or mean high tide where tides are diurnal (happening twice daily), as their reference point because that is the current extent of where the seawater travels and they are interested in how much further it will reach over time. They have made their data public; thankfully, also in GIS form (https://coast.noaa.gov/slrdata/). The files they have created are digital elevation models (DEMs), rasters showing the change of an attribute over space. This interactive map was a combination of many DEMs created from the best Lidar-based elevation data available; Lidar being radar sent down from planes detecting changes in elevation of the ground and bodies of water. These data show the slow invasion of sea water into the continental United States. Over time, the impacts this phenomenon are sure to affect millions of people and drastically change the environment and infrastructure on which they rely.

I will use these data to analyze the impact of sea level rise on the island of Galveston. Currently, I am still narrowing down what aspect of impact I would like to study: social, infrastructural, economic, etc. I should mention, the data NOAA provide for sea level rise have a limited accuracy, as they are predictions and have some uncertainty due to factors they admit they do not consider (erosion, some hydrological factors, storms, etc.). Nevertheless, you work with what you have and I plan to evaluate where the greatest risk lies in the island.

 

**If curious about the step-by-step map building processes proceed to this url: https://coast.noaa.gov/data/digitalcoast/pdf/slr-inundation-methods.pdf