Lab 10: Impact of Sea Level Rise on Coastal Communities

Hi students. So, today we're going to be talking about the sea-level lab, and how to manipulate files and get the data you need. In the first part of this lab, you're going to be looking at tide gauge data to look at recent sea-level rise, since about 1940 or so. And this is a KMZ file that you will load into Google Earth. And what I recommend you do, is you load it, and then basically it's very, very straightforward. What you're going to want to do is zoom in. So, I've loaded it, and now you can see my dots appear on my map. This is just the U.S.; the data are global, though. And you can see the dots appear on the map. The different colors are the time intervals. So, the last reported year is, in green, is 2016. Generally, we don't tend to use the older sites which stop recording in 1998, etc. So, we're gonna be looking mostly at these green dots, and I'm gonna give you the name of a station in this state. So, you're gonna have to cruise around a little bit to look for them. So, let me just pull up one of these records that look at the east coast of Florida. Let's zoom in a little bit. Let's say we're gonna look at the east coast of Florida, and I'm gonna click on this guy here. You can see that there are two dots that show up. It doesn't really matter which one you choose. I always tend to choose the one that's in the ocean. If you see two dots that have different colors, you're gonna want to choose the most recent one. So, generally choose the green one. If there's like a yellow one and a green one, choose the green one and click on it. And then, it says Trident Pier, Port Canaveral. And I'm gonna click on the PS MSL ID number, and it's gonna open like a little web window here in Google Earth for you, and you're gonna see down here. This curve is what you want to be looking at. It's the monthly data in millimeters. Okay, these are millimeters, so seven thousand millimeters, seventy-two fifty millimeters. This is a 250 millimeter difference. Which 250 millimeters is 25 centimeters. Okay, so you can see 25 centimeter difference from here to here. And you're gonna be looking at trends. So, in this case, you can see that the sea level is rising. It's kind of slow. You're gonna want to be looking at the middle of this these annual variations, which are to do with tides and all sorts of other phenomena. Alright. So, you're gonna want to look at the averages, and you can see that it's averaging rising from about 7,000 here in 1995, which is the beginning of your time series. And up here, it's averaging somewhere in the middle maybe, up here, just about 7200 or so. So, sea level is going up, as shown by this tide gauge data. So, you can be looking at a bunch of stations from different places and answering questions about what the trends are. Is sea level going up or down? Remember, this is relative sea level, so it is sea level relative to the coastline. And, in some cases, just to tell you, the sea level (relative sea level) is actually going down, which means the land surface is rising up. So, this is kind of a cool lab because you're gonna be looking at very powerful data set, the tide gauge data. All right, so, that's that. It's pretty straightforward. So, I'm gonna get out of Google Earth. I'm gonna quit Google Earth. And now, I'm gonna keep looking at the sea-level rise data set, which is a really cool data set because it shows you flooding maps for what happens when we raise sea level. And the first thing I want to do is I want to change feet to meters. Unfortunately, it's underneath my recording button, so I'm not sure I can actually do that. But you're gonna want to change it to meters. This is a foot scale and if you click down here on the bottom, you'll see that it allows you to click on the knob, which I can't do, and change it to meters. Okay, so you will be working in meters. There are several things you can do. You can change that, you can raise sea level 2 feet, 3 feet, 4 feet. It doesn't show a whole lot till you move close. So, let's let's look at Houston, Texas. I'm going to zoom in on Houston. It’s a pretty low-lying area. It's not one of the ones we deal with though. Look at the coastline in Houston and you can see it's a really nice Google Earth Map. You can actually go up here and you can look at base map Street View. So, in some cases, I'm having you look at Street View, in some cases I'm having you look at satellite view. So, it's kind of cool. If you live in a coastal area, you can see the street you live on. And now, you can see what happens when I start raising sea level 5 feet, 6 feet. You'll see that not much is happening over here. But if we move up here, you can see there's a lot of flooding right in this part of Houston. You can see if I if I go back to one foot, two foot, three foot, four foot, you can see the progressive flooding. So, that's one thing that you're gonna want to look at in this lab. The other thing that's really cool in this lab, and I'm gonna go back to Street, and I want to move out. Let's move over here. This should be my…Why is it not letting me move out? There should be a scale over here. I'm not quite sure why it's not letting me move out. That should stay here, okay. So, actually, you know what I can do? I can enter an address. So. this is a cool thing. I actually have you do this. So, Miami, Florida. Actually let’s not go to Miami because that scenario you're gonna be dealing with. Let's go to another coastal city. Let's look at a flat coastal. Let’s go to Mobile Alabama. Mobile, Alabama and now it’s going to take me there. Okay, so here we are, Mobile. Obviously very low-lying and there's five foot of sea level rise in Mobile. Go back down again, three foot, you can see the water goes out, but, boy, it's flooded this area pretty well. I'm gonna go back out to satellite view. And what you can look at on the left side here, is you can look at flood frequency, which would give you an area in red. Very similar to that other map showing you how frequently that area floods. But you'll also notice areas around these creeks are flooding a lot as well in red. So, that's the flood frequency. And the other thing we have you look at is this vulnerability map, which I find really interesting. And you look at the vulnerability map, and it tells you a lot. So, there's not a lot of construction here, so that's why that's not that vulnerable. But if you look at Mobile, most vulnerable is in red and least vulnerable is in pink. And you can tell differences between different areas in terms of their vulnerability. What it means is the vulnerability is not just the susceptibility of an area to sea level rise, but it's also how vulnerable the population is. So, for example, if you're looking at the inner city where there's a lot of poor people who can't adapt to sea level because they don't have the resources, that's going to be an area that's more vulnerable to sea level rise, than if you're looking at downtown Manhattan where everybody's millionaires. Okay, and so that's just an example. This is sort of a sociological side of sea level change that I find so interesting, and I hope you will too. So, you're going to be looking at a combination of the sea level rise view, you're going to be looking at the flood frequency view, and you're also going to be looking at this vulnerability view. And to move around from area to area because… Oh yeah, here it is. Look at this, there it is. I just lost it. I'm thinking I'm in Google Earth, but here it is, down here. Just enter these addresses where you want a tool around to. So, enjoy yourselves. I think it's a lot of fun. It's a really interesting lab, and you can tell I'm really enthusiastic about it. So, I will talk to you later on.