Record King Tide’s mark rising sea level – future norms
All over the world extreme high tide’s, so called “King Tides” have been setting new records. Tides are more extreme each month reflecting the lunar cycle and the alignment of the planets. Such extreme tides add to the gradually rising sea level, and occasionally to a higher ocean bulge due to a low pressure system or storm surge. Superstorm Sandy was a clear example of all these effects piling up for greater effect.
This week a Youtube video was posted from Kits Pool, a location in Vancouver, British Columbia showing the new high water mark: http://youtu.be/S0q98sZZdl8 Similar problems happened all the way down the Pacific Coast from Seattle to San Diego. A website displays photos of such California events and encourages their submission.
As explained in the first chapter of High Tide On Main Street, the coming coasal crisis is a combination the new era of long term sea level rise for the coming centuries, combined with storm surge and extreme tides. We need to get used to it and realize that the coast is moving inland for the first time in 6,000 years. This requires a totally new mindset for our coasts. This is highly disruptive and mentally challenging. Most people are still totally unaware. Help to inform, whether that means directing them to my book or any other forum to explain the big picture of this new era of Earth’s history. This is no longer our grandfather’s planet. That is not a political opinion. It is a fact. The sooner we embrace and confront that reality the sooner we will stop squandering resources pretending that this is some natural phenomenon and part of nature’s cycles.
Cycles of the natural world are involved. But as those who have read my book understand, we have now altered the natural ice age cycle of the last few million years. By the natural cycle, we should be entering the eighty thousand year cooling period, heading towards the next ice age, characterized by increasing ice sheets and falling sea level. The opposite is happening and will continue for at least a thousand years. That much excess heat is already stored in the ocean. It is 1.5 degrees F (0.8 C) warmer than a century ago.
Today’s King Tides show what future normal high tide will be. They can serve as a warning of how radically we have to adapt, either building higher, with different structures, or retreating.