Sea Level Change

Climate change presents numerous challenges for management of U.S. National Park Service (NPS) natural and cultural resources and infrastructure. 92% of U.S. coastal national parks are, or will be, affected by sea level rise. The parks need the best available sea level rise and storm surge projections for park planning. It was announced in September 2013, that the NPS has taken the proactive approach to identifying and addressing these issues by launching a project to examine future sea level and storm surge 118 coastal parks. The aim of this project is to determine how vulnerable to sea level change and flooding from coastal storms these parks are so that we can protect these resources before they are lost forever. Rising sea level coupled with storm events like Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy are endangering habitats and cultural resources and will require changes to coastal infrastructure.

Human emissions of greenhouse gases are changing the sea level around the world. Although it is not possible to directly attribute any single hurricane to human climate change, the storm surges caused by hurricanes exacerbate damage from climate change caused sea level rise. This project is working to provide park managers and planners with the best available science that can be incorporated into park documents. Dr. Maria Caffrey and her team from the University of Colorado Boulder are in the process of compiling sea level change data under a number of climate scenarios. These data contain information gathered from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Sea level change scenarios have been combined with NOAA Sea, Lake, and Overland Surges from Hurricanes (SLOSH) models to estimate which areas could be inundated by sea level changes and storm surges over the next century.