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Article
Evolving Tides Aggravate Nuisance Flooding Along the U.S. Coastline.
Science Advances
  • Sida Li, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
  • Thomas Wahl, University of Central Florida
  • Stefan A. Talke, California Polytechnic State University
  • David A Jay, Portland State University
  • Philip M Orton, Stevens Institute of Technology
  • Xinghui Liang, Chinese Academy of Sciences
  • Guocheng Wang, Chinese Academy of Sciences
  • Lintao Liu, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
3-5-2021
Subjects
  • Tides,
  • Coastal flooding
Abstract

Nuisance flooding (NF) is defined as minor, nondestructive flooding that causes substantial, accumulating socioeconomic impacts to coastal communities. While sea-level rise is the main driver for the observed increase in NF events in the United States, we show here that secular changes in tides also contribute. An analysis of 40 tidal gauge records from U.S. coasts finds that, at 18 locations, NF increased due to tidal amplification, while decreases in tidal range suppressed NF at 11 locations. Estuaries show the largest changes in NF attributable to tide changes, and these can often be traced to anthropogenic alterations. Limited long-term measurements from estuaries suggest that the effects of evolving tides are more widespread than the locations considered here. The total number of NF days caused by tidal changes has increased at an exponential rate since 1950, adding ~27% to the total number of NF events observed in 2019 across locations with tidal amplification.

Rights
  • Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC).

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.

DOI
10.1126/sciadv.abe2412
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/35039
Citation Information
Li, S., Wahl, T., Talke, S. A., Jay, D. A., Orton, P. M., Liang, X., Wang, G., & Liu, L. (2021). Evolving tides aggravate nuisance flooding along the U.S. coastline. Science Advances, 7(10), eabe2412. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abe2412