Coastal Storminess Is Changing

[GordMay]

How coastal storminess is changing

Coastal flooding causes billions of dollars in damage each year. Rising sea levels are known to be a key driver, but the importance of another factor, storm surges, is less clear. Typically after accounting for increasing sea level, they’re not thought to make much of an impact. However new research suggests that this may not be the case.

“Trends in Europe storm surge extremes match the rate of sea-level rise” ~ by Francisco M. Calafat et al
➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04426-5

[Island Time O25]

At about the time of Industrialization we started losing our "in tune with nature" abilities. Case in point. In my university geography class back in the 80s my definitely unPC OZ born professor was laughing at then rising efforts to save heating/cooling costs, etc. which were all the rage in the wake of the oil crisis of the 70s.

He said that 90% of the then newly built housing has failed to take into account house orientation to the sun, to prevailing winds, landscape shades, etc. Basically he said no one was paying attention to things which were integral to the ancient and medieval builders as most of the time they had to be very frugal with those costs. He would point out that in the New England winter tiny windows and show shedding highly sloping roofs were the correct adaptations to the climate. Not the wall sized windows and flat roofs of the ranch style or some such which may be suitable in a different climate.

IMO same with coastal properties today. We build where there is (and always was) high probability of flooding and storm surges and then we rake our brains and drain our pocketbooks to remediate our building and design mistakes.