Sea Level

Glacial Rebound: The Not So Solid Earth

nasa.gov - August 26, 2015

When you fill a sink, the water rises at the same rate to the same height in every corner. That's not the way it works with our rising seas.

According to the 23-year record of satellite data from NASA and its partners, the sea level is rising a few millimeters a year -- a fraction of an inch. If you live on the U.S. East Coast, though, your sea level is rising two or three times faster than average. If you live in Scandinavia, it's falling. Residents of China's Yellow River delta are swamped by sea level rise of more than nine inches (25 centimeters) a year.

These regional differences in sea level change will become even more apparent in the future, as ice sheets melt. For instance, when the Amundsen Sea sector of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is totally gone, the average global sea level will rise four feet. But the East Coast of the United States will see an additional 14 to 15 inches above that average.

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The Lake Borgne Surge Barrier, which rises 26 feet above sea level, is designed to be overtopped by storm surges created by a hurricane with a 1 percent chance of occurring in any year, the so-called 100-year storm, hits the area. The overtopping water will be stored in the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway and the Industrial Canal in New Orleans. Larger storms will cause even more water to overtop the wall.

nola.com - by Mark Schleifstein - August 18, 2015

The rebuilt New Orleans area hurricane levee system remains inadequate to protect the heart of the nation's 45^th largest metropolitan area from another Hurricane Katrina or larger storm, nationally-known engineers and scientists said almost a decade after the 2005 storm.

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WIRED                 BY Katie M. Palmer                                                    Nov. 24, 214

The FDA announced Friday that it would start developing a stockpile of blood plasma from Ebola survivors, treated with a pathogen inactivation system that’s never been used before in the United States.

So far, the US has had some amazing success in curing Ebola, possibly thanks to experimental plasma treatments. Drawn from survivors, the stuff comes enriched in antibodies that could help to fight off the disease—but it also has the potential to carry other diseases, like malaria, that are common in west Africa where Ebola is raging. The new system will kill off any extra contaminants that may be lurking in this potentially live-saving serum.

It’s the same one, Cerus Corporation’s Intercept system, that will be used in a Gates Foundation-funded study of Ebola treatments in West Africa. The pathogen-killing molecule at the heart of the system is amotosalen, part of a class of three-ringed molecules called psoralens....

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submitted by Albert Gomez 

In November 2013, a full moon and high tides led to flooding in parts of the city, including here at Alton Road and 10th Street. Photograph: Corbis

Low-lying south Florida, at the front line of climate change in the US, will be swallowed as sea levels rise. Astonishingly, the population is growing, house prices are rising and building goes on. The problem is the city is run by climate change deniers

theguardian.com - by Robin McKie - July 11, 2014

A drive through the sticky Florida heat into Alton Road in Miami Beach can be an unexpectedly awkward business. Most of the boulevard, which runs north through the heart of the resort's most opulent palm-fringed real estate, has been reduced to a single lane that is hemmed in by bollards, road-closed signs, diggers, trucks, workmen, stacks of giant concrete cylinders and mounds of grey, foul-smelling earth.