NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) — The first-ever climate assessment for the state of Virginia is sounding the alarm for the Commonwealth’s coastal regions.
The study out of George Mason University claims that sea levels are rising at a moderate rate currently, but could accelerate greatly in just the next few decades.
“What we expect in the future, particularly after 2050, is an acceleration in that rise due to warming in the global climate system,” said Dr. Jessica Whitehead, director of Old Dominion University’s Institute for Coastal Adaptation and Resilience and a co-author on the recent Virginia climate assessment. “Then we expect that acceleration to growth higher rates per year.”
It’s a rising issue in the future that will affect the children of today.
“Somebody who is in our middle school system in Hampton Roads here right now, those kids are the ones who are going to be challenged the most by making sure that we’re able to deal with this rise in the future,” Whitehead said.
Whitehead said the concerning rise in sea levels is due to a multitude of factors, some unique to Hampton Roads.
“Tens of thousands of years ago, we had the impact from a meteor in the region,” Whitehead said. “That is one of the areas where we have land that’s sinking a little bit faster than the land everywhere else. Our drinking water is coming mostly from deep, deep aquifers. But drawing down on that aquifer also leads to the sinking. We’re beginning to lose coastal forests that are becoming saltwater marshes, so they can’t continue to trap sediment and get taller faster than the sea levels rising.”
Whitehead said the rising sea levels will have a direct impact on urban flood mitigation.
“Our stormwater systems were built in some places over 100 years ago,” Whitehead said, “so as the sea level is rising, that sea level is rising into those systems, so they have less capacity to be able to process stormwater.”
The environmental risks are ones that come with economic costs.
“We very often think of this as an environmental issue, and it is, but there’s also economic costs for us,” Whitehead said. “The potential home values that are at risk, that’s in the billions of dollars. Our ports have to be right where the water is. That cargo has to be able to move in and out those ports. These are all things that are at risk. Yes, it’s about the environment, but it’s very much about us, too.”
The good news, as Whitehead puts it, is that Hampton Roads as a region is active in addressing these rising sea levels and risks, but that major projects to fully address the issue will take time, and in some cases, decades.
Know more
If you’d like to see the climate assessment for yourself, see below:
