From Droughts to Floods, Extreme Weather’s Increasing Impact

Far from being a problem for future generations, climate change and its impacts both severe and incremental are confounding communities across the country every single day, according to Rebecca Smyth, the West Coast director of the Coastal Services Center, a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that focuses on coastal health, restoration, and resilience.

In an opening address to land use professionals gathered in San Francisco for ULI’s “Building the Resilient City: Risks and Opportunities”conference, Smyth explained how sea-level rise exacerbates the severity of high tides—a normal occurrence that can now have catastrophic consequences. NOAA estimates that sea levels have risen 0.12 inch (0.3 cm) per year since 1992 due to warming oceans and melting of land-based ice like glaciers and polar ice caps.

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Pointing to a photo of a man rowing a kayak through a Sausalito, California, parking lot inundated with water, Smyth said such freakish scenarios are the result of high tides leading to urban floods.

“When we talk about climate change, we can’t talk about it as a future state anymore,” she said. “We have to talk about it as a new normal to plan for and invest in today.” This was the major conclusion of the Third National Climate Assessment, released by the U.S. Global Change Research Program in May.

Smyth said that NOAA takes a “systems-based” approach to coastal resilience to climate change, one that encompasses risks to wastewater and urban stormwater infrastructure, transportation networks, and energy grids. Uneven social and economic vulnerability across communities and fragile ecosystems also complicate coastal regions’ ability to bounce back after severe weather events. One of the major hurdles in taking a systems approach to climate mitigation is that each individual component that needs to be fortified—rail systems, wetlands, and power and sewer lines—receives funding from the government separately, Smyth added.

Smyth pointed to several NOAA/Coastal Services Center initiatives intended to bolster the efforts of coastal communities in adapting to climate impacts. Adapting to Rising Tides, or ART, is a Bay Area–focused pilot project that seeks to identify climate-related vulnerabilities of a dozen major community assets, including the Oakland International Airport and the Port of Oakland, along a 66-square-mile (171 sq km) study area skirting the East Bay.

To provide communities with applied research, Smyth cited the Digital Coast Partnership (DCP), a collaboration among NOAA/CSC, the Urban Land Institute, and other nongovernmental organizations as well as academic institutions. The DCP’s website offers real-time data, toolkits, technical assistance, and case studies in developing climate adaption strategies. Among the tools available is the Sea-Level Rise and Coastal Flooding Impacts Viewer, which offers simulations of sea-level rise in coastal areas.

Finally, Smyth explained how the most successful approach that cities and regions can take to adapt to climate change will combine “gray” (manmade) and “green” (natural) infrastructure. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has championed what it calls SAGE (Systems Approach to Geomorphic Engineering) that embraces both built and natural solutions to coastal resilience. Smyth called upon the audience to “change how we view green infrastructure and nature-based solutions as part of our defense against the hazards and changes, especially sea-level rise.” Wetlands, for example, improve water quality, boost local tourism economies, and reduce the impacts of flooding and tides.

“We have urbanized in a way that has largely been about building around nature instead of building with nature,” Smyth said. “What we have now is an opportunity to build with nature.”