High tides could be higher than normal through Jan. 13 in the Chesapeake Bay area and citizens are being asked to help document flooding.
Maryland is joining the King Tide Photo Initiative already underway in numbers of coastal U.S. states, British Columbia and Australia. The effort uses citizen-submitted photos of tidal flooding to track areas that already are or could be vulnerable to storm surges in the future.
"Not only are the seas rising because of melting glaciers and rising temperatures, but the land here in the Chesapeake is also sinking," says CoastSmart Communities Planner Kate Skaggs with Maryland's Department of Natural Resources.
The sea level in Maryland is expected to rise 3- to 4 feet over the next century.
This, of course depends on climate models predicting global warming rate which have not proven to be correct in the past. Current sea level rise in the mid-Atlantic region is 3-4 mm/year (12-16 inches per century) with no evidence for acceleration.
Higher than average so-called King Tides are caused when the sun, moon and Earth line up in a position that allows the gravitational force among them to exaggerate tides here.
"Water levels are continuing to rise, but King Tides are not climate change and they are not sea level rise. But, they may help provide an indicator of what is to come in the future," Skaggs says.
I could probably find some flooding pictures for them. But I won't.
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