The Rising Tide
March 15th, 2008 at 8:30 am
Imagine this: By 2100, the Gulf rises 2-4 feet, inundating Galveston as well as portions of Harris County and Southeast Texas, threatening roads, rails, pipelines and ports; average annual temperatures climb 2-4F and very hot days get even hotter, stressing vehicles and energy systems and buckling Houston’s METRORail; increasingly powerful and more frequent storms hammer the Port of Houston, airports, and petrochemical facilities in Port Arthur, Beaumont, Freeport and Houston. Sound like a far-fetched scenario hatched by a Hollywood imagination? Unfortunately, that’s not the case.
A major study of likely climate change impacts to the Gulf Coast has just been released by the U.S. Department of Transportation and the U.S. Climate Change Science Program. The Bush administration has predictably downplayed the 439-page report, entitled Impacts of Climate Change and Variability on Transportation Systems and Infrastructure: Gulf Coast Study, Phase 1. Drawing on a growing body of scientific literature, the authors examine how rising sea levels, increased storm intensity, warming temperatures, and changes in precipitation present risks to transportation and infrastructure in the central Gulf region from Houston-Galveston to Mobile, Alabama. It’s gonna be one hell of a ride.
Despite the serious consequences posed for Houston-Galveston and Southeast Texas there has been scant media attention to the study. Worse, the authors also found that “most [transportation planning] agencies do not consider climate change projections per se in their long-range plans, infrastructure design, or siting decisions.” (How much you wanna bet Gov. Perry’s TxDOT is one of those heads-in-the-sand agencies?)
Key excerpts from the report, which can be read in its entirety here:
The changing climate raises critical questions for the transportation sector in the United States. As global temperatures increase, sea levels rise, and weather patterns change, the stewards of our Nation’s infrastructure are challenged to consider how these changes may affect the country’s roads, airports, rail, transit systems, and ports. The U.S. transportation network – built and maintained through substantial public and private investment – is vital to the Nation’s economy and the quality of our communities. Yet little research has been conducted to identify what risks this system faces from climate change, or what steps managers and policy makers can take today to ensure the safety and resilience of our vital transportation system.
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Warming temperatures are likely to increase the costs of transportation construction, maintenance, and operations. More frequent extreme precipitation events may disrupt transportation networks with flooding and visibility problems. Relative sea level rise will make much of the existing infrastructure more prone to frequent or permanent inundation – 27 percent of the major roads, 9 percent of the rail lines, and 72 percent of the ports are built on land at or below 122 cm (4 feet) in elevation. Increased storm intensity may lead to increased service disruption and infrastructure damage: More than half of the area’s major highways (64 percent of Interstates; 57 percent of arterials), almost half of the rail miles, 29 airports, and virtually all of the ports are below 7 m (23 feet) in elevation and subject to flooding and possible damage due to hurricane storm surge.
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In addition, the climate analysis indicates that the number of hurricanes may increase as the temperature of the sea surface continues to warm. Simulated storm surge from model runs across the central Gulf Coast at today’s elevations and sea levels demonstrated a 6.7- to 7.3-m (22- to 24-ft) potential surge for major hurricanes of Category 3 or greater. Based on recent experience, even these levels may be conservative; surge levels during Hurricane Katrina (rated a Category 3 at landfall) exceeded these heights in some locations. Many of the region’s major roads, railroads, and airports have been constructed on land surfaces at elevations below 5 m (16.4 ft). Storm surge poses significant risk to transportation facilities due to the immediate flooding of infrastructure, the damage caused by the force of the water, and secondary damage caused by collisions with debris.
Many of us will see these impacts become a reality in our lifetimes. In fact relative sea-level rise (the combination of sinking land and rising oceans) is already a bitter truth for Galveston Island, as I wrote last November in the Observer. Check out the interactive map on how rising seas will affect Galveston here. And here’s a graph of the tide gauge at Pier 21 in Galveston. The trend is about 1/4-inch per year, but by all indications the rate is accelerating due to climate change.
