A team of international researchers has found a link between seasonal fluctuations in sea level to a long-time phenomenon — Rossby Waves. And this connection may lead to a new tool to help coastal communities, such as Miami, better anticipate and mitigate “nuisance flooding” impacts.
A team of international researchers has found a link between seasonal fluctuations in sea level to a long-time phenomenon — Rossby Waves. And this connection may lead to a new tool to help coastal communities, such as Miami, better anticipate and mitigate “nuisance flooding” impacts.
“We’ve known for a long time that sea level is rising and that there are also important fluctuations happening on different time scales, including seasonal variations, which are the reason that nuisance flooding in cities like Miami typically occurs in late summer or early fall,” said UCF coastal engineer Thomas Wahl, who was part of the research team.
“We can predict high tide and low tide and we know what causes sea level to vary seasonally, but we found that in some years the seasonal fluctuations are much larger along the Gulf and U.S. southeast coasts than in others, causing more nuisance flooding and increasing flood risk from storm surges during the hurricane season. These unusually large seasonal fluctuations were poorly understood and Rossby Waves appear to be the missing piece.”
Read more at University of Central Florida
Image Credit: B137 via Wikimedia Commons
