More and more residents will find their neighborhoods and streets flooded, environmental officials warned city commissioners Tuesday. Low-lying areas like posh Las Olas Isles will experience the brunt first, but much of the eastern portion of the city as well as downtown will be affected within the next century.
Environmental agencies project the ocean will rise in the region between 2 and 5 feet by 2100 as a result of global climate change.
They said flooding would be more frequent and more severe. The officials pointed to flooding that occurs in Las Olas Isles during seasonal high tides as an example of the future for more of the city.
“While we can think of sea-level rise being something far off in the future, we are getting glimpses of what it will look like during these extreme high tides," said Nancy Gassman, the head of Broward County's climate change program.
They say residents can expect hotter summers and more extreme weather from wetter rainy seasons to longer droughts as well.
The projections mirrored those in federal and regional environmental reports over the past decade, but officials focused on how climate change will affect specific areas of Fort Lauderdale. National and international scientific panels have concluded that human activities account at least partly for a rise in global temperatures and thus sea levels, but climate change remains politically divisive across the nation. Read the full report here.
Source: by Scott Wyman, Broward Politics, Sun Sentinel.com.
