NASA Study: Rising Sea Level Could Exceed Estimates for U.S. Coasts

 By 2050, sea level along contiguous U.S. coastlines could rise as much as 12 inches (30 centimeters) above today’s waterline, according to researchers who analyzed nearly three decades of satellite observations. The results from the NASA Sea Level Change Team could help refine near-term projections for coastal communities that are bracing for increases in both catastrophic and nuisance flooding in coming years.

Global sea level has been rising for decades in response to a warming climate, and multiple lines of evidence indicate the rise is accelerating. The new findings support the higher-range scenarios outlined in an interagency report released in February 2022. 

That report, developed by several federal agencies – including NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the U.S. Geological Survey – expect significant sea level rise over the next 30 years by region. They projected 10 to 14 inches (25 to 35 centimeters) of rise on average for the East Coast, 14 to 18 inches (35 to 45 centimeters) for the Gulf Coast, and 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters) for the West Building on the methods used in that earlier report, a team led by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California leveraged 28 years of satellite altimeter measurements of sea surface height and correlated them with NOAA tide gauge records dating as far back as 1920. By continuously measuring the height of the surrounding water level, tide gauges provide a consistent record to compare with satellite observations.

The researchers noted that the accelerating rate of sea level rise detected in satellite measurements from 1993 to 2020 – and the direction of those trends – suggest future sea level rise will be in the higher range of estimates for all regions. 

The trends along the U.S. Southeast and Gulf coasts are substantially higher than for the Northeast and West coasts, although the range of uncertainty for the Southeast and Gulf coasts is also larger. This uncertainty is caused by factors such as the effects of storms and other climate variability, as well as the natural sinking or shifting of Earth’s surface along different parts of the coast.

Learn more online at: https://sealevel.nasa.gov/newsletter_signup?email=

Cold Patch in North Atlantic…

Icelandic glaciers - Credit: Finnur Pálsson

"A region of cooling water in the North Atlantic Ocean, located south of Iceland and Greenland, has likely slowed the melting of glaciers since 2011 and may continue to stymie ice loss until 2050, according to researchers.

 "Nicknamed the ‘Blue Blob,’ the cold patch was most prominent during the winter of 2014-2015 when the sea surface temperature was about 1.4°C (2.52°F) colder than normal, although the origin and cause of the patch is still being investigated."

 Read the full story online at: https://www.meteorologicaltechnologyinternational.com/news/polar-weather/cold-patch-in-the-north-atlantic-helping-to-stall-glacier-loss-in-iceland.html.

Webb space telescope deployment complete

08/01/2022

Today the James Webb Space Telescope team successfully fully deployed its iconic 6.4-metre, gold-coated primary mirror, completing the final stage of all major spacecraft deployments to prepare for science operations.

“The successful unfolding of the Webb telescope has been a complex but impressive engineering masterpiece. On behalf of ESA, I want to sincerely congratulate our colleagues at NASA for this achievement. Webb is an international partnership led by NASA, where ESA is providing key contributions in the form of instruments, science teams and, very importantly, a successful launch on Christmas Day from the European Spaceport in Kourou. I am grateful to NASA, CSA and our European team including CNES, Arianespace and ArianeGroup for this excellent cooperation,” says Josef Aschbacher, ESA Director General.

Read the full release online at: hhttps://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Webb/Webb_deployment_complete

Orion’s fireplace: ESO releases new image of the Flame Nebula

Orion offers you a spectacular firework display to celebrate the holiday season and the new year in this new image from the European Southern Observatory (ESO). But no need to worry, this iconic constellation is neither exploding nor burning. 

The “fire” you see in this holiday postcard is Orion’s Flame Nebula and its surroundings captured in radio waves — an image that undoubtedly does justice to the nebula’s name! It was taken with the ESO-operated Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX), located on the cold Chajnantor Plateau in Chile’s Atacama Desert.

See the full press release and associated paper online at: https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2201/?lang.

The observations mentioned in this press release are presented in a paper accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The team is composed of Th. Stanke (European Southern Observatory, Garching bei München, Germany [ESO]), H. G. Arce (Department of Astronomy, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA), J. Bally (CASA, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA), P. Bergman (Department of Space, Earth and Environment, Chalmers University of Technology, Onsala Space Observatory, Onsala, Sweden), J. Carpenter (Joint ALMA Observatory, Santiago, Chile [ALMA]), C. J. Davis (National Science Foundation, Alexandria, VA, USA), W. Dent (ALMA), J. Di Francesco (NRC Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics, Victoria, BC, Canada [HAA] and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria, BC, Canada [UVic]), J. Eislöffel (Thüringer Landessternwarte, Tautenburg, Germany), D. Froebrich (School of Physical Sciences, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK), A. Ginsburg (Department of Astronomy, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA), M. Heyer (Department of Astronomy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA), D. Johnstone (HAA and UVic), D. Mardones (Departamento de Astronomía, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile), M. J. McCaughrean (European Space Agency, ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands), S. T. Megeath (Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Toledo, OH, USA), F. Nakamura (National Astronomical Observatory, Tokyo, Japan), M. D. Smith (Centre for Astrophysics and Planetary Science, School of Physical Sciences, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK), A. Stutz (Departmento de Astronomía, Facultad de Ciencias Físicas y Matemáticas, Universidad de Concepción, Chile), K. Tatematsu (Nobeyama Radio Observatory, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, National Institutes of Natural Sciences, Nagano, Japan), C. Walker (Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, US [SO]), J. P. Williams (Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, HI, USA), H. Zinnecker (Universidad Autonoma de Chile, Santiago, Chile), B. J. Swift (SO), C. Kulesa (SO), B. Peters (SO), B. Duffy (SO), J. Kloosterman (University of Southern Indiana, Evansville, IN, USA), U. A. Yıldız (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA [JPL]), J. L. Pineda (JPL), C. De Breuck (ESO), and Th. Klein (European Southern Observatory, Santiago, Chile).

APEX is a collaboration between the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR), the