Rising sea levels: The economy is going down the drain

What are the economic consequences of a rise in sea level? US researchers pursued this question and came to the city of Annapolis to amazing insights.

By Arthur Landwehr, ARD-Studio, Washington

It's not the big disasters. There are small events preceding the great change. The sea level has risen by a few inches, and the small shops in the old port of Annapolis in the vicinity of Washington make $ 100,000 less in sales. Here, climate change is not something Abstract, but concretely.

What happened? Always when the tide is higher than normal, flooded the Parking lot at the port, the roads and the walkways up to the doors of the shops. After a few hours, with low tide, everything is gone again. Sunshine flood you call it. In the USA alone, there are more than 200 coastal cities.

Only: "In the 1950s, the communities had an average of two Floods in a year. In the first decade of this century, has risen to eleven in the year," says Christopher Field of Stanford University.

Also threatens the island of Tangier, on the coast Virginiasist by climate change. A good 60 percent of the island have disappeared in the past 150 years - the Rest may go in the next 25 years.

In Annapolis on the Chesapeake Bay, not miles as the crow flies from the Atlantic ocean, the change is particularly large: In the 1960s, the tide rose to an average of four Times a year on the shore. In 2017, this happened 63 Times; because the sea level has risen.

researchers from Stanford University wanted to know, what are the economic consequences of the. They analyzed the Parking machines, flood weirs, surveillance cameras, sales of businesses, and much more, in order to get accurate data. Then they compared specific days over several years with each other - for example, a Sunny Tuesday in October with and without Flooding.

The result: "Flooding due to high tide, the visitors reduced to two percent or 3,000," says Miyuki Hino, who led the study.