NASA, the independent space agency of the United States Government, has reportedly warned that coastal cities throughout the U.S. and the rest of the world would be battered by an increasing amount of tidal floods in a decade’ time, triggered by a notable rise in lunar movement.
For the uninitiated, the moon controls tidal activity of the Earth’s oceans and seas with its gravitational pull on a monthly basis. However, the Sea Level Change Science Team at NASA has calculated that a mid-2030s lunar cycle will significantly amplify the rising of sea levels triggered by climate change.
This would be causing a number of coastal communities from across the world to come under immense pressure from the threat of rising sea levels.
A NASA news release stated that the phenomenon of rising global sea levels will be at work for an additional decade. The higher sea levels, more pronounced by the lunar cycle, would cause a significant uptick in flood numbers across almost all mainland U.S. coastlines, Guam, and Hawaii.
As per reports, Scientists at NASA took all possible known causes of flood, both astronomical as well as oceanic, into account and came to a conclusion that the middle of the next decade would present the perfect conditions for a storm of flood-related dangers.
It is to be noted that while high-tide floods are not as instantly catastrophic and damaging as storm surges such as the 2004 one that hit New Orleans, they can just as be destructive owing to their consistent nature.
Prof. Phil Thompson from NASA, who also works as an assistant professor in the department of oceanography at the University of Hawaii, stated that it is the overall accumulated effect that has gathered over time which will have a major impact.
The moon is known for having a monthly gravitational cycle that cause tidal activities as it orbits the Earth. However, the satellite is not as well known for its large 18.6-year cycle that affects its angle of rotation.
Scientists predict, when this cycle is combined with the climate-change driven rising sea levels, it could cause major problems.
Source credit: https://metro.co.uk/2021/07/14/a-forthcoming-moon-wobble-will-cause-devastating-flooding-nasa-says-14928946/