Riding the Waves of Climate Change: Unveiling the Connection Between Rising Sea Levels and Precipitation

As the polar ice caps melt, sea levels are on the rise across the globe, and, as a result, coastal flooding events in many areas are increasing in frequency. One of these areas is the Chesapeake Bay Region (CBR) which was an area of interest for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Student Airborne Research Program for the US East Coast (NASA SARP East). As a part of this field campaign, the lead researcher for this project chose to evaluate the connection between rising sea levels and precipitation through an assessment of coastal flooding events in the CBR. The hypothesis for this study is that sea level rise is becoming an increasingly important factor for coastal flooding events and, as such, less precipitation is required for these occurrences to take place. To assess this possible indirect relationship, data from 18 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tide gauges in the CBR were incorporated along with precipitation records from NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) satellite collaboration. With these data sources, coastal flood days were identified and precipitation records from those days were extracted. Then, a hydrological model for the region was created via the US Geological Survey's Digital Elevation Model (USGS DEM) and the Chesapeake Bay Program's (CBP) Land-River Segmentations. This model was used on flood days to identify how much precipitation fell in each tide gauge's watershed. The results for all of the tide gauges indicate the precipitation occurring during flood days is decreasing, implying that precipitation is becoming less of a factor for coastal flood events in the CBR.