Why Is The Promenade Flooding Getting Worse Every Year?
Sea Level Rise
Maryland has 3,100 miles of tidal shoreline, making it the fourth most vulnerable state to suffer the effects of sea-level rise associated with climate change.
As areas such as the Eastern Shore and parts of Baltimore become flooded more regularly, increased damages to infrastructure and loss of land are possible.
Higher temps
Increases in Maryland’s average temperature have already led to frequent and intense heat waves that negatively impact public health, agriculture, and energy demand. For every 2 degrees Fahrenheit the earth warms, there is an estimated 15% decrease in arctic sea ice, directly leading to sea level rise
Increased Rain
Climate change already brings more frequent and intense rain events to Maryland, resulting in more flooding, landslides, and erosion.
Increased rainfall volume and frequency can lead to failures in stormwater infrastructure resulting in Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs), sinkhole formation, and pollution entering our waterways.
What is “Sunny Day Flooding”? (aka Nuisance Flooding)
Sunny Day Flooding is a rising problem in coastal areas like Baltimore and much of Maryland and other low-lying areas or those with a lot of shoreline. These areas can flood during high tide events even on days with little to no rain or storms. This type of flooding is becoming more common due to rising sea levels. It can lead to basement flooding in homes, damage to infrastructure, crops, and habitats.
Understanding the generational opportunity for Baltimore presented by the Harborplace redevelopment and reconstruction of part of the Inner Harbor Promenade, the Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore (WPB) and the Baltimore Department of Planning, Office of Sustainability, identified the need for the design to be resilient to climate change, particularly sea-level rise. WPB, with support from the Department of Planning, engaged a consultant team, SCAPE Landscape Architecture DPC, to better understand the available sea-level rise projections and likely implication of flooding in the Inner Harbor with a focus on high tide flooding and the potential for flooding of the Inner Harbor Promenade.
Specifically this memo is intended to:
Provide an overview of recent coastal flooding trends based on existing available information including city planning documents and NOAA tide gauge data,
Advise on appropriate available sea-level rise projections to use for analyzing future flood risk to the Inner Harbor Promenade,
Describe and visualize likely future water levels and flooding with those sea-level rise projections, and
Engage with City agencies and select stakeholders for input into and to share findings from this analysis of likely sea-level rise and high tide flooding in the Inner Harbor Promenade in order to inform WPB and the City’s review and evaluation of the developer team’s design proposals.
This memo summarizes the findings and conclusions.
Sea Level Rise is making Coastal Flooding more frequent and more severe in Baltimore
Water levels associated with high frequency coastal flooding due to normal coastal processes were estimated for the 10 times per year, once per year (annual), and once in 10 years (10% annual chance) flood events. These were determined based on frequency return curves provided by Jamie Carter at NOAA Office for Coastal Management. These curves were generated based on NOAA analysis of past and projected water levels due to non-storm tidal conditions and coastal processes (versus extreme storm events) and draw in the data from the Interagency 2022 Sea Level Rise Technical Report (Sweet et al. 2022). The curve for the selected sea-level rise assumptions (increasing emissions, 95% quantile) used to generate these projected water levels is shown below.
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