NASA Photo Illuminates Florida's Risk For Sea Level Rise, Deadly Tropical Cyclones

NASA's Earth Observatory just released an awe-inspiring photo (in the slideshow above) that shows just why so many Floridians are at risk to tropical cyclones and global sea level rise.

The photo, taken by astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in October 2014, shows Florida's peninsula illuminated at night. As NASA notes, the brightest areas in the photo indicate the most populous areas in the state. Notably, the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metro area, home to 5.6 million people, is the most noticeable blip on the landscape, lighting up the entire southeastern coast of Florida a brilliant white.

Other noticeable cities include the Tampa metro area (2.8 million people), the brightest area on the Gulf Coast, the Orlando metro area (2.3 million people), which lights up a chunk of central Florida and the Jacksonville metro area (1.3 million people) in the far northeastern corner of the state.

More importantly, as you can tell from the bright spots in the photo, most of Florida's nearly 20 million people live along the coast. And even though Florida hasn't had a hurricane make landfall on the state in more than nine years, the risk for a potentially deadly tropical cyclone only increases as more people flock to Florida's coasts.

The most notorious example might just come from Hurricane Andrew, which made landfall as a Category 5 hurricane in the Miami metro area in 1992. When Andrew came ashore in the Homestead, Florida, area it shredded homes and caused an estimated $23 billion in damage, killing 23 people.

Global sea level rise is another risk to the millions along Florida's coast. Since 1880, sea levels along the Florida coast have risen by nearly a foot, and are projected to rise another 3 to 6 feet by the end of the century due to climate change. So great is the concern for sea level rise in the coastal areas of South Florida, where some areas are currently just five feet above sea level, that local politicians in South Miami, Florida, recently proposed splitting Florida into two separate states, North and South Florida, in order to better sort out sea level rise implications.

With Florida's population centers so clustered along the coast, it seems more like a matter of when, not if, serious and possibly deadly events could impact millions of Floridians.

Link: http://www.wunderground.com/news/nasa-photo-florida-coast-night-20141119