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US

Florida population is ‘exploding’ in area hardest hit by Hurricane Ian

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CNN
 — 

Hurricane Ian last week slammed into one of the fastest-growing areas of the country, putting hundreds of thousands of people in harm’s way — many of whom had never experienced a hurricane.

Florida has added nearly 3 million people since 2010. And the Fort Myers area, which was ravaged by Ian’s deadly storm surge, was recently named the sixth fastest-growing city in the country by the US Census Bureau. The population in the Fort Myers-Cape Coral metro area was around 444,000 in 2000, according to Census Bureau data. By 2021 it had ballooned to more than 787,000.

Southwest Florida’s population has “exploded in part because it’s the cheapest part of the state to live,” according to Jesse Keenan, a professor of sustainable real estate at Tulane University’s School of Architecture, who told CNN that “there has been a huge amount of growth in the past several decades.”

Florida, which has a reputation for attracting retirees, has recently drawn new residents from parts of the country that historically don’t have much experience with hurricanes. In 2019, Florida saw the most migration from Northeast states including New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, according to the Census Bureau, in addition to states in the Midwest.

The influx comes as scientists warn that hurricanes are becoming more destructive, with larger storm surges due to sea level rise and a new propensity for strong storms to rapidly intensify.

Those trends combined with the region’s growing population, housing and infrastructure have made the coast even more vulnerable to strong storms.

But little has been done to dissuade people from moving into the danger zone, experts told CNN.

Southwest Florida is attractive in large part because it has a good quality of life – it’s sunny, warm and relatively cheap.

But something else is at play: In 2011, Florida’s Republican-controlled state legislature loosened decades-old state regulations meant to keep development in high-risk areas at a reasonable pace, or to discourage developers from building on low-lying wetlands, Keenan said.

Around the same time, former Gov. Rick Scott and Republican lawmakers approved a state budget that got rid of the Department of Community Affairs, a state office regulating growth and development.

“That opened the door for unrestrained development in ways that put people at a lot of risk, particularly flood risks,” Keenan said.

The weakening of those regulations was cheered by Florida’s business community and real estate sector, which framed the move as supercharging economic growth. But that growth started happening in riskier areas that are more vulnerable to storms.

“The bottom line is the state backed out and the counties were left to their own devices without any adult supervision,” said Keenan. “You build where the land’s cheap, and you sell that housing at a comparatively lower price. It was a race, and storms like this really force everybody to take a water break and reevaluate their lives in many ways.”

Jeremy Porter, senior research fellow for the climate risk nonprofit First Street Foundation, also noted that hard-hit Cape Coral was built on a floodplain.

“There’s a tremendous amount of risk,” Porter said.

But that risk isn’t necessarily obvious to newcomers, and there is no central resource to help homeowners understand the threat.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s flood maps – which are used to determine insurance requirements policy premiums – were not designed to serve as a general risk-assessment tool for individuals. They also only consider risk based on previous floods, rather than the increasing threat as rainfall rates get higher, sea level rises and storms get stronger.

A recent report from First Street Foundation found that as of 2020, around 8.7 million properties were listed in FEMA’s Special Flood Hazard Areas — but as many as 14.6 million properties are actually at risk of significant flooding.

And that risk grows even higher in the group’s future projections. First Street’s analysis showed that by 2050, Cape Coral will be among the cities with the greatest proportion of properties with substantial flood risk.

“None of the current standards built into public-facing maps, especially federal maps, take into account that change in climate in the future,” Porter said.

As the focus in Southwest Florida turns to rebuilding, the question now is whether state and county officials will discourage growth in these vulnerable areas. They could push residents to build more resilient homes – or give them “carte blanche” to rebuild to status quo, said Larry Larson, director emeritus and senior policy adviser for the Association of State Floodplain Managers and a longtime flood hazard expert.

“The challenge now for Florida will be you’ve got a lot of destroyed buildings, houses and so on,” Larson told CNN. “What are you going to do when you let them rebuild?”

There are a few ways some governments and the private sector can discourage people from buying homes in flood-prone areas. In some instances, the federal or local governments can buy frequently flooded properties and relocate families that live there.

Another way is to show home buyers the information up front. First Street, for example, has partnered with real estate giant Redfin to show prospective buyers how flood-prone a property is. Those estimates take the climate crisis into account.

Porter said Redfin and First Street have seen home buyers steering away from the most high-risk houses on the market.

“We’re seeing people are starting to interact with that data,” Porter said. “They’re looking explicitly at the flood risk scores.”

But it’s not fool-proof. Porter noted that people aren’t necessarily saying no to flood-prone neighborhoods just yet. Instead, they’re looking at lower-risk houses in the same area.

“It doesn’t mean people are moving outside their housing market when they see that level of risk,” Porter said.

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Science

Thwaites ‘doomsday glacier’ is holding on ‘by its fingernails,’ scientists say

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CNN
 — 

Antarctica’s so-called “doomsday glacier” – nicknamed because of its high risk of collapse and threat to global sea level – has the potential to rapidly retreat in the coming years, scientists say, amplifying concerns over the extreme sea level rise that would accompany its potential demise.

The Thwaites Glacier, capable of raising sea level by several feet, is eroding along its underwater base as the planet warms. In a study published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience, scientists mapped the glacier’s historical retreat, hoping to learn from its past what the glacier will likely do in the future.

They found that at some point in the past two centuries, the base of the glacier dislodged from the seabed and retreated at a rate of 1.3 miles (2.1 kilometers) per year. That’s twice the rate that scientists have observed in the past decade or so.

That swift disintegration possibly occurred “as recently as the mid-20th century,” Alastair Graham, the study’s lead author and a marine geophysicist at the University of South Florida, said in a news release.

It suggests the Thwaites has the capability to undergo a rapid retreat in the near future, once it recedes past a seabed ridge that is helping to keep it in check.

“Thwaites is really holding on today by its fingernails, and we should expect to see big changes over small timescales in the future – even from one year to the next – once the glacier retreats beyond a shallow ridge in its bed,” Robert Larter, a marine geophysicist and one of the study’s co-authors from the British Antarctic Survey, said in the release.

The Thwaites Glacier, located in West Antarctica, is one of the widest on Earth and is larger than the state of Florida. But it’s just a faction of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which holds enough ice to raise sea level by up to 16 feet, according to NASA.

As the climate crisis has accelerated, this region has been closely monitored because of its rapid melting and its capacity for widespread coastal destruction.

The Thwaites Glacier itself has concerned scientists for decades. As early as 1973, researchers questioned whether it was at high risk of collapse. Nearly a decade later, they found that – because the glacier is grounded to a seabed, rather than to dry land – warm ocean currents could melt the glacier from underneath, causing it to destabilize from below.

It was because of that research that scientists began calling the region around the Thwaites the “weak underbelly of the West Antarctic ice sheet.”

In the 21st century, researchers began documenting the Thwaites’ rapid retreat in an alarming series of studies.

In 2001, satellite data showed the grounding line was receding by around 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) per year. In 2020, scientists found evidence that warm water was indeed flowing across the base of the glacier, melting it from underneath.

And then in 2021, a study showed the Thwaites Ice Shelf, which helps to stabilize the glacier and hold the ice back from flowing freely into the ocean, could shatter within five years.

“From the satellite data, we’re seeing these big fractures spreading across the ice shelf surface, essentially weakening the fabric of the ice; kind of a bit like a windscreen crack,” Peter Davis, an oceanographer with the British Antarctic Survey, told CNN in 2021. “It’s slowly spreading across the ice shelf and eventually it’s going to fracture into lots of different pieces.”

Monday’s findings, which suggest the Thwaites is capable of receding at a much faster pace than recently thought, were documented on a 20-hour mission in extreme conditions that mapped an underwater area the size of Houston, according to a news release.

Graham said that this research “was truly a once in a lifetime mission,” but that the team hopes to return soon to gather samples from the seabed so they can determine when the previous rapid retreats occurred. That could help scientists predict future changes to the “doomsday glacier,” which scientists had previously assumed would be slow to undergo change – something Graham said this study disproves.

“Just a small kick to the Thwaites could lead to a big response,” Graham said.

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US

Scientists at Florida Aquarium make major breakthrough in race to save Caribbean coral reefs

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Florida Keys
CNN
 — 

Scientists at the Florida Aquarium have made a breakthrough in the race to save Caribbean coral: For the first time, marine biologists have successfully reproduced elkhorn coral, a critical species, using aquarium technology.

It’s a historic step forward, and one they hope could help revitalize Caribbean ecosystems and could pay humans back by offering extra protection from the fury of hurricanes.

Elkhorn coral once dominated the Caribbean. But, just as other vital coral ecosystems are degrading around the world, elkhorn are now rarely seen alive in the wild. This species — so important because it provides the building blocks for reefs to flourish — has been until now notoriously difficult to grow in aquariums.

Which is why scientists were thrilled when they saw their reproductive experiment was a success.

“When it finally happened, the first sense is just sheer relief.” said Keri O’Neil, the senior scientist that oversees the Tampa aquarium’s spawning lab. “This is a critical step to preventing elkhorn coral from going extinct in the state of Florida.”

O’Neil’s colleagues call her the “coral whisperer” because she has managed to spawn so many varieties of coral. Elkhorn marks the aquarium’s 14th species spawned inside the Apollo Beach lab, but the team ranks it as its most important yet.

O’Neil estimates there are only about 300 elkhorn coral left in the Florida Keys Reef Tract — but the spawning experiment produced thousands of baby coral. She expects up to 100 of them could survive into adulthood.

Named for its resemblance to elk antlers, the coral thrives at the top of reefs, typically growing in water depths of less than 20 feet. This makes their colonies crucial for breaking up large waves. During peak hurricane season, reefs are a silent but powerful ally that protects Florida’s coastlines from storm surges, which are growing larger as sea levels rise.

“As these reefs die, they begin to erode away and we lose that coastal protection as well as all of the habitat that these reefs provide for fish and other species,” O’Neil said. “Now there are so few left, there’s just a few scattered colonies. But we’re really focusing on restoring the elkhorn coral population for coastal protection.”

The Florida Aquarium’s news comes after scientists reported in early August that the Great Barrier Reef was showing the largest extent of coral cover in 36 years. But the outlook for coral around the world is grim — studies have shown that the climate crisis could kill all of Earth’s coral reefs by the end of the century.

Elkhorn coral was listed as federally threatened under the US Endangered Species Act in 2006 after scientists found that disease cut the population by 97% since the 1980s. And ocean warming is its largest threat. As ocean temperature rises, coral expels the symbiotic algae that lives inside it and produces nutrients. This is the process of coral bleaching, and it typically ends in death for the coral.

“They’re dying around the world,” O’Neil told CNN. “We are at a point now where they may never be the same. You can’t have the ocean running a fever every summer and not expect there to be impacts.”

Elkhorn coral seem to have something analogous to a fertility problem. Its reproduction is sporadic in the wild, making it difficult to sustain a much-needed increase in population. Because of its low reproductive rate, genetic diversity can also be very low, making them more susceptible to disease.

“You could say they’re successfully having sex, but they’re not successfully making babies [in the wild],” O’Neil said. “Terrestrial animals do this all the time. When you have an endangered panda or chimpanzee, the first thing you do is start a breeding program, but coral reproduction is super weird.”

The most challenging part for O’Neil’s team was doing the unprecedented — getting the coral to spawn in a lab. O’Neil said other researchers doubted they could pull it off.

“We faced a lot of criticism from people,” she said. They would say “‘you can’t keep those in an aquarium. You know that’s impossible!’”

They were right. At first.

Elkhorn coral only spawn once a year. In the lab’s 2021 experiment, the environment was strictly controlled to imitate natural conditions. Using LED lights, they accurately mimicked sunrise, sunset and moon cycles. But the coral didn’t spawn.

We “realized that the timing of moonrise was off by about three hours,” O’Neil said.

After that frustrating failure, the aquarium’s scientists knew they had a much better shot this year. And, with support from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Restoration Center and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the Florida Aquarium did in August what was thought impossible by some peers.

The spawning could be a game-changer, according to Thomas Frazer, the dean of the College of Marine Science at the University of South Florida, and it could lead to a future where coral is more resilient to the dramatic changes brought by the climate crisis.

“This type of work really matters,” Frazer told CNN. “Corals selected for restoration might, for example, be more resistant to warmer ocean temperatures and bleaching, exhibit skeletal properties that are able to withstand more intense wave energy, or traits that might make them more resistant to disease or other environmental stressors.”

Margeret W. Miller is a coral ecologist who has focused on restoration research for more than two decades. Miller co-authored a study in 2020 that found the elkhorn rate of reproduction in the Upper Florida Keys was so low, it would indicate the species was already “functionally extinct” and could be wiped out in six to 12 years.

Miller said the Florida Aquarium’s breakthrough will open new doors to tackle the larger restoration effort.

“Because this species is an important restoration target, the capacity for spawning under human care opens lots of research opportunities to develop interventions that might make restoration efforts more resilient to climate change and other environmental threats,” Miller told CNN.

Miller said more research needs to be done to make sure lab-spawning elkhorn coral is reasonably safe and effective, to be used in species conservation.

“This sort of captive spawning is not a tool that directly addresses widespread coral restoration at the global scale that would match the scale of the need. Indeed, no current coral restoration efforts meet that scale, and none will truly succeed unless we can take serious action to ensure that coral reef habitats can remain in a viable condition where corals can thrive,” Miller told CNN.

The climate crisis is the ultimate problem that needs to be solved, Miller said. The rapid increase in ocean temperature needs to be addressed, along with threats to water quality. Still, she said, the ability to grow elkhorn in a lab is an important tool in the restoration effort.

“The research on coral propagation and interventions that can be enabled by captive spawning efforts can, however, buy time for us to make such changes effectively before corals disappear from our reefs completely,” Miller said.

Elkhorn branches can grow as much as five inches per year, making it one of the fastest-growing coral species, according to NOAA. And based on observations from the Florida Aquarium scientists, their new elkhorn coral babies will take three to five years to become sexually mature.

Within a year or two, scientists intend to replant these lab-grown corals in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

In the race to restore the reefs, scientists agree this breakthrough is only a first step.

“We are really buying time,” O’Neil said. “We’re buying time for the reef. We’re buying time for the corals.”

The ultimate goal is a breeding program where scientists could select for genetic diversity and breed more resilient coral capable of withstanding threats like pollution, warming ocean waters and disease.

Then nature can take the wheel.

“There is hope for coral reefs,” O’Neil said. “Don’t give up hope. It’s all not lost. However, we need to make serious changes in our behavior to save this planet.”

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