RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The continually rising tides that are advancing into cities have caused immeasurable damage. The issue is serious. The oceans will not stop growing, and many coastal towns may disappear in the coming years. Hydrogeologist Rodrigo Sato sounds the alarm.
With a master’s degree from the renowned University of São Paulo (USP) and broad experience in the subject, Sato says that there are solutions, but they require great investment and political will. “Our engineering is already able to solve the problem; there are many years of studies and experiments, many of them back in Roman times, which held back the tide with clay dikes. Of course, with today’s technology, we can do much more,” he says.
However, the data are alarming. “If you analyze the past 180 years, the average sea level has increased in height by about seventy centimeters. Associated with the phenomena of climate change, such as storms that did not occur before, we have a serious problem.”
Brazilian southern coast
In Brazil, particularly in the south, the problem has been alarming residents, causing panic in traffic and raising fear among those who own waterfront properties. In Florianópolis, the phenomenon has been regularly verified. In mid-June, waters flooded part of Avenida Beira Mar Norte, one of the city’s main avenues.
In the north of the island, on the quiet beach of Ponta das Canas, the sea invaded areas that, according to locals, it had never reached before. The fishermen were forced to rush to hold on to the boats that were on dry land because the sea had advanced too far.
“It is an eroding process that has been quite extensive in terms of material damage, and it is starting to have an impact because all the available sediment has already been virtually exhausted and now the body of water is reaching its limits close to houses. Regarding damage, here in Santa Catarina, we have had losses over the past ten years, between tens of millions to hundreds of millions in terms of assets.”
According to the hydrogeologist, the phenomenon occurs due to several factors. “Global warming melts the glaciers, this produces an accumulation of water, which added to factors such as storms, carries the water to places that were safe some centuries ago.”
“The issue of swells is natural; this has been happening on the planet for thousands of years. If it were not so, there would be no coasts, the limits of the current and old coasts. You realize that geological actions shaped them,” he says.
“However, in recent years, we have seen an abnormal increase in tides. The swells are accelerating over time, and intensifying over the past twenty years. Because, yes, there is an anthropogenic aggravation. Man is favoring the erosive process,” Sato points out.
The United States and Oceania
The alarm should ring in various regions of the world, such as the United States and Oceania. There are many islands in Oceania which are doomed to disappear altogether. Unfortunately, this damage is recurrent all over the world.
“And the bad news is, there’s no way this phenomenon can be stopped. It will continue in the long term, in the coming decades, and perhaps for centuries to come,” says Sato.
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