President Donald Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and a very expensive “tax” on American businesses that make the US less competitive. He has threatened to withdraw the US from the Paris climate accord, in which countries around the world pledged to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to keep temperatures from rising past the critical 2°C mark.
And yet climate change is already imperiling Mar-a-Lago, the crown jewel of Trump’s extensive real estate portfolio and his preferred location for carrying out many of his official presidential duties. Rising sea levels are causing more frequent and more damaging tidal floods on the Florida coast, and projections suggest that the risk to lives and property from climate change-related flooding events is only going to increase dramatically in the coming years.
The National and Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has put out a variety of different estimates of rising sea levels in Southern Florida. The more conservative finding suggests that they could jump anywhere from 3 feet by 2050 to 7 feet by 2100.
But in January, the agency put out new “extreme” sea level projections — its doomsday scenario, in other words. In this scenario, we’d see a 10- to 12-foot rise in sea level in the US by 2100, which would have dramatic consequences for places like Mar-a-Lago, as you can see in the photo above.
Of all US states, Florida faces the greatest risk from rising sea levels
So what would a 10-foot rise in sea levels mean for Florida? Here’s a satellite image of what that would look like. Large swaths of the state are submerged. Miami is entirely flooded, along with the rest of Southern Florida:
There is evidence that average sea levels are already steadily rising in Southern Florida. A 2016 paper found that in the past decade, the average rate of sea-level rise had tripled from 3 millimeters a year to 9 millimeters. And overall sea levels in Southern Florida had risen about 90 millimeters, or 3.5 inches, since 2006.
Of the 30 most populous US cities that would be negatively affected by extreme sea-level rise, Climate Central, a nonprofit climate science research group, found that 19 were located in Florida (circled in yellow in the chart below).
Sea-level rise is hard to predict, but it’s clear Mar-a-Lago is at risk of extreme flooding
Scientists don’t have a great understanding of how exactly rapidly sea levels will continue to rise or the precise impact on specific areas.
But new research that indicates parts of the Antarctic ice sheet may collapse in the next 100 years — and that has scientists scrambling to model more extreme scenarios. If the Antarctic ice sheet does melt, it could trigger a catastrophic 10-foot spike in sea levels and inundate major US cities like New York and Miami, displacing nearly 150 million people worldwide.
“It may be a lot less stable [in Antarctica] than we thought,” said Ben Strauss, a vice president at Climate Central. “But the truth is we are relatively early in our scientific understanding of how the great ice sheets will respond to warming.”
Last summer, the Guardian investigated Trump’s coastal properties to see how at risk each of them were to flooding from rising sea levels.
What they found was Mar-a-Lago was already in serious trouble.
The estate was at high risk for flooding during heavy rains and storms, with water already pooling on the premises in addition to nearby bridges and roads in Palm Beach. Plus, in the next 30 years, they estimated there will be 210 days a year where Mar-a-Lago will be flooded with at least a foot of water.
Keren Bolter, chief scientist for Coastal Risk Consulting and the firm that analyzed Trump’s properties, told the Guardian that tidal flooding in the next 30 years could partially submerge some of the club’s luxurious cottages and bungalows. And perhaps even eventually render Trump’s “Southern White House” uninhabitable.
