Today is
Friday. Welcome to Equilibrium, a newsletter that tracks the growing global battle over the future of sustainability. Subscribe here: thehill.com/newsletter-signup.
NASA scientists are warning of a new factor that could add to the danger coastal cities face from more powerful storm surges and rising seas — moon wobble — as Joseph Guzman reported for The Hill’s Changing America.
The moon controls the tides — and during half of its 18 year cycle, a wobble in its orbit means that “high tides get higher, and low tides get lower,” NASA noted.
That half of the cycle will next begin in the 2030s, when temperatures will also be hotter and sea levels higher due to climate change. And thanks to moon wobble, many places will also “begin to experience recurrent high-tide flooding,” agency scientists wrote in Nature Climate Change.