A powerful earthquake, combined with rising sea levels, could significantly increase flood risks in the Pacific Northwest, impacting thousands of residents and properties in northern California, Oregon, and Washington, according to new Virginia Tech research. The study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that a major earthquake could cause coastal land to sink up to 6.5 feet, expanding the federally designated 1 percent coastal floodplain, an area with a 1-in-100 chance of flooding each year, by 35 to 116 square miles.

Flash floods resulting from extreme rainfall pose a major risk to people and infrastructure, especially in urban areas. Higher temperatures due to global climate change affect continuous rainfall and short rain showers in somewhat equal measure. However, if both types of precipitation occur at the same time, as is typical for thunderstorm cloud clusters, the amount of precipitation increases more strongly with increasing temperature, as shown in a study by two scientists from the University of Potsdam and the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT) in Bremen. The study has just been published in the journal “Nature Geoscience”.