Extreme coastal flooding events are occurring far more frequently in our warming world than ever before, threatening countless communities that will only become more vulnerable as climate change intensifies. A recent study found that once-in-a-century flooding events now strike on our planet about once a decade. The study, published June 10 in the journal Nature Climate Change, also found that human-driven climate change has quadrupled the frequency of coastal sea level extremes since 1900. The findings were released alongside another study by a separate team, published in the journal Science Advances, that found human-caused sea level rise was clearly measurable at 97% of sites sampled around the world, and was responsible for around 58% of the observed daily extreme water level exceedances between 2000 and 2018. In other words, human activities are the primary drivers behind sea level extremes — which include storm surges, high tides and rising sea level anomalies. As the ocean's potential to devastate coastal communities surges, Live Science spoke with Sönke Dangendorf, lead author of the Nature Climate Change study, to learn more about what's to come. Here's what he had to say. Patrick Pester: How do you separate human-driven sea level rise from natural forces?Sönke Dangendorf: The absolute basis for doing these kinds of investigations is to work with observations, but observations are unfortunately sparse. We have a few more than 100 tide gauges [distributed worldwide] that offer long, century-scale records of sea level change since the early 20th century. We see that sea levels are changing at those locations, but we cannot tell a whole lot about what is happening elsewhere. So, what we can do is use the same climate models that we use to produce future projections of sea level change. If you compare observations with the models, then the models need to be able to reproduce what the observations have shown. That was the first step we did, and indeed we proved in this study that the climate models are capable of reproducing observed climate. The nice thing with climate models then is that if you are able to reproduce what has been observed, you can start doing experiments. For instance, you can keep greenhouse gases constant in the modeling and then assess the influence of natural climate variability on the changes that we have observed. That's what we did in the study. We found that we have seen already a 12-fold increase on average globally in what used to be a once-in-100-year event in 1900. And when we do these forcing experiments, we have also seen that anthropogenic forcing [human-driven change], in particular since the 1970s, has become the dominant force. PP: What does this mean for coastal communities around the world?SD: A couple of centimeters of sea level rise doesn't sound like a whole lot in theory, but if you live along the coast, it hits you much harder than you might think. Just an example: I used to live along the U.S. East Coast in Norfolk, Virginia. The community was built along the water, and they used to be fine in the 1950s and 1960s; they wouldn't see flooding at all, or maybe just once every five or six years. But due to sea level rise, what happens now is that high tide leads to flooding. You see flooded streets, and that affects your commute, so people increasingly cannot make it to work. It affects your daily life suddenly. And then it makes it very hard for you and your coastal community because you have increasing insurance costs — the accumulated costs of these events can easily be as much as a major hurricane making landfall. So, this is a daily experience that many people already have, and it's a direct impact of sea level rise.With respect to what we assessed in these more extreme events, people may absorb a once-in-a-100-year event once in their lifetime. They may experience something like a Storm Sandy, and they may be able to recover from that, but if you think about recovering from that basically every eight years — the frequency of these events nowadays compared to 1900 — that's of course way more difficult and not feasible for many people.PP: What can we do?SD: We can adapt. The silver lining here is that we have shown humans are the dominant forcing factor behind these changes. That's the silver lining because it means if we react, we can do something about it. The reaction to changes in climate is often delayed, so we have sea level rise that we are already committed to. For instance, if you look into projections, they all agree with respect to what happens until around 2060, independently of how much greenhouse gases are emitted. There's no way around that. We could stop emitting greenhouse gases today, and we would still experience it. So, we need to adapt to that sea level rise, but if we mitigate climate change, if we stop emitting greenhouse gases, then we can avoid dangerous sea level rise, and that's very important.Flooding is becoming more severe and disruptive as our planet warms. (Image credit: Roberto Westbrook via Getty Images)PP: What will the world look like in 2060 with the committed sea level rise?SD: According to the last IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report, what used to be a once-in-a-100-year event in the present day will occur annually at 19% to 31% of tide gauge locations by 2050. So, at about a quarter of the locations, you will experience these once-in-a-100-year events annually, and that is something that is just mind-blowing.RELATED STORIES'Food insecurity is no longer just about low-income countries': Environmental economist explains how climate change is pushing agricultural systems to the brinkWater shortages could prevent the US from mining more lithium, deepening reliance on foreign imports'The biggest El Niño event since the 1870s': 'Super' El Niño is now the most likely scenario by the end of this year ‪—‬ and the humanitarian cost could be hugeThe changes are happening much quicker in low-latitude locations. The reason is that in the tropics you typically have a less variable climate. You don't have these massive swings all the time. For instance, in the North Sea, we have a storm season, and we have huge tide ranges. We are already adapted to pretty massive changes of multiple meters, so a couple of centimeters of sea level rise do not play out that hard, but in the tropics, where it's more calm, it makes a huge difference. As an analogy, think about two hurdle runners. You have one hurdle runner that's compared to the tropics; he jumps very consistently but always below the hurdle, so he never makes it over. Then you have another hurdle runner that's the North Sea type of guy. His jumps are very variable. Sometimes he's very high and makes it over that hurdle, but very often he also jumps very low. Now think about lowering that hurdle, which is comparable to increasing sea levels. Suddenly, that hurdle runner who is very consistent makes it over all of the time, while the guy from the North Sea may jump over the hurdle a couple more times, but he also still has the very extreme lows. So, the constant jumper is way more sensitive to these changes.Editor's note: This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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QUICK FACTSWhere is it? Over the BahamasWhat's in the photo? The space shuttle Atlantis, preparing to dock with the International Space Station (ISS)Who took the photo? An unnamed astronaut on board the ISSWhen was it taken? July 10, 2011This stunning astronaut photo shows the last time one of NASA's iconic space shuttles photobombed astronauts' view of Earth as the spacecraft docked with the ISS. NASA's Space Shuttle Program included five plane-like spacecraft — Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour — which collectively completed 135 missions between 1981 and 2011, racking up more than 32,000 hours in space. During that time, they helped to construct the ISS and, later, ferry astronauts to and from the station. The space shuttles also helped to deploy and maintain several other important spacecraft, including the Hubble Space Telescope.The last space shuttle to fly was Atlantis, which successfully completed 33 missions (the second-highest total, behind Discovery). This photo shows Atlantis approaching the ISS for the last time as it passed over the distinctive turquoise waters of the Bahamas. The space shuttle's bay doors are open, exposing its cargo area. This was standard procedure for all space shuttles once they reached low Earth orbit because it prevented the spacecraft's radiators from overheating.The open doors also enabled the shuttle's docking mechanism, located within its cargo bay, to attach to the ISS, thus creating a pressurized seal so that astronauts could move between the two spacecraft. Atlantis' final flight began on July 8, 2011, when it launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida vertically strapped to a massive fuel tank and a pair of rocket boosters. It returned to Earth on July 21, gliding down to land onto a runway at the launch site. (The spacecraft is now on display at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.)In addition to helping construct the ISS, NASA's space shuttles visited Russia's Mir space station, serviced Hubble, and deployed both the Magellan probe to Venus and the Galileo probe to Jupiter. In total, the space shuttle orbited Earth 4,848 times, traveling nearly 126 million miles (203 million kilometers) — more than 525 times the distance between Earth and the moon.Astronaut photos of the space shuttles were popular because they offered "punctuated snapshots of distinct places on Earth" that were "framed by a human eye," NASA representatives wrote in 2011. "These images speak to people."Atlantis touched down at the Kennedy Space Center on July 21, 2011, brining the 30-year Space Shuttle program to an end. (Image credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls)While the Space Shuttle Program achieved a lot during its 30-year history, it famously suffered two tragedies: the 1986 Challenger and 2003 Columbia disasters, which killed all crewmembers on board.NASA eventually canceled the program in 2011, citing the high cost of maintaining the aging spacecraft and a reduced need for the vehicles after the completion of the ISS the same year. To this day, the space shuttles remain the only winged spacecraft to carry humans into space. See more Earth from space 'Painting-like' ripples in the Bahamas A 2020 satellite photo shows off the ethereal beauty of submerged sandbanks and seagrass beds in the Great Bahama Bank. Glowing ring of algae in New Zealand A 2026 satellite photo captured a gleaming halo of phytoplankton encircling the remote Chatham Islands and a hidden underwater plateau. Arctic blast paints plume in Florida A 2026 satellite photo captured a stunning scene of sediment swirling across the West Florida Shelf after an extreme cold snap.

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IFLScience meets CEPI, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, to talk viruses, vaccines, and the global health specters that keep us up at night.