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Local forecast for 2100: soggy

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By NATALIE SHEPHERD

nshepherd@wfla.com

Published: October 23, 2009

TAMPA - What will the Tampa Bay area look like in 2100?

One leading climate change scientist says many famous locations, including places such as Tampa General Hospital and the Salvador Dalí Museum, could be covered with seawater.

Gordon Hamilton, a research professor at the University of Maine, has done extensive research on how melting ice in Greenland and Antarctica are affecting global sea levels. The reduction in Greenland's glaciers, he said, was brought home to him this year when a glacier he had been studying suddenly and dramatically shrank.

"Sure enough, the glacier had just disappeared from where it was a few months before, and it was now it was five miles further back up the fjord," he said.

Hamilton was in Tampa on Thursday as part of the Hip Boot Tour organized by Clean Air-Cool Plant, a nonprofit global warming activist group.

The Hip Boot Tour is making stops in cities along the East Coast to discuss the possible effect of melting ice. Events were scheduled for Thursday and today in Tampa and St. Petersburg.

At The Florida Aquarium, Hamilton and members of Clean Air Cool Planet used maps to show how much of the Bay area could be underwater by 2100. Some estimates show water levels rising about 3 feet. That would put parts of Harbour Island, Davis Islands and Tampa General Hospital underwater.

If water levels rise 6 feet, MacDill Air Force Base and much of St. Petersburg and Pinellas County beaches would be underwater, too.

"In a place like Florida, ... you're probably going to be constantly digging out or shoveling out or bucketing water out of constantly flooded downtowns and neighborhoods," Hamilton said.

Clean Air-Cool Planet officials say there are ways to slow the problem. Executive Director Brooks Yeager said reducing pollutants such as black carbon and methane will help. "We can get serious about a national emissions reduction strategy in the United States."

Reporter Natalie Shepherd can be reached at (813) 225-2703.

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