Coastal Flooding of Guam

Coastal flooding of Guam poses an escalating threat to the land’s inhabitants, ecosystem, and infrastructure. Coastal flooding is projected to cause detrimental damage to Guam, showing extreme flooding of Guam by 2100. Due to Guam’s low topography, Guam is very vulnerable to coastal flooding. The main contributor to Guam’s coastal flooding problem is typhoons.

Since 1976, typhoons have wreaked havoc around Guam, destroying infrastructure and causing sea levels to rise. Since the 1976 attack, Guam has changed all of its infrastructure to metal and concrete to minimize the damage done by typhoon attacks. However, this is still not enough to prevent damage from being done to the infrastructure and the sea level. The 2002 typhoon wreaked havoc on Guam even though infrastructure and precautions were taken. The global mean sea level is projected to rise 2m by the end of the century. However, Guam’s local sea level rise is projected to rise 2.8m more than the global mean sea level rise at extreme forecasts. (Mulhern, 2020).

On May 19, 2023, Guam faced its worst typhoon in decades, Typhoon Mawar. This category 4 level storm carried destructive winds of up to 140 miles per hour, destroying the infrastructure and ecology of Guam. The majority of Guam lost power causing all but 1000 of the Guam Power Authority’s 52,000 customers. Rainfall pummeled Guam, flooding the land by almost 2 feet of rain. (Kaur, Pannett, Timsit, Livingston, 2023).

References

Mulhern, O. (2020, October 9). Sea level rise projection map – guam. Earth.Org. https://earth.org/data_visualization/sea-level-rise-by-2100-guam/ 

Kaur, A., Pannett, R., Timsit, A., & Livingston, I. (2023, May 25). Guam homes flooded, power cut by one of the worst typhoons in decades. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/05/24/typhoon-mawar-guam-updates/