11

I was reading this article at theBlaze.com that talks about an interview Al Gore had with Chris Wallace (shown on Fox News on Sunday Jun 4, 2017).

The article focuses on claims that Al Gore had made about climate change, such as that he made in his 2006 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” and elsewhere that now seem alarmist. However here I would like to ask about the statement highlighted in bold in below quote from the article:

“Greenland, for example, has been losing one cubic kilometer of ice every single day. I went down to Miami and saw fish from the ocean swimming in the streets on a sunny day. The same thing was true in Honolulu just two days ago, just from high tides because of the sea level rise now,” he added.

There is no question that Al Gore said above, as it can be seen in this YouTube video starting at 9:17 point.

Question: Can you see fish swim on the streets in Miami because of the sea level rise?

Barry Harrison
  • 14,093
  • 4
  • 68
  • 101
neo
  • 642
  • 1
  • 5
  • 10
  • [Walking catfish](https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/3/2/1365196/-Daily-Bucket-Florida-s-Invaders-Walking-Catfish)? – Laurel Jul 26 '17 at 00:48
  • 1
    There is a good answer here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article47483575.html I was in Miami last week, and definitely no fish or water in the streets. – DavePhD Jul 26 '17 at 00:53
  • @DavePhD, looking at that article it seems that it has happened some times but not necessarily in Miami but in Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood. – SherlockEinstein Jul 26 '17 at 01:09
  • 9
    Get a good storm surge, and I suspect you will see fish swimming in the streets. Remember New Orleans after Katrina? I also suspect it might be Miami Beach rather than Miami. See e.g. this BBC article about flooding there, and the engineering effort to raise the streets: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170403-miamis-fight-against-sea-level-rise – jamesqf Jul 26 '17 at 04:42
  • 5
    @jamesqf and none of that is because of 'sea level rise' or 'global warming'. It's because of people building things too close to shorelines more and more... – jwenting Jul 26 '17 at 05:36
  • 2
    [Politifact](http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/dec/04/barack-obama/do-fish-swim-streets-miami-high-tide-barack-obama-/) already dove into this water –  Jul 26 '17 at 09:41
  • 2
    @jwenting: Does the question state that the fish are swimming in the streets because of sea level rise? No. But if interested, you might search for accounts of fish in the streets in the same areas (to exclude Florida swampland real estate scams) prior to say 1950. – jamesqf Jul 27 '17 at 17:00
  • "On a sunny day" says nothing about conditions days or even hours before. Lots of wiggle/weasel room there, as well as frequency of certain phenomenon increasing due to climate change, as well, if true. – PoloHoleSet Jul 27 '17 at 17:05
  • @jamesqf " just from high tides because of the sea level rise now" yes, it does. And of course "because of the sea level rise" – jwenting Jul 31 '17 at 05:51
  • @jwenting https://tamino.wordpress.com/2015/05/12/florida-sea-level/ . Sea level in Florida has risen some 250 mm since the 1900s. It's frankly ridiculous to claim that that hasn't affected the number of flood events there. – James Picone Aug 02 '18 at 06:41
  • @JamesPicone the claim is about the supposed few millimeters since the 1980s causing massive flooding high enough that fish can swim in the streets unimpeded. – jwenting Aug 02 '18 at 06:46
  • @jwenting the *measured* *~100* millimetres since the 1980s, you mean. Why is it surprising that this significantly affects flood magnitude and extent? These systems aren't linear; if you raise sea level 10cm somewhere 11cm above sea level won't get any extra flooding (well modulo tides, but ignore that for now). The next 2 cm drastically increase flooding. – James Picone Aug 02 '18 at 06:54

2 Answers2

24

Miami did have sunny day flooding, 3 feet above mean sea level, (2 feet higher than average high tide) in October and November of 2016.

In November, it was reported that fish and an octopus were in a parking garage due to such flooding.

However, this is primarily due to a local seasonal phenomenon, whereby tides are about 10 inches higher in mid-October than in the January to July time period (See slide 4 here), coupled with the moon phase, especially the 14 November 2016 super moon.

Overall, according to the slide presentation linked above, in the past 150 years, the sea level at Miami has risen 1 foot.

DavePhD
  • 103,432
  • 24
  • 436
  • 464
12

I believe what Al Gore is referring to is the so called "sunny day flooding", a phenomenon that has increased in frequency in recent years and has been tied to climate change. Here is a interesting graphic from the NY Times on the subject and here is the full article

Politifact has reviewed similar claim by Obama and rated it half true because where the fish was seen was not in the city proper but in the surrounding areas (like Miami Beach and Ft Lauderdale). They also address another instance of this claim being made by Al Gore to NPR in November 2015:

Our efforts to reach Gore were unsuccessful. However, Miami Beach officials told PolitiFact that Gore’s comment stems from a tour during a conference about climate change that happened to coincide with the king tides.

Miami Beach officials, including assistant city manager/public works director Eric Carpenter, showed Gore the impact of the tides on the state-owned Indian Creek Drive where the water washes over the sea wall onto the street.

"I absolutely saw the fish," Carpenter told PolitiFact. "You can actually see the fish swimming out of the creek, past the mangrove trees that are there and into the street. I probably saw close to a dozen. They weren’t big fish, but I don’t know, two or three inches long?"

Another article about it by the Miami Herald

ventsyv
  • 7,136
  • 2
  • 27
  • 44