How much rising seas will cost each state in houses lost Seattle gets hit with mere $2.2 billion in losses

If everything stays as it is: Humans keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere and the seas rise six feet by 2100, AND no more houses or suburbs or cities are built on U.S. coastlines, then the housing market will only take a nearly trillion dollar hit. Zillow took data from NOAA to predict which houses, generally, would be affected by six vertical feet of additional ocean. Click through this slideshow to see the predictions for each state. Alabama: Number of Homes: 12,735 — Total Value: $3.8 billion — Median Value: $234,987

less If everything stays as it is: Humans keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere and the seas rise six feet by 2100, AND no more houses or suburbs or cities are built on U.S. coastlines, then the housing market will ... more Photo: PAUL J.RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images Photo: PAUL J.RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images Image 1 of / 35 Caption Close How much rising seas will cost each state in houses lost 1 / 35 Back to Gallery

If everything stays as it is: Humans keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere and the seas rise six feet by 2100, AND no more houses or suburbs or cities are built on U.S. coastlines, then the housing market will only take a nearly trillion-dollar hit.

No big deal, I guess. After all, that's decades from now! Live it up!

Except that sea level rise, ocean acidification, weather-pattern shifts, etc., will be ramping up over those decades, not happening all at once in some mythical future. You know, going from inches to feet to yards over mere decades.

Plus, Zillow's number is just houses lost. It does not include the massive damage to apartment buildings, businesses, infrastructure and water tables ... and probably a lot of things we're not thinking about but will be trouble anyway.ac

So ... yeah yeah yeah ... enough of the inexpert lecture.

Here's what Zillow said in a news release:

"As we move through this century, homeowners will have to consider another factor when it comes to their homes – whether rising sea levels have any impact on them," said Zillow Chief Economist Dr. Svenja Gudell. "It's easy to think about how the ocean levels can affect the coasts in an abstract sense, but this analysis shows the real impact it will have on nearly two million homeowners - and most likely more by the time we reach 2100 - who could lose their homes."

The real estate and rental online marketplace took data from NOAA to predict which houses, generally, would be affected by six vertical feet of additional ocean. That six-foot number comes from a March study in the journal Nature that showed estimates for sea-level rise have been low. As the Washington Post put it:

The startling findings paint a far grimmer picture than current consensus predictions, which have suggested that seas could rise by just under a meter at most by the year 2100. Those estimates relied on the notion that expanding ocean waters and the melting of relatively small glaciers would fuel the majority of sea level rise, rather than the massive ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica.

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But, of course, the researchers from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and Penn State University figured out that in order to account for the known level of seas in previous hot periods of the Earth, one has to throw in the ice sheets, too.

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"Sea level rise on the scale seen in those eras likely required a loss of ice not just from Greenland, but also from Antarctica. But previous computer models of Antarctica have failed to accurately reproduce such scenarios," the Post wrote.

And if that happens, as it had to have in the deep past, then you get 2 million homes lost to sea level rise at a cost of $882 billion. Check out the gallery above for how this shakes out state by state.

For the Washington cities that will be most affected during this period that could cost the state $13.8 billion in total homes losses, Zillow said, the future looks like this:

Aberdeen will have 4,548 homes lost at a value of $380 million

Hoquiam will lose 3,050 homes at a value of $261 million

Blaine will lose 1,825 homes for $368 million

Camano Island will lose 922 home for $498 million

And Seattle, with a much higher mean value of homes in the sea-flood zones, will lose 1,663 homes for $2.2 billion

Zillow added:

More than half of all homes that would be lost are in Florida, and they account for nearly half of the lost housing value as well. In all, one in eight Florida homes would be lost. More than 9 percent of homes in Hawaii would be underwater; 81 percent of those are in the capital city of Honolulu. Thirty-six coastal cities would be entirely underwater, and nearly 300 cities would lose at least half their homes. The at-risk homes along the waterfront are 58 percent more valuable than the average U.S. home. The biggest difference in home values is in Maine, where homes at the water's edge are worth $436,798, more than three times the statewide median home value of $138,900. By contrast, homes at risk of rising oceans are less valuable than the typical home in Hawaii, Maryland, Washington, and Oregon.

As we reported earlier in the story "Seattle will surf catastrophic sea level rise, but that's not the whole climate change story," the losses here will be much, much less than in places such as Miami.

And that's great ... unless you own property or run a business in Seattle's Duwamish industrial zone, which Seattle Public Utilities research shows will be the hardest-hit local region.

"There's going to be some challenges for the people and businesses who are exposed," Paul Fleming, who runs the Climate Resiliency Group for Seattle Public Utilities, told us previously. "It's absolutely going to be a challenge, but relative to Miami it's going to be a different story."

Coming at the issue from a different angle, another study published in March by Mathew Hauer, a doctoral student in geography at the University of Georgia, found that some 13 million Americans in 319 coastal counties are "at risk" under a sea rise of nearly six feet.

But of those in danger of being swept over by marine waters, nearly 70 percent live in the southeastern U.S., "suggesting the impacts of (sea level rise) will be highly regionalized in nature." A point well made in this map published in Nature magazine:

Caption for map: Cumulative projected populations at risk of SLR under the 0.9 m scenario by 2100 for US counties. Counties not included in the study are colored in grey. Published in Nature magazine on March 14, 2016, in the study "Millions projected to be at risk from sea-level rise in the continental United States." (Used by permission of the study author.)

Here are the maps for how Seattle will be affected prepared for the City of Seattle:

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook. If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.