Over 200 evacuate as ocean swells flood Majuro Atoll
Quoting Radio New Zealand – 28 November 2019
“About 200 people evacuated their homes in the capital of the Marshall Islands on Wednesday after big waves caused ocean inundation around the low-lying atoll.
“The waves combined with an otherwise unremarkable high tide on Wednesday, with more flooding feared for Thursday and Friday before the tides recede.
"The predicted tides were not particularly high, certainly not in the vicinity of the record high water levels from September of this year (that produced a series of ocean inundations in Majuro)," climate researcher Murray Ford, a senior lecturer in Geography at the University of Auckland, said Thursday.
"The tides and sea level rise component is not unusually high and not the direct cause of this flooding," it was only a "contributing factor", Dr Ford said.
"The key driver of this current inundation appears to be a large swell which has arrived from a more northerly direction than the typical trade wind swell."
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