by Daniel Brouse
December 5, 2025
Florida faces a long list of climate-driven threats -- extreme heat, stronger hurricanes, toxic algal blooms, and collapsing insurance markets -- but accelerating sea-level rise (SLR) sits at the center of nearly all of them. Although the current rise of a few millimeters per year may sound trivial, the reality is anything but. Sea-level rise is no longer linear; it is entering a phase of nonlinear, exponential acceleration, and Florida is already experiencing the consequences.
Sea level has been rising for a century, but what matters most is the rate of change. Historically, it took roughly a century for the rate to jump from ~3 mm/year to ~6 mm/year. Now, that doubling has happened in just eight years.
This exponential acceleration is driven by:
If current trends hold -- and most projections underestimate nonlinear behavior -- Florida could see centimeters per year within the next decade and experience multiple surge-years this century where sea levels jump over a foot in a single year due to ice-sheet pulses and ocean heat anomalies.
This is not a distant scenario. It is unfolding now.
Storm surge is no longer just a hurricane problem. Florida now experiences regular tidal flooding with no storms at all, as "sunny-day floods" push seawater into streets, yards, and infrastructure simply because the baseline sea level is higher.
Consequences include:
Saltwater corrodes electrical systems, sewer lines, bridges, roads, pumps, and underground cables. Critical infrastructure in Miami-Dade, Tampa Bay, the Keys, and Jacksonville is suffering chronic damage.
Saltwater intrusion destroys soil structure, kills vegetation, and converts freshwater wetlands into ghost forests.
Saltwater is infiltrating freshwater aquifers -- especially the Biscayne Aquifer -- which supply millions of Floridians with drinking water.
One striking example of the water crisis:
"VERY RARE": Tampa is currently purchasing about 10 million gallons of water per day -- something officials say almost never happens this early in the year.
Saltwater intrusion and low river flows are driving emergency purchases months ahead of schedule.
Extreme saltwater events, chronic flooding, stronger hurricanes, and skyrocketing property risk have triggered a full-scale insurance meltdown in Florida.
This means the financial burden is shifting directly onto Florida taxpayers, even if they live nowhere near the coast.
Florida's sea-level rise is not "millimeters that don't matter."
It is:
Florida is already living in the future the rest of the country is headed toward. The question is no longer if sea-level rise will reshape the state, but how fast and how prepared communities will be for what's coming next.
* Our probabilistic, ensemble-based climate model — which incorporates complex socio-economic and ecological feedback loops within a dynamic, nonlinear system — projects that global temperatures are becoming unsustainable this century. This far exceeds earlier estimates of a 4°C rise over the next thousand years, highlighting a dramatic acceleration in global warming. We are now entering a phase of compound, cascading collapse, where climate, ecological, and societal systems destabilize through interlinked, self-reinforcing feedback loops.
What Can I Do?
The single most important action you can take to help address the climate crisis is simple: stop burning fossil fuels.