In my lifetime, the sea off Sarasota has risen nearly a foot — measured at the tide gauge, not modeled.
- 1950 to 2010 (sixty years): about six inches.
- 2010 to 2022 (twelve years): another five.
The rise is now running more than four times faster. A peer-reviewed study in Nature Climate Change (2026) found human-driven sea level rise alone has quadrupled extreme coastal flooding since 1900 — Key West’s “100-year flood” is now a 1-in-5-year flood.
A shallow shelf and a guaranteed landfall
West Florida sits on one of America’s shallowest continental shelves — when a hurricane shoves water ashore, it piles up. And the Gulf guarantees landfall: a storm here can’t curve out to sea, it can only hit land somewhere. Higher seas on a shallow shelf is a storm-surge multiplier. Ian proved it in Fort Myers; Helene and Milton in 2024 brought it to Sarasota’s doorstep, with Milton coming ashore at Siesta Key.
The engineering problem
Here’s the engineering problem: every seawall, road, and building code on this coast was designed against the “100-year storm” — a statistic from the Gulf of the past. Designing to yesterday’s hundred-year flood in 2026 isn’t conservative. It’s designing for a world that no longer exists.
Measuring our own water
On November 12th we’re unveiling the Living Laboratory for Coastal Resilience. Here’s the absurd part: the nearest sea-level gauge to Sarasota is in St. Petersburg, while billions of dollars of our property sits in the surge zone. The Living Laboratory fixes that — AI models fed by ground truth from a mesonet of sensors along ten miles of Sarasota shoreline. Our water, our shelf, measured in real time — and a prototype for every coastal community facing the same rising seas.
Are we building our coast for the Gulf we have — or the Gulf we remember?
The Bunting Brief is Bob Bunting’s short-form series on the weather and climate forces shaping Florida’s Gulf Coast.
🎟️ Join us November 12 — From Climate Risk to Climate Resilience, Sarasota. Get tickets here.
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