Allow me to echo what everyone else has said: the Moon’s wobble isn’t a new phenomenon.
Scientists have known about the lunar sways, which take 18.6 years to complete, for centuries. The first half of the pattern is marked in the U.S. by lower tides and the second — which the moon is currently in — by high tides.
The issue is “how one of the wobble’s effects on the moon’s gravitational pull — the main cause of Earth’s tides — will combine with rising sea levels resulting from the planet’s warming” according to NASA. In a recent study, the organisation found that the effects of the Moon’s wobbles on tides could be made worse by rising sea levels caused by climate change.
Led by the members of the NASA Sea Level Change Science Team from the University of Hawaii, the new study shows that high tides will exceed known flooding thresholds around the country more often. What’s more, the floods will sometimes occur in clusters lasting a month or longer, depending on the positions of the Moon, Earth, and the Sun. When the Moon and Earth line up in specific ways with each other and the Sun, the resulting gravitational pull and the ocean’s corresponding response may leave city dwellers coping with floods every day or two.
But is it too late? NASA have answers for that too:
[…] if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, the rise in global temperatures would begin to flatten within a few years. Temperatures would then plateau but remain well-elevated for many, many centuries. There is a time lag between what we do and when we feel it, but that lag is less than a decade.
(via KQED)