RALEIGH - Some scientists predict that sea levels could rise by as much as a meter by the end of the century, endangering North Carolina’s low-lying barrier islands and coast.
While sea levels have been rising for centuries, scientists and policy administrators attending a forum sponsored by the N.C. Division of Coastal Management last week were told that climate change is adding to the rise in sea levels.
One meter is a little more than a yard, or 39.4 inches.
"The coastal ecosystems will all migrate upward and landward," said Stanley Riggs, a geology professor at East Carolina University.
Riggs said sea levels are rising "substantially faster" than in previous years.
"The rate has doubled twice since 1800," Riggs said. "It’s now up to about a half a meter per century. We’re on that upward curve. A conservative continuation of that upward curve puts us at a meter by 2100."
Roy Cordato, vice president for research at the John Locke Foundation, a conservative think tank in Raleigh, questions those figures.
"I just don’t know where they get that data," Cordato said. Cordato countered that data from Wilmington shows that the sea level has risen five or six years from 1936 to 2005.
He said that the numbers, coming from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, aren’t actually projections with probabilities assigned to them.
"They’re actually storylines," Cordato said. "They latch on to these things, I think, to make an alarmist case.”
During the forum, Virginia Burkett of the U.S. Geological Survey said that global sea level rises were 1.7 mm per year. From 1993 to 2003, sea levels rose 3.1 mm per year, she said.
Burkett and Riggs said attributed the increases to land ice melting in arctic climates and running off into the ocean.
Cordato countered, saying that arctic sea ice had increased in recent years and that sea ice had also been increasing in Antarctic regions.
While Cordato and Riggs disagree on how much sea levels will likely rise in coming decades, they find common ground in what it should mean for fragile islands and coastal regions likely to be impacted by increases in sea levels.
"Those islands that are low and narrow will be affected first and most extensively," Riggs said.
He said that it’s impossible to predict exactly which areas will be affected.
"I can’t sit here and say that the 1700 block and the 1900 block (of a particular street on an island) are in trouble," Riggs said.
It’s the storms that, coupled with sea levels rising, actually move the shorelines, Riggs said.
Riggs questioned construction in low-lying, high-hazard coastal areas. And he acknowledged that people with $1 million coastal homes could be in jeopardy of losing their investment.
"I couldn’t agree with that more," Cordato said. He added that we shouldn’t have government-subsidized flood insurance for such areas.
"It encourages people to build in risky areas and they don’t have to assume the risk themselves," Cordato said.
Riggs said that shorelines aren’t the only areas that could be affected.
He said that coastal estuaries and wetlands could also change.
Barry Smith can be reached at barrysmith@freedom.com.
Poster Comment:
BONUS ARTICLE:
Southern Pacific Nations Prepare for Climate Related Evacuations Kanyad Keshani Koshi, professor of environmental studies at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, tells Christopher Joyce of National Public Radio (NPR) that if rising ocean waters "turn against" Fijians, their already low living standards will worsen. The island of Fiji Losing Land Because of Rising Sea Waters Fiji has livable lowland but the center is mountainous volcano surrounded by steep rocky slopes. This is inhospitable higher ground if the low lands become uninhabitable.
Fiji, surrounded by the world's largest ocean, is racking up obvious affects of climate change. Though rising ocean waters are not obvious, changes are beginning to show. You can see "the exposed roots of coconut trees," as Simon McGree, Fiji's meteorological office chief climate scientist, told Joyce of NPR.
McGree further said that real estate records, which indicate land boundaries, show that land is already lost to rising ocean waters. Even a small rise leads to potentially devastating weather effects. There are higher tides and storm surges. Other areas are seeing a drop in rainfall levels. There are stronger storms and unexpected Pacific area droughts.
It is well known and proved that warmer waters and stormwater runoff carrying silt are hurting the Pacific's Great Barrier Reef. Clive Wilkinson, coordinator for the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, tells Joyce that the runoff soils are harming the coral and warmer waters are beginning to kill parts of the Great Barrier Reef.
Wilkinson says that a warming Pacific doesn't just effect the coral and reef around the large island nations of the South Pacific. There is a much greater global effect. For instance, the unpopular El Nino Pacific Ocean pattern that brings droughts all over the southern hemisphere, in Indonesia, Australia, Africa, has a shrinking recurrence cycle. It is now recurring every seven and possible every four years.
For all these reasons, New Zealand, along with Australia, is implementing a crisis plan. Joyce reports for NPR that there is a likely potential that millions of people will suffer from rising ocean waters, the stronger storms that come with them, and the loss of freshwater supplies.
As reported on NPR, according to Adrian Macy, New Zealand's newly appointed climate ambassador, who was formerly ambassador to France, climate changes introduce "massive threats" to Pacific island economies and the threats can only be enlarged to humanitarian crises in the event of a mass Fiji Losing Land Because of Rising Sea Waters migration of people out of the islands. Macy also says that this is why New Zealand, and also Australia, are beginning to make "plans to handle climate refugees."
As Kanyad Keshani Koshi said to NPR, "There are a lot of secondary impacts of climate change which will make the quality of life in the island Pacific very, very bad...."
Christopher Joyce, "Pacific Island Cultures Brace for Climate Change," National Public Radio. URL: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10891261&ps=bb1