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rfmcdonaldNot long after I posted my photos from Dalvay Beach, the Bloomberg article "Watch Your Coastal Property. Here Comes the Sea" by Amrith Ramkumar appeared on my RSS feed. The rate of sea level rise has been suppressed by volcanic eruptions' ejecta of dust and gas. Without future volcanic eruptions, sea level rise might occur far more rapidly in the future than we've been accustomed to expect.
What will this mean to the beaches bordering the oceans of the world, as directly exposed as they are to rising sea levels? Certainly nothing good. These beaches, as I hope my photos have shown, are low-lying and narrow, easily overwhelmed by just a couple of metres of water. If irreversible sea level rises occur, these will be destroyed utterly.
In his flawed novel 2312, Kim Stanley Robinson imagined that by the early 24th century, the beaches of our era will only be memories, vaguely remembered by the super-old and otherwise preserved in archives. Was Robinson right? At the current pace, it's difficult to imagine how he wouldn't be.
Climate scientists have long warned of a rise in sea level as global warming melts the world’s glaciers. But while the level has been increasing at about 3.5 millimeters a year, the rate of increase itself has fluctuated, leading some people to doubt the warnings and the broader impact of rising carbon emissions.
Fresh evidence, in a study published today in Scientific Reports, suggests the scientists were right, and that satellite measurements have been distorted by the eruption in 1991 of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines.
The volcanic eruption, the second-largest of the 20th century, is estimated to have spewed almost 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, lowering global temperatures by about 1 degree Fahrenheit from 1991 to 1993, as gas and dust particles blocked solar radiation, and causing sea levels to drop. The researchers, from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Old Dominion University, used models to calculate the impact of the Pinatubo eruption and found that sea levels fell about six millimeters.
The confusion lies in the timing. The six-millimeter drop took place right after satellite measurements of the sea level began, in 1993, followed by a bounceback in the sea level. From today's vantage, that makes it look like the rate of increase hasn’t risen over the past few decades. In fact, it makes it look as if it's fallen. If you take the eruption out, the satellite surveillance would show a clear acceleration in the rate, the researchers conclude.
Pinatubo “doesn’t affect the overall trend between the two endpoints, but it does affect how you estimate the acceleration, because of the pattern of rise during that interval,” said NCAR scientist John Fasullo, who led the study.
What will this mean to the beaches bordering the oceans of the world, as directly exposed as they are to rising sea levels? Certainly nothing good. These beaches, as I hope my photos have shown, are low-lying and narrow, easily overwhelmed by just a couple of metres of water. If irreversible sea level rises occur, these will be destroyed utterly.
In his flawed novel 2312, Kim Stanley Robinson imagined that by the early 24th century, the beaches of our era will only be memories, vaguely remembered by the super-old and otherwise preserved in archives. Was Robinson right? At the current pace, it's difficult to imagine how he wouldn't be.
