• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing January 23, 2023
Extreme Warming Ahead Even as Worst-Case Scenarios Grow ‘Obsolete’ January 23, 2023
Notley Scorches Federal Just Transition Bill as Fossil CEO Calls for Oilsands Boom January 23, 2023
IRON OXIDE: New Battery Brings Long-Duration Storage to Grids, 750 Jobs to West Virginia January 23, 2023
BREAKING: GFANZ Banks, Investors Pour Hundreds of Billions into Fossil Fuels January 17, 2023
Next
Prev

Climate threat to vulnerable islands

April 16, 2016
Reading time: 3 minutes
Primary Author: Tim Radford

 

Computer blind spot hides dangers of drought as climate change bites for millions of inhabitants on atolls and archipelagos too small to register on scientific maps.

LONDON, 16 April, 2016 − Almost threequarters of a sample of island groups – atolls and archipelagos that are home to more than 18 million people − are expected to become increasingly more arid under a regime of climate change.

  • The climate news you need. Subscribe now to our engaging new weekly digest.
  • You’ll receive exclusive, never-before-seen-content, distilled and delivered to your inbox every weekend.
  • The Weekender: Succinct, solutions-focused, and designed with the discerning reader in mind.
New!
Subscribe

The new research implies a systematic underestimate of the plight of islanders as the world warms because of increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It also poses another threat to the survival of island communities.

Poignantly, many of the islands are too small even to be included in climate science calculations. So the communities that have, historically, contributed least to global warming could become the most immediate victims.

Kristopher Karnauskas, assistant professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Colorado-Boulder, US, and colleagues report in Nature Climate Change that they took a fresh look at the world vision of climate projections and the assumptions made in calculating the impacts of climate change.

Water stress

Overall, as the world warms, some regions will become moister, some more parched. The impact on the islands would be about half and half: 50 per cent would see more rain, 50 per cent would feel water stress.

But the scientists found the “resolution” of such projections was too coarse to include many tiny spots that have always figured on naval charts. And many islands in Polynesia are too small to register on the climate map of the world, so an estimated 18 million inhabitants are, in effect, “computationally disenfranchised”.

Even a dot on the map as famous as Easter Island a World Heritage Site in the South Pacific, and home to a set of vast, enigmatic statues that tell of a vanished culture − is deemed not to be there. The grid on the climate map that contains it is regarded as open ocean.

The islands of French Polynesia, the Marshall Islands and the Lesser Antilles are all among the most “water vulnerable” places on the planet, but they do not register at all on climate projection models.

“This shows that any rainwater they have is also
vulnerable. The atmosphere is getting thirstier,
and would like more of that freshwater back”

It’s not as if islanders didn’t have problems already. Coral atolls are rarely more than two metres above sea level, and many are projected to disappear altogether under water as the sea levels rise − unless the world stops burning fossil fuels and switches to renewable energy on a massive scale. .

Even with limited sea level rise, their citizens face an uncertain future. If the ocean invades the groundwater and poisons their crops, before washing away their villages, it isn’t clear if inhabitants of the islands could technically qualify as refugees deserving of international help.

And the latest research brings no comfort. Even if more rain does fall, evaporation will also increase, so perhaps 73% of the islands could become more parched as a result of increased evaporation.

Regional changes

“Islands are already dealing with sea level rise,” Dr Karnauskas says. “But this shows that any rainwater they have is also vulnerable. The atmosphere is getting thirstier, and would like more of that freshwater back.”

Climate scientists divide the world into grid boxes 240 km by 210 km to consider regional changes. If the area is almost entirely ocean, they consider it ocean and make predictions of change.

Altogether, the researchers say, there are thousands of islands too small to figure on the climate maps. The UN estimates the population of the Small Island Developing States to have been at 64 million in 2010. By 2100, it would be 80 million.

“Paper after paper in my field shows changes in drought or aridity, but my eye always looks at the maps and graphs in those papers and I wonder why we can’t see islands,” Dr Karnauskas says.

“Using models, it turns out, is much less straightforward for islands than for places where there are big chunks of land.” – Climate News Network



in Climate News Network

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

U.S. Geological Survey/wikimedia commons
Biodiversity & Habitat

Climate Change Amplifies Risk of ‘Insect Apocalypse’

December 1, 2022
43
Alaa Abd El-Fatah/wikimedia commons
COP Conferences

Rights Abuses, Intrusive Conference App Put Egypt Under Spotlight as COP 27 Host

November 14, 2022
26
Western Arctic National Parklands/wikimedia commons
Arctic & Antarctica

Arctic Wildfires Show Approach of New Climate Feedback Loop

January 2, 2023
27

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

RL0919/wikimedia commons

Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing

January 23, 2023
2.3k
Weirton, WV by Jon Dawson/flickr

IRON OXIDE: New Battery Brings Long-Duration Storage to Grids, 750 Jobs to West Virginia

January 30, 2023
572
Joshua Doubek/Wikipedia

No New Jobs Came from Alberta’s $4B ‘Job Creation’ Tax Cut for Big Oil

October 6, 2022
477
United Nations

Salvage of $20B ‘Floating Time Bomb’ Delayed by Rising Cost of Oil Tankers

January 27, 2023
105
EcoAnalytics

Albertans Want a Just Transition, Despite Premier’s Grumbling

January 23, 2023
289
@tongbingxue/Twitter

Extreme Warming Ahead Even as Worst-Case Scenarios Grow ‘Obsolete’

January 23, 2023
321

Recent Posts

Rachel Notley/Facebook

Notley Scorches Federal Just Transition Bill as Fossil CEO Calls for Oilsands Boom

January 23, 2023
295
Sergio Boscaino/flickr

Dubai Mulls Quitting C40 Cities Over ‘Costly’ Climate Target

January 24, 2023
104
hangela/pixabay

New UK Coal Mine Faces Two Legal Challenges

January 24, 2023
49

Gas Stoves Enter U.S. Climate Culture War, Become ‘Bellwether’ for Industry

January 22, 2023
82
Jeff Hitchcock/flickr.

BREAKING: GFANZ Banks, Investors Pour Hundreds of Billions into Fossil Fuels

January 23, 2023
513

Exxon Had the Right Global Warming Numbers Through Decades of Denial: Study

January 17, 2023
228
Next Post

Soil could save Earth from overheating

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}