• 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
Historic Deal Reopens B.C. Indigenous Land to Fracking, Promises Surface Restoration March 14, 2023
Biden Approves $8B Oil Extraction Plan in Ecologically Sensitive Alaska March 14, 2023
U.S. Solar Developers Scramble after Silicon Valley Bank Collapse March 14, 2023
$30.9B Price Tag Makes Trans Mountain Pipeline a ‘Catastrophic Boondoggle’ March 14, 2023
UN Buys Tanker, But Funding Gap Could Scuttle Plan to Salvage Oil from ‘Floating Time Bomb’ March 9, 2023
Next
Prev

New land height metric raises sea level rise risk

November 4, 2019
Reading time: 4 minutes
Primary Author: Tim Radford

 
Millions of us now live in danger: we could be at risk from future high tides and winds, says a new approach to measuring land height.

 

LONDON, 4 November, 2019 – Researchers have taken a closer look at estimates of coastal land height – and found that the numbers of people already at risk from sea level rise driven by global heating have multiplied threefold.

  • 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.
Subscribe

More than 100 million people already live below the high tide line, and 250 million live on plains that are lower than the current annual flood heights. Previous estimates have put these numbers at 28 million, and 65 million.

And even if the world takes immediate drastic action and reduces greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the century, at least 190 million people will find themselves below sea level.

If the world’s nations continue on the notorious business-as-usual track and go on burning ever greater volumes of fossil fuels, then around 630 million will, by the year 2100, find themselves on land that will be below the expected annual flood levels.

Protection in question

“These assessments show the potential of climate change to reshape cities, economies, coastlines and entire global regions within our lifetime,” said Scott Kulp of Climate Central, who led a study published in the journal Nature Communications.

“As the tideline rises higher than the ground people call home, nations will increasingly confront questions about whether, how much, and how long coastal defences can protect them.”

At the heart of the new research is a revised estimate of what constitutes sea level, and how it should be measured. Individuals and communities find out the hard way how the highest tides can rise to poison their farmlands with salt and wash away the foundations of their homes.

But the big picture – across nations and regions worldwide – is harder to estimate: for decades researchers have relied on satellite readings, confirmed by flights over limited spaces with radar equipment.

“There is still a great need for . . . more accurate elevation data. Lives and livelihoods depend on it”

But space-based readings by Nasa’s radar topography programme tend to be over-estimates, the researchers argue. That is because the technology measures the height of the first reflecting surface the radar signal touches. In open country, this may not matter. But forests and high buildings in densely-peopled cities distort the picture.

In parts of coastal Australia, and using a new approach, the researchers found that satellite readings delivered over-estimates of 2.5 metres. So global averages in the past have over-estimated, by around 2 metres, the elevation of lands that are home to billions.

Research of this kind helps clarify the challenge that faces governments, civic authorities and private citizens: communities grow up along low-lying coasts and estuaries because these provide good land, reliable water supplies and easy transport. But the catch with flood plains is that, sooner or later, they flood.

The repeated evidence of a decade of climate science is that floods will become more devastating, more frequent and more prolonged for a mix of reasons.

Multiple risks

Soils will subside because of the growing demand for groundwater and for clays and stone for bricks and mortar; because global average temperatures will rise and oceans expand as they warm; glaciers will melt and tip more water into the sea to raise ocean levels; and tropical cyclones will become more intense to drive more destructive storm surges.

Researchers have already warned that sea level rise could be accelerating, to bring more flooding to, for instance, the great cities of the US coasts, while some cities can expect ever more battering from Atlantic storms.

Coastal flooding is likely to create millions of climate refugees even within the US, and the worldwide costs of coastal flooding could reach $1 trillion a year by the end of the century.

The latest study confirms that the hazards are real, and may have so far been under-estimated. The researchers calculated that, in parts of China, Bangladesh, India, Vietnam and Thailand, places now home to 237 million people could face coastal flooding every year by 2050 – a figure 183 million higher than previous estimates.

US coasts threatened

The same study highlights faulty estimates of ground elevation even in the richest and most advanced nations. In some parts of the crowded coastal cities of New York, Boston and Miami, for instance, the researchers believe satellite readings have over-estimated ground height by almost five metres. They say their new approach reduces the margin of error to 2.5 cms.

Right now, around a billion people live on lands less than 10 metres above high tide levels. Around 250 million live within one metre above high tide.

“For all of the critical research that’s been done on climate change and sea level projections, it turns out that for most of the global coast we didn’t know the height of the ground beneath our feet,” said Benjamin Strauss, president and chief scientist of Climate Central, and co-author.

“Our data improves the picture, but there is still a great need for governments and insurance companies to produce and release more accurate elevation data. Lives and livelihoods depend on it.” – 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
46
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
30

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

Behrat/Wikimedia Commons

Hawaii Firm Turns Home Water Heaters into Grid Batteries

March 14, 2023
138
EcoFlight

Historic Deal Reopens B.C. Indigenous Land to Fracking, Promises Surface Restoration

March 14, 2023
60
moerschy / Pixabay

Fringe Conspiracy Theories Target 15-Minute City Push in Edmonton, Toronto

February 22, 2023
1.6k
Rebecca Bollwitt/flickr

Fossils Stay ‘Oily’, Gibsons Sues Big Oil, U.S. Clean Energy Booms, EU Pushes Fossil Phaseout, and Fukushima Disaster was ‘No Accident’

March 14, 2023
33
David Dodge, Green Energy Futures/flickr

U.S. Solar Developers Scramble after Silicon Valley Bank Collapse

March 14, 2023
29
U.S. National Transportation Safety Board/flickr

$30.9B Price Tag Makes Trans Mountain Pipeline a ‘Catastrophic Boondoggle’

March 14, 2023
27

Recent Posts

U.S. Bureau of Land Management/flickr

Biden Approves $8B Oil Extraction Plan in Ecologically Sensitive Alaska

March 14, 2023
20
EcoAnalytics

Canadians Want Strong Emissions Cap Regulations, Not More Missed Targets

March 14, 2023
24
Raysonho/wikimedia commons

Purolator Pledges $1B to Electrify Last-Mile Delivery

March 14, 2023
11
United Nations

UN Buys Tanker, But Funding Gap Could Scuttle Plan to Salvage Oil from ‘Floating Time Bomb’

March 10, 2023
84
Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons

Biden Cuts Fossil Subsidies, But Oil and Gas Still Lines Up for Billions

March 10, 2023
150
jasonwoodhead23/flickr

First Nation Scorches Imperial Oil, Alberta Regulator Over Toxic Leak

March 8, 2023
357
Next Post

Climate threat from inhalers can prove costly

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}