• 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
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Cities & Communities
  • Electric Mobility
  • Heat & Power
  • Community Climate Finance
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Cities & Communities
  • Electric Mobility
  • Heat & Power
  • Community Climate Finance
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Cities & Communities
  • Electric Mobility
  • Heat & Power
  • Community Climate Finance
  FEATURED
BREAKING: Don’t Attend COP 28 Unless You’re There to Help, Figueres Tells Oil and Gas September 21, 2023
Thorold Gas Peaker Plant Won’t Be Built After Unanimous City Council Vote September 20, 2023
Indoor Heat Leaves Canadians Unsafe with ‘No Escape’, CBC Investigation Finds September 20, 2023
Agrivoltaics a Win-Win for Farmers, Communities, Solar Developers, and Alberta’s UCP September 20, 2023
‘Beginning of the End’ for Oil and Gas as IEA Predicts Pre-2030 Peak September 19, 2023
Next
Prev

Extreme sea levels could soon become annual events

September 8, 2021
Reading time: 3 minutes
Primary Author: Tim Radford

 

Extreme sea levels are inevitable. Researchers now know more about their scale. Prepare for high tides almost every year.

LONDON, 8 September, 2021 − Those who live by the sea could soon enough be at risk from it. Extreme sea levels − those episodes of high tide, storm surge and coastal flood − that now happen only once in every century could within a lifetime be happening every year.

  • Be among the first to read The Energy Mix Weekender
  • A brand new weekly digest containing exclusive and essential climate stories from around the world.
  • The Weekender:The climate news you need.
Subscribe

And this is increasingly likely even if nations act on promises made six years ago and make drastic reductions in fossil fuel use. The global warming already inevitable because of the last decades of greenhouse gas emissions makes frequent flooding ever more likely.

US, European and Australian researchers report in the journal Nature Climate Change that they used computer projections to model what would be likely to happen to sea levels at 7,283 coastal locations worldwide over the next 70 years, under a range of scenarios that saw global temperatures rise to between 1.5°C and 5°C.

The bad news is that at least half of them face a massive increase in the frequency of extreme episodes by 2070.

“How much warming will it take to make a 100-year event an annual event? Not much more than what has already been documented”

The most vulnerable regions will be in the tropics and subtropics, including the Mediterranean Sea, the Arabian Peninsula, the southern part of North America’s Pacific Coast, Hawaii and the Caribbean, the Philippines, Indonesia and much of the southern hemisphere.

“One of our central questions driving this study was this: how much warming will it take to make what has been known as a 100-year event an annual event? Our answer is, not much more than what has already been documented,” said Claudia Tebaldi, of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in the US.

In the last century, the world has warmed by at least one degree Celsius above the average for most of human history: in 2015, in Paris, 195 nations vowed to contain global temperature rise to “well below” 2°C by 2100, and ideally to no more than 1.5°C. That promise has yet to be backed up by concerted, dramatic international action.

In fact, the planet could surpass the 1.5°C limit, at least temporarily, some time this decade. Within 70 years, at present rates of emissions, the world will be committed to a potentially catastrophic global average rise of 3°C.

Warmth in store

And, researchers have warned, and warned again, coastal flooding could reach devastating levels. So the latest study simply confirms an alarming future, and adds a little more certainty to the zones more at risk.

The research is also a reminder that although drastic cuts and a concerted effort to restore the natural world could limit the rise in global air temperatures, the world’s oceans are subject to a slower timetable: the warming that has already happened will increasingly be reflected in tide levels for decades to come.

Like all such projections, the potential outcome ranges from optimistic to very pessimistic. With a temperature rise of just 1.5°C, seven-tenths of the studied locations might experience little increase in flood frequency. At the gloomier end of the spectrum, 99% could see flooding multiply 100-fold.

“It’s not huge news that sea level rise will be dramatic even at 1.5°C and will have substantial effects on extreme sea level frequencies and magnitude,” Dr Tebaldi said. “This study gives a more complete picture around the globe. We were able to look at a wider range of warming levels in fine spatial detail.” − Climate News Network



in Climate News Network, Ice Loss & Sea Level Rise, Severe Storms & Flooding

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

Ken Lund/flickr
Legal & Regulatory

California Suit Claims Decades of Public Deception by Big Oil Companies

September 19, 2023
94
HiMY SYeD/flick
Ontario

Ontario Waits 8 Months to Release Dire Climate Impact Report

September 14, 2023
509
dtdchange/Twitter
Cities & Communities

‘No Place to Hide’ as U.S. Home Insurers Slash Climate Risk Coverage

September 14, 2023
115

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

UN Climate Change/flickr

BREAKING: Don’t Attend COP 28 Unless You’re There to Help, Figueres Tells Oil and Gas

September 21, 2023
404
Kristoferb/Wikimedia Commons

Canadians Could Save $10.4B, Cut Climate Pollution by Replacing Central Air with Heat Pumps

August 28, 2023
810
/Piqusels

‘Beginning of the End’ for Oil and Gas as IEA Predicts Pre-2030 Peak

September 19, 2023
469
Asurnipal/wikimedia commons

Agrivoltaics a Win-Win for Farmers, Communities, Solar Developers, and Alberta’s UCP

September 20, 2023
171
Jon Sullivan/flickr

Thorold Gas Peaker Plant Won’t Be Built After Unanimous City Council Vote

September 21, 2023
592
Rennett Stowe/flickr

‘I’ve Been Ghosted,’ Rural Mayor Says, as Alberta Towns Push Back on Renewables Moratorium

September 8, 2023
1.9k

Recent Posts

Rewat Wannasuk/Pexels

Virtual Power Plants Could Cut Peak Demand 20%, Save U.S. Grid $10B Per Year

September 20, 2023
95
Jeremy Bezanger/Unsplash

Indoor Heat Leaves Canadians Unsafe with ‘No Escape’, CBC Investigation Finds

September 20, 2023
62
Wesley Fryer/flickr

Smart Thermostats Boost Grid Stability Amid Intense Heat

September 20, 2023
45
Cullen328/wikimedia commons

Manufactured Housing Could Dent the Affordable Housing Crunch with Energy-Efficient Designs

September 20, 2023
120
Mr Renewables/Wikipedia

Californians Fight for New Community Solar Plan

September 20, 2023
106
Plug'n Drive/Wikimedia Commons

Rural Carshares Ensure EV Push Leaves No One Behind

September 20, 2023
39
Next Post

Amazon fires are rising threat to Brazil’s great rainforest

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
The Energy Mix - Energy Central
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Cities & Communities
  • Electric Mobility
  • Heat & Power
  • Community Climate Finance

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}