Here’s more lousy news on the climate change front (you Republicans out there can just hum softly through this or go make yourselves sandwiches or something). According to an Oct. 1 news release from the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the half a million people living on atolls around the world are screwed.
“A new study shows that the combined effect of storm-induced wave-driven flooding and sea level rise on island atolls may be more severe and happen sooner than previous estimates of inundation predicted by passive ‘bathtub’ modeling for low-lying atoll islands, and especially at higher sea levels forecasted for the future due to climate change,” states the news release.
This comes from a new study (titled “Many Atolls May be Uninhabitable Within Decades Due to Climate Change”) from three researchers: Curt D. Storlazzi, Edwin P. L. Elias and Paul Berkowitz, who based their models on the atolls that make up the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. And make no mistake–this is more bad news, on top of the already rotten climate news most of us have grown accustomed to for the past couple of decades.
“Observations show global sea level is rising due to climate change, with the highest rates in the tropical Pacific Ocean where many of the world’s low-lying atolls are located,” states the news release. “Sea level rise is particularly critical for low-lying coral reef-lined atoll islands; these islands have limited land and water available for human habitation, limited food sources and ecosystems that are vulnerable to inundation from sea level rise. Sea level rise will result in larger waves and higher wave-driven water levels along atoll islands’ shorelines than at present.
The reason it’ll get so bad is because “waves will synergistically interact with sea level rise, causing twice as much land forecast to be flooded for a given future sea level than currently predicted by models that do not take wave-driven water levels into account.” The result–the complete destruction of habitation–is a forgone conclusion. And it will come sooner rather than later.
“Many atoll islands will be flooded annually, contaminating the limited freshwater resources with saltwater, and likely forcing inhabitants to abandon their islands in decades, not centuries, as previously thought,” said Storlazzi in the news release.
The study’s abstract sums it all up in pretty clear terms:
Observations show global sea level is rising due to climate change, with the highest rates in the tropical Pacific Ocean where many of the world’s low-lying atolls are located. Sea-level rise is particularly critical for low-lying carbonate reef-lined atoll islands; these islands have limited land and water available for human habitation, water and food sources, and ecosystems that are vulnerable to inundation from sea-level rise. Here we demonstrate that sea-level rise will result in larger waves and higher wave-driven water levels along atoll islands’ shorelines than at present. Numerical model results reveal waves will synergistically interact with sea-level rise, causing twice as much land forecast to be flooded for a given value of sea-level rise than currently predicted by current models that do not take wave-driven water levels into account. Atolls with islands close to the shallow reef crest are more likely to be subjected to greater wave-induced run-up and flooding due to sea-level rise than those with deeper reef crests farther from the islands’ shorelines. It appears that many atoll islands will be flooded annually, salinizing the limited freshwater resources and thus likely forcing inhabitants to abandon their islands in decades, not centuries, as previously thought.
Click here to read the atolls study.
Photo of wave at Laysan Island: Michele Reynolds/USGS
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