Surging seas driven by the climate crisis already impacting Island nations says UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres

The Pacific Islands Forum is underway in Tonga. The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres made a speech to the opening of the forum. 

He highlighted in his speech (see below) the need for a just transition for the phaseout of fossil fuels and called for all members of the G20 to step up and lead, by phasing out the production and consumption of fossil fuels and stopping their expansion immediately. 

While Australia was not explicitly named, we are the only member state of the Forum involved in fossil fuel expansion and export.

"When governments sign new oil and gas licenses, they are signing away our future." said Guterres.

He also called for national climate plans – Nationally Determined Contributions – to be submitted by next year, aligning with the 1.5-degree upper limit of global heating.

Guterres also launched two new reports from Tonga highlighting the acceleration of sea level rise and the impacts already occurring on low lying Pacific Nations.

What impact #sealevelrise on Melbourne's privatised port facilities?

The Andrews Victorian state government has been successful with the sale of the Port of Melbourne for $9.7 billion, an election promise. The government had been expecting around $7 billion for the asset. Technically, its not a sale, but a 50 year lease of the port’s commercial operations. The long term lease of Australia's largest port facilities had bipartisan support, with the State Liberal Party, when in power, doing much of the initial paperwork to bring about the privatisation.

The new owners of the Port of Melbourne are the Lonsdale consortium which includes the Queensland Investment Corporation, the Future Fund, GIP and OMERS.

This is another public asset sale deriving from neoliberalism which has had the support of both major political parties. There are really very few state owned assets left to flog now.

The money will be a windfall gain for the state's budget, but it sacrifices future revenue and control of Port infrastructure. The port is a major gateway for imports and exports and holds a near monopoly position. Being at sea level, the port facilities are extremely vulnerable to sea level rise due to climate change.

Guest Post: Rising sea levels will be too much, too fast for Florida

Within a generation or two sea level rise is going to really start to affect most coastal nations. Alreadyit is having an affect on small island nations with coral atolls being inundated and their fresh water lenses being contaminated by salt water. But developed countries will also feel the pain such as the predicament facing Miami in Florida. This is a timely article on what the future holds for Miami:

By Harold R. Wanless, University of Miami

It is amazing for me to see the very aggressive building boom underway in south Florida; on the beaches and barrier islands, throughout downtown and in the low western areas bordering the Everglades. They are building like there is no tomorrow. Unfortunately, they are right.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) published its assessment of sea level rise in 2012 as part of the National Climate Assessment. Including estimates based on limited and maximum melt of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, it anticipated a raise of 4.1 to 6.6ft (1.25 to 2m) by 2100, reaching 2ft (0.6m) by around 2050 and 3ft (0.9m) by around 2075.

This degree of sea level rise would make nearly all the barrier islands of the world uninhabitable, inundate a major portion of the world’s deltas, upon which hundreds of millions of people live, and leave low-lying coastal zones like southeast Florida increasingly difficult to maintain infrastructure services for and increasingly vulnerable to hurricanes and storms.

Ice Sheets and Sea level: what the past tells us is likely.

Watch this informative video By Peter Sinclair and the Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media on ice sheet collapse and sea level rise and past climates.

"We are still potentially underestimating the instability of the ice sheets" informs Stefen Rahmstorf, Professor of Physics of the oceans from Postdam University. "The IPCC has greatly revised it's estimates of how unstable the Greenland ice sheet was"

Dr Richard Alley in a graph illuminates that on current CO2 levels we can expect sea level rise to impact 10 per cent of the Earth's population, hundreds of millions of people. He says in the video that "Greenland is very tightly tied to temperature, and if it gets too hot, it goes away".

Guest Post: Reversal of sea level rise co-ordinated planning increasing risk to Australian coastal development

Sea level rise is perhaps one of the greatest perils of climate change over the long term according to Dr Peter Ward. The rate of rise will start relatively small and accelerate over this century and the following ones. The latest IPCC report projects sea level rise at 28-98 centimeters by the year 2100, and while this is more than the previous report, there is considerable doubt that this may be still unduly conservative. We simply do not know and understand the complexities of ice sheet disintegration - a non-linear process.

A survey of scientists researching in the sea level field - Expert assessment of sea-level rise by AD 2100 and AD 2300 - found that sea level rise is likely to be 70-120 centimeters by 2100 if greenhouse-gas emissions are not mitigated. A few like James Hansen think that it could be substantially higher.


The Postdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said in a media release:

The experts were also asked for a “high-end” estimate below which they expect sea-level to stay with 95 percent certainty until the year 2100. This high-end value is relevant for coastal planning. For unmitigated emissions, half of the experts (51%) gave 1.5 meters or more and a quarter (27%) 2 meters or more. The high-end value in the year 2300 was given as 4.0 meters or higher by the majority of experts (58%).

And yet here in Australia we see the Federal Government dropping the ball in co-ordinating coastal planning, and State Governments also withdrawing, leaving planning up to local Government which largely lacks the resources and cannot afford to carry the risk of inappropriate planning and development on our coasts. Queensland is just the latest Government to absolve itself of this planning responsibility.

Longterm sea level rise estimated at 2.3 metres for every degree Celsius of global warming

"Continuous sea-level rise is something we cannot avoid unless global temperatures go down again," said climate scientist Anders Levermann from the Postdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. "Thus we can be absolutely certain that we need to adapt. Sea-level rise might be slow on time scales on which we elect governments, but it is inevitable and therefore highly relevant for almost everything we build along our coastlines, for many generations to come."

Anders Levermann was taking about the implications of a new study he is a co-author of - The multi-millennial sea-level commitment of global warming. The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences online during July 2013. It is one of the first studies to combine analyses of four major contributors to potential sea level rise into a collective estimate, and compare it with evidence of past sea-level responses to global temperature changes.

The result is a longterm estimate that global sea levels will rise about 2.3 meters, or more than seven feet, over the next two thousand years for every degree (Celsius) the planet warms. "the total sea-level commitment after 2,000 y is quasi-linear, with a sensitivity of 2.3 m °C" reports the study.

"The study did not seek to estimate how much the planet will warm, or how rapidly sea levels will rise," noted Professor Peter Clark, an Oregon State University paleo-climatologist and co-author on the PNAS article. "Instead, we were trying to pin down the 'sea-level commitment' of global warming on a multi-millennial time scale. In other words, how much would sea levels rise over long periods of time for each degree the planet warms and holds that warmth?"

Seagrass projected to drastically decline with sea level rise

To most of us, what is hidden beneath the waves of our coastal environment remains invisible and is little thought about or cared about. Yet seagrass meadows, though hidden from our direct view, contribute valuable ecological services supporting valuable fish nurseries, as food for dugongs and turtles, and as a highly efficient blue carbon sink sequestering carbon.

A new study of the seagrass meadows in Moreton Bay, Queensland found that a significant proportion of valuable seagrass habitats would be lost without action to offset the affects of climate change. "The area of seagrass habitat was predicted to decline by 17% by 2100 under a scenario of SLR of 1.1 m." said the study.

Lead author Dr Megan Saunders from UQ's Global Change Institute said "Seagrass meadows not only help to slow climate change by sucking up a large portion of the world's plant-stored carbon, but they also benefit livelihoods, food security, fisheries, biodiversity, shoreline protection and other ecosystem services,"

Sea Level rising 3 to 4 times faster on US Atlantic coast

One of the impacts of the Greenland Ice sheet melt is the increase in cold fresh water impacting on the themohaline circulation, the great ocean conveyor belt. There are signs the Gulf Stream has slowed down by a third due to this influx of melt water. The Gulf Stream acts to drag water away from the coast of North America, so a slowing current will add to greater sea level rise along the east coast of north America: increasing sea level rise by up to 4 times the global average.

Scientists from the US Geological Survey (USGS) identified that since about 1990, sea-level rise in the 1,000-km (600 mile) stretch of coastal zone from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, to north of Boston, Massachusetts is a sea level rise hotspot. This is based on tide gauge data and concurs with sea level rise modelling.

Australia gives foreign aid to Kiribati to combat climate change as new coal mines approved

At the start of this week Australia's Foreign Minister Bob Carr announced that Australia would fund repairs to 40 kilometres of main road in South Tarawa, Kiribati. The road is heavily damaged and undermined by rising sea levels and coastal erosion from climate change. The irony is that at the same time Bob Carr's colleague, Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke was approving 3 major fossil fuel developments that will exacerbate climate change.

"Kiribati is at the front line of climate change," Senator Carr said. "Its highest point is now just three metres above sea level. Unless action is taken, Kiribati will be uninhabitable by 2030 as a result of coastal erosion, sea level rise and saltwater intrusion into drinking water."

To Kiribati Australia's aid money is an important contribution to a small island state facing obliteration due to rising seas in the next 50 years. The highest point on Kiribati is just 3 metres above sea level, and much of the land is only one to two metres high. Rising seas and storm surges are spoiling land for agriculture, washing away houses, undermining roads and producing salt water incursion into fresh drinking water wells.

Kiribati is unlikely to survive the impacts of climate change this century, but adaptation can be made to increase resilience. "This project will provide more than 40 per cent of the population with better access to health clinics, schools and markets. Coastal roads will be rehabilitated to withstand rising sea levels and storm surges caused by climate change." said Senator Carr.

Is Climate Change causing an exponential rate of Ice sheet Mass Loss, sea level rise?

Climate scientist James Hansen and his colleague Makiko Sato have released a new discussion paper with updated data on ice sheet mass loss from Greenland and Antarctica, with implications for possible multi-metre sea level rise this century. It makes for some interesting reading - there is a link to Hansen's website and the paper at the end.

The thesis that Hansen has put forward for several years is that Ice Sheet collapse is a non-linear process: that with the inclusion of amplifying climate feedbacks it is likely to follow an exponential rate of acceleration - a doubling rate. It might be a 10 year doubling time, or less. This will lead to extensive sea level rise, perhaps in the order of 5 metres this century.

But accurate data measurements of ice mass loss via laboriously estimating mass input and output has only been available since the early 1990s, and accurate satellite measurements (Gravimetry) via the GRACE satellites since 2000.

What these measurements show is that ice mass loss from both Greenland and Antarctica are accelerating, but the data for the time period is still too short to determine whether ice sheet mass loss will follow a somewhat linear path, or an exponential path doubling every 10 years or shorter time period.

Caption: Figure 2: Greenland (a) and Antarctic (b) mass change deduced from gravitational field measurements by Velicogna (2009) and best-fits with 5-year and 10-year mass loss doubling times. From NASA: Earth's Climate History: Implications for Tomorrow Hansen and Sato July 2011

Update 14 Jan 2013: Matt Owens from Fairfax Climate Watch had a similar idea in reviewing Hansen's discussion paper. Read his initial analysis: Sea level rise could crimp GDP; US direct losses could top 1/4 trillion per year during 2040-2050. On 11 January 2013 he updated his analysis with a new article: Surprising negative feedback could mean epic disaster. Both are worthwhile reading.

Sea Level Rise unstoppable: emissions reduction needed to enable climate adaptation

Well this is a nice pickle! It seems that sea level rise won't stop even if we aggressively mitigate global warming and keep global average atmospheric temperatures beneath 2 degrees celsius. The reason, it seems, is there is enormous inertia in the world's oceans and we are now warming the deeper ocean which will continue for hundreds of years.

Simple physics really. You heat a liquid and it expands. This thermal expansion is responsible for about a third of the currently observed rate of sea level rise. And it will continue for several hundred years as deeper cooler layers of the ocean take up the heat from the upper layers. Even if we take aggressive action to reduce carbon emissions, and go carbon negative, such action may only slow the rate of sea level rise as the deeper ocean continues to expand.

California coast to be hit hard by sea level rise with climate change

A US National Research Council report released June 22 concluded that average global sea level is likely to rise two to three times higher within this century than previously estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007, with the US west coast being particularly affected at greater than the global average for sea level rise.

The study confirms that sea level rise is accelerating and is in accord with other recent studies estimating global sea level rise at a metre or more by the end of the century, with the melting of land ice now the largest component of global sea-level rise (about 65%). Scientists say that Global Warming means 20 Metre sea level rise is in the pipeline.

Related: Sea Level Rise and Australia | The risks of Sea Level Change - Dr Peter Ward | Scientists Estimate Sea level Rise for next 500 years

Sea level rise hidden impact on Biodiversity and Habitat loss

A new scientific study published in Global Change Biology raises alarm bells about global climate change and the secondary impact of sea level rise on habitat loss and species biodiversity, especially in the Asian and Pacific regions.

We already know that Climate change and habitat loss threaten biodiversity with the extinction rate underestimated and that Biodiversity is a crucial climate change buffer for ecosystem and cultural diversity. Scientists have warned that biodiversity is declining rapidly throughout the world, describing the loss of species as the 6th mass extinction event on the earth. Tropical insects may already be an extreme risk of extinction with just moderate increases in temperature. Now the secondary effects of sea level rise could also have a devastating impact on biodiversity.

Pacific climate change: temperatures rise, sea levels increase, rainfall changing

A major new report on climate change in the Pacific Ocean region reports that the region is getter hotter, sea levels are rising, rainfall is changing and equatorial winds have weakened. While cyclone may tend to decrease slightly in the future, cyclone intensity is likely to be greater.

The report launched today - Climate change in the Pacific, scientific assessment and new research - contains 530 pages in 2 volumes with over 100 authors. The research was led by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) and Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) with strong input from 15 National Meteorological Services, Geoscience Australia, and from universities in the region. The report includes observations and climate projections for 15 partner countries involved : Cook Islands, East Timor, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.

Goodbye Mountain Glaciers, hello sea level rise

Photo: Fox Glacier in New Zealand (2007) by Andrew Turner

New research from Canada says that most mountain glaciers are on the retreat. Many glaciers in Europe, New Zealand, Africa and the US Rocky Mountains will lose up to 75 per cent of their mass by the end of the century. The study reveals that the melt from mountain glaciers will contribute up to 12 centimetres of sea level rise by 2100.

The risks of Sea Level Change - Dr Peter Ward

Dr Peter Ward claims that the single biggest threat and impact of climate change will be rising seas, rather than hot weather, or even drought. He has a new book out this year called The Flooded Earth: Our Future In a World Without Ice Caps which explains why, how, and how fast the seas will rise, due to global warming. Dr Peter Ward is a paleontologist and professor of Biology and of Earth and Space Sciences at the University of Washington, Seattle.

The interview is done by Alex Smith from Radio Ecoshock