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Gulf Bay Double Whammy: Rising Seas, Dammed Rivers
Terra Daily
New research finds that every U.S Gulf Coast bay in Texas and Louisiana is vulnerable to significant flooding and expansion within the coming century due to a combination of rising seas and reduced silt flowing from dammed up rivers.
“Looking back over the past 10,000 years, we find the evolution of each of these bays is punctuated by rapid flooding events that result in landward shifts in bay environments of tens of kilometers and increases in bay area up to 30 percent within a century or two,” said John Anderson, the W. Maurice Ewing Chair in Oceanography and professor of earth science at Rice University in Houston.
“These flooding events can be triggered by either a rapid increase in sea level or a rapid decrease in the amount of silt flowing into the bay, and there’s ample evidence to suggest that both of those will occur in each of these bays during the coming century.”
(24 Oct 2006)
Rising Seas and Stronger Storms Threaten New York City
Ker Than, LiveScience.com via Yahoo!News
Global warming could substantially raise sea levels around New York City over the next century and put the Big Apple at greater risk of being flooded by hurricane waves, a new computer model predicts.
Sea level around the city could jump 15 to 19 inches by 2050 and by more than three feet by 2080, according to the model.
“With sea levels at these higher levels, flooding by major storms would inundate many low-lying neighborhoods and shut down the entire metropolitan transportation system with much greater frequency,” said study team member Vivien Gornitz of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University in New York.
(25 Oct 2006)
Tiny island states seek help from rising Pacific
Paul Tait, Yahoo! News
As the rising Pacific Ocean laps at their doorsteps, tiny Tuvalu and Kiribati fear becoming environmental refugees and said major greenhouse gas emitters Australia and the United States have a moral obligation to help.
Aid and scientific groups have warned that millions in the Asia-Pacific region may be made homeless by sea level rises of up to 50 cm (19.7 inches) by 2070.
But Tuvalu, a speck of nine islands with 10,000 inhabitants, says their predicament is even more urgent as the ocean inexorably rises and threatens to engulf their palm-fringed homes.
(25 Oct 2006)
