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Coastal Mega-Cities in for a Bumpy Ride
Srabani Roy, Inter Press Service
About 643 million people, or one-tenth of the world’s population, who live in low lying coastal areas are at great risk of oceans-related impacts of climate change, according to a global research study to be released next month.
The study, by researchers at Columbia University’s Centre for International Earth Sciences Information Network and the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development, is the first of its kind. The researchers identified populations, particularly urban populations, at greatest risk from rising sea levels and more intense storms due to climate change.
“Of the more than 180 countries with populations in the low-elevation coastal zone, 130 of them — about 70 percent — have their largest urban area extending into that zone,” said Bridget Andersen, a research associate at CIESIN, in a statement.
“Furthermore, the world’s largest cities — those with more than five million residents — have on average one-fifth of their population and one-sixth of their land area within this coastal zone.”
The study, which will be published in the peer-reviewed journal Environment and Urbanisation, assesses the risks to populations and urban settlements along coastal areas that are less than 10 metres above sea level, referred to as the low-elevation coastal zone, or LECZ. Although globally this zone accounts for only two percent of the world’s land area, it contains 10 percent of the world’s population and 13 percent of the world’s urban population, the study found.
(28 March 2007)
Also at Common Dreams.
Tiny island with a global warning
Mark Doyle, BBC
In the first of a series of reports, BBC World Affairs Correspondent Mark Doyle analyses the state of food production and consumption across the globe.
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The tiny Indian island of Ghoramara, in the delta where the River Ganges meets the Bay of Bengal, is a symbol of the crisis the world is facing as it struggles to feed a growing population.
It is a tiny place – just a few kilometres across – and it is getting tinier.
The island, part of a chain called the Sundarbans, was first settled by farmers in colonial times when the authorities decided to expand rice production to feed the multitudes in the city of Calcutta.
But when I visited Ghoramara there was powerful evidence that soil erosion caused in part by farming and the rising surrounding sea level caused by global warming were gradually making the island disappear.
(28 March 2007)
Making Sense Of Melting Ice
How long will the poles stay frozen? The search for answers.
Mary Carmichael, Newsweek
Every year, the cap of sea ice floating atop the North Pole dwindles from about 14 million to 7 million square kilometers-a number that would panic scientists if it weren’t a normal occurrence, courtesy of nature.
Most of the summer shrinkage is caused by melting, and the pack ice grows again once winter arrives, freezing the choppy water back into solid sheets. Because it’s a recurring cycle, scientists have never found this phenomenon worrisome.
Until this year, when Ronald Kwok of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory rang the alarm. He’d noticed that in 2005, little of the ice that had formed the previous winter had gone on to survive the summer-making the Arctic cap the smallest it had been in five decades.
The polar regions are notorious shape-shifters. Complex ecosystems, they can be swayed by factors from wind to water to warming, and their forbidding climate makes on-site research difficult. As a result, they’re a bit of a mystery to scientists, and their future is hard to predict. But with ever more omens foretelling the death of the ice caps-possibly, in some models, by the year 2040-researchers are launching a major effort to make such a prediction.
(2 April 2007 issue)
Global warming study warns of vanishing climates
James Randerson, Guardian
By the end of the century up to two fifths of the land surface of the Earth will have a hotter climate unlike anything that currently exists, according to a study that predicts the effects of global warming on local and regional climates. And in the worst case scenario, the climatic conditions on another 48% of the land surface will no longer exist on the planet at all.
The changes – which will have a devastating affect on biodiversity hotspots such as the Amazonian and Indonesian rainforests – will wipe out numerous species that are unable to move to stay within their preferred climate range. These species will either have to evolve rapidly or die out.
“There is a real problem for conservation biologists,” said the lead author, John Williams, at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. “How do you conserve the biological diversity of these entire systems if the physical environment is changing and potentially disappearing?”
Studies already suggest that the ranges of species are shifting towards the poles at around six kilometres a decade, but what will happen when the rate of change intensifies?
(27 March 2007)
Also at Common Dreams
New, Previously Unknown Climate Zones Seen by 2100
Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters via ENN
Global warming could re-make the world’s climate zones by 2100, with some polar and mountain climates disappearing altogether and formerly unknown ones emerging in the tropics, scientists said Monday.
And when climate zones vanish, the animals and plants that live in them will be at greater risk of extinction, said Jack Williams, lead author of a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“What we’ve shown is these climates disappear, not just regionally, but they’re disappearing from the global set of climates, and the species that live in these climates really have nowhere to go as the system changes,” said Williams, a geographer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
(27 March 2007)
