By Steven Goddard and Anthony Watts
From the New York Daily News via Associated Press reports :
Global warming resolves 30-year land dispute between India, Bangladesh: Coveted island sinks
By NIRMALA GEORGE, Associated Press Writer Nirmala George, Associated Press Writer – Wed Mar 24, 9:29 am ET
NEW DELHI – For nearly 30 years, India and Bangladesh have argued over control of a tiny rock island in the Bay of Bengal. Now rising sea levels have resolved the dispute for them: the island’s gone.
New Moore Island in the Sunderbans has been completely submerged, said oceanographer Sugata Hazra, a professor at Jadavpur University in Calcutta. Its disappearance has been confirmed by satellite imagery and sea patrols, he said. “What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming,” said Hazra.
Note in the map below that the island was a river estuary, meaning it wasn’t made out of rock as claimed. It was made out of mud and sand. From Wikipedia:
The island was situated only two kilometers from the mouth of the Hariabhanga River. The emergence of the island was first discovered by an American satellite in 1974 that showed the island to have an area of 2,500 sq meters (27,000 sq ft). Later, various remote sensing surveys showed that the island had expanded gradually to an area of about 10,000 sq meters (110,000 sq ft) at low tide, including a number of ordinarily submerged shoals. The highest elevation of the island had never exceeded two meters above sea level. [1]
…
The island was claimed by both Bangladesh and India, although neither country established any permanent settlement there because of the island’s geographical instability. India had reportedly hoisted the Indian flag on South Talpatti in 1981 and established a temporary base of Border Security Forces (BSF) on the island, regularly visiting with naval gunships. [3][4]
The AP claim (probably from Seth Borenstein) is that global warming induced sea level rise has submerged the island, and that is complete nonsense.
Let’s look at sea level trends in the region. Here’s the NOAA Tides and Currents map of the area from their interactive web site.
NOAA’s nearest tide gauge shows sea level rising in that region at 0.54 mm / year, which means that would take nearly 2000 years for sea level to rise one meter. See the plot below:
Note that since the island was first discovered in 1974, the sea level graph above shows 19.4 mm (0.76 inches) rise based on a rate of 0.54mm/year.
Sea level rise is a relative phenomenon. It can be caused by sea rising, or land sinking. Sort of like sitting on a train at the station, and you can’t tell if your train has started moving or the adjacent one.
Looking at a satellite image of the Bangladesh delta, one can see how tides, currents, silts, and other factors shape what is a tenuous boundary between land and sea:
Temporary estuary islands and sandbars appear and disappear all the time worldwide. Sometimes it can take a few years, sometimes a few centuries. Note that most of the area near South Talpatti Island is only 1-3 meters above sea level anyway, which means that such low lying islands made of mud and sand are prone to the whims of tide and currents and weather.
Low lying islands are modified by nature on a regular basis. For example we have Chandeleur Lighthouse in Louisiana
From USGS:
The lighthouse was situated on land until Hurricane Georges (September 28, 1998). After that the island had eroded from under the lighthouse such that the lighthouse appeared to be in open water. Since Georges, although the island had reformed behind the lighthouse, the lighthouse remained in open water. The pre-Ivan photo (August 11, 2004) shows the lighthouse in open water about 30 m from the shoreline, and the northern tip of the island was relatively broad and extended several hundred meters north of the lighthouse.
…
It was probably the cumulative effect of four hurricanes in 7 years that resulted in the deep erosion (evidenced by lack of shoaling) seen now after Hurricane Ivan.
And looking further back in time, islands have disappeared before: from the Sarasota Herald – May 29, 1937
While we are on the subject of islands disappearing into the Indian Ocean, even more interesting is the 2002 discovery nearby of a 9,000 year old city, submerged 36 metres off the coast of India.
==================
The city is believed to predate the Harappan civilisation
Lost city ‘could rewrite history’
By BBC News Online’s Tom Housden
The remains of what has been described as a huge lost city may force historians and archaeologists to radically reconsider their view of ancient human history.
Marine scientists say archaeological remains discovered 36 metres (120 feet) underwater in the Gulf of Cambay off the western coast of India could be over 9,000 years old.
The vast city – which is five miles long and two miles wide – is believed to predate the oldest known remains in the subcontinent by more than 5,000 years.
=================
How many Hummers were they driving 9,000 years ago? Chalk up another clueless AGW claim. Sea level rises and/or land subsides, estuary flows change, and sandbars appear and disappear. In this case of a tiny sandbar/island near the Bangladesh delta, it has nothing to do with global warming.
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Anyone who has had the pleasure of travelling or living in that area would not be the least bit surprised that this so-called island disappeared. Explains where all the water from the melting Himalayan glaciers went…
I remember the New Jersey took some fire from an island off the coast of Vietnam. The New Jersey returned fire and sank the island. (literally!)
Cutting down 45% of the mangroves to aid the shrimp industry probably has more effect than either land sinkage or river flow.
Bangladesh: losing mangroves to shrimp farming leads to food loss and environmental insecurity
http://www.wrm.org.uy/bulletin/144/Bangladesh.html
Its political, the island will re appear nearer one of the claimed parent coun tries!
I would say predicting sea levels is more complicated than climate, no one has plotted the bottom with any accuracy, the tectonic plate movement is erratic and fluctuations on magnetic flux change everything, nightmare to understand.
There is an island that was a sunken ship from the 1812 war with the USA in Canada, would they like to tie that in with AGW or unicorns?
I read a source that claimed the “island” was created in 1970 after a cyclone.
Yep, it’s a sand bar !!!!!!!
What the heck, here’s the souce:
http://www.banglapedia.org/httpdocs/HT/S_0503.HTM
If only Mother Nature could solve all our border disputes so peacefully.
So in a choice between a sand bar in a river being washed away or the sea, presumably very, very locally, having suddenly risen over six feet, alarmists want us to believe the latter. That about right?
The good news is that there’s no sandbar left to fight over.
The bad news is that the alamists will find sand where none exists to bury thier heads in.
If indeed the sea levels continue to rise, won’t we see corresponding flooding and deposition on the flood plains of Bangladesh thus maintaining the relative levels between sea level and flood plain? Surely some of that catastrophic glacial melting will transport a smidgen of dirt toward the sea thus creating some more rocky islands in the Sunderbans?
I’ll start worrying about sea levels when Kevin Costner starts growing gills.
There are other reasons for sea (ocean) levels rising or falling in a particular area of the globe. Indian Ocean has one of the largest negative ‘geoid anomalies’, which may well be reason for sea levels fluctuation.
http://planetearth.nerc.ac.uk/images/uploaded/custom/geoid-c2.jpg
This geoid anomaly may also be reason for the Maldives disappearing in the near future.
The east coast of England is dissapearing too! The once major city port of Dunwich started to disappear due to the SUVs of the 13th century.
These must be the SUVs that caused the Medieval Warm Period.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunwich
Another case is Spurn Head in Yorkshire (Yorkshire is being eroded! Hooray!) The appearance and disappearance of Spurn Head is cyclical at ~250 years. They keep having to rebuild the road to the lighthouse even on the present version.
I must accept the total blame for this, having driven my former camper van down to the end of the spur, causing sea level to rise.
http://www.fortunecity.com/greenfield/ecolodge/25/spurn.htm
Good job! Kudos! Set Borenstein should have done this for his readers – maybe he is not qualified enough or not committed to serve the best interest of his readers.
here’s some relevant reporting from the Sunderbans:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/5749623/part_2/story-of-a-sinking-land.thtml
Just for the heck of it, I posted this comment on the Yahoo News site linked above:
/Mr Lynn
Curiousgeorge (04:31:29) :
I’ll start worrying about sea levels when Kevin Costner starts growing gills.
———————————————————-
I’ll start worrying when Kevin Costner makes another movie.
@jim Hogg.
The city exists and photos have been taken. (As well as other samples.) The Indians are seeing a lot of resistance from the establishment because the city rewrites the history books. The current consensus is that civilisation arose in the fertile cresent of the Middle East and this city is a direct challenge to that.
By it’s depth, we can reasonably assume that the last Ice Age was still going when the city was founded, so a rise of 120 ft when going from a full glacial period to an interglacial isn’t out of the expected range. By it’s size, we can tell that it wasn’t somebodys first attempt at city building, they had had a lot of practice by the time the submerged city was founded. This pushes the beginnings of the founding civilisation further back into the glacial period.
Certain references in Vedic literature suggests that it was written during the last full Ice Age, which might imply a connection.
The bottom line is that should such a city exist, then it becomes likely that civilisation did not arise in the ME or Europe and spread from there, but was rather imported from a much older Indian civilisation. This concept is an affront to many in the establishment.
It is (or was)a sandbar in an estuary. Sandbars in estuaries appear and disappear as part of the natural evolution of the estuary.
The argument between estuary India and Bangladesh over sovereignty reminds me of a similar spat over a small island called Perejil (Parsley in English) between Spain and Morocco back in 2002. The island lies 250 metres of the coast of Morocco, and is claimed by Spain. A brief description of events is at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perejil_Island_crisis
An amusing little episode.
@ur momisugly JohnB (05:29:04) : So the sea level rise back then must have been caused by all those SUV’s ( Sport Utility Vimana’s ) 🙂
A Rock for the Ages, done in by a meandering thalweg.
Pity. Geomorphology used to be an honest science.
There’s a tide-guage in Mumbai next to the Gateway of India monument which has been compared to its appearance in paintings from the Victorian era. No perceptible change from more than 150 years.
Are you sure this piece didn’t first appear in The National Enquirer?
Looking at the picture you start this piece with the one thing that strikes me is the trees are still there, which means the island is still there. It hasn’t been washed away or the trees would have floated off.
My guess is the photo was taken at a particularly high Spring Tide, possibly with a storm surge or melt surge added in and the story itself is just hokum and smoke.
Perhaps someone would like to look for it at low tide.
How about the islands and mountains that have been created in or near Iceland during the recent years ? Surely here the cause was global warming as well ! The sediments were overhotted and it just so happened that there were no adequate temperature recording-stations set up in the area to register the proof of this robust global warming . Anyway the heating here is undeniable .