From the hot and well above sea level University of Arizona, home of the world famous parking lot climate station, comes this zany press release:
Rising seas will affect major US coastal cities by 2100
Rising sea levels could threaten an average of 9 percent of the land within 180 U.S. coastal cities by 2100, according to new research led by University of Arizona scientists.
The Gulf and southern Atlantic coasts will be particularly hard hit. Miami, New Orleans, Tampa, Fla., and Virginia Beach, Va. could lose more than 10 percent of their land area by 2100.
The research is the first analysis of vulnerability to sea-level rise that includes every U.S. coastal city in the lower 48 with a population of 50,000 or more.
The latest scientific projections indicate that by 2100, the sea level will rise about 1 meter — or even more. One meter is about 3 feet.
At the current rate of global warming, sea level is projected to continue rising after 2100 by as much as 1 meter per century.
“According to the most recent sea-level-rise science, that’s where we’re heading,” said lead researcher Jeremy L. Weiss, a senior research specialist in the UA’s department of geosciences. “Impacts from sea-level rise could be erosion, temporary flooding and permanent inundation.”
The coastal municipalities the team identified had 40.5 million people living in them, according to the 2000 U.S. Census. Twenty of those cities have more than 300,000 inhabitants.
Weiss and his colleagues examined how much land area from the 180 municipalities could be affected by 1 to 6 meters of sea-level rise.
“With the current rate of greenhouse gas emissions, the projections are that the global average temperature will be 8 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than present by 2100,” said Weiss, who is also a UA doctoral candidate in geosciences.
“That amount of warming will likely lock us into at least 4 to 6 meters of sea-level rise in subsequent centuries, because parts of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets will slowly melt away like a block of ice on the sidewalk in the summertime.”
At 3 meters (almost 10 feet), on average more than 20 percent of land in those cities could be affected. Nine large cities, including Boston and New York, would have more than 10 percent of their current land area threatened. By 6 meters (about 20 feet), about one-third of the land area in U.S. coastal cities could be affected.
“Our work should help people plan with more certainty and to make decisions about what level of sea-level rise, and by implication, what level of global warming, is acceptable to their communities and neighbors,” said co-author Jonathan T. Overpeck, a UA professor of geosciences and of atmospheric sciences and co-director of UA’s Institute of the Environment.
Weiss, Overpeck and Ben Strauss of Climate Central in Princeton, N.J., will publish their paper, “Implications of Recent Sea Level Rise Science for Low-Elevation Areas in Coastal Cities of the Conterminous U.S.A.,” in Climatic Change Letters. The paper is scheduled to go online this week.
Weiss and Overpeck had previously developed maps of how increases in sea level could affect the U.S. coastline. Strauss suggested adding the boundaries of municipalities to focus on how rising seas would affect coastal towns and cities.
For the detailed maps needed for the new project, the researchers turned to the National Elevation Dataset produced by the U.S. Geological Survey. The NED provides a high-resolution digital database of elevations for the entire U.S.
The high resolution let Weiss and his colleagues identify the elevation of a piece of land as small as 30 meters (about 100 feet) on a side – about the size of an average house lot.
The researchers used the USGS database to create detailed digital maps of the U.S. coast that delineate what areas could be affected by 1 meter to 6 meters of sea-level rise. The researchers also added the boundaries for all municipalities with more than 50,000 people according to the 2000 U.S. Census.
To increase the accuracy of their maps, the team included all pieces of land that had a connection to the sea and excluded low-elevation areas that had no such connection. Rising seas do not just affect oceanfront property — water moves inland along channels, creeks, inlets and adjacent low-lying areas.
“Ours is the first national-scale data set that delineates these low-lying coastal areas for the entire lower 48 at this degree of spatial resolution,” Weiss said.
The NED data set has some uncertainty, particularly for estimating elevation changes of 1 meter or less. That means the researchers’ ability to identify the threat to any particular small piece of land is better for larger amounts of sea-level rise than for smaller amounts of sea-level rise, Weiss said.
“As better digital elevation models become available, we’ll be using those,” Weiss said. “The USGS is always improving the digital elevation models for the U.S.”
Overpeck said, “The main point of our work is to give people in our coastal towns and cities more information to work with as they decide how to deal with the growing problem of sea-level rise.”
Researcher contact information:
Jeremy Weiss
520-621-6144
Jonathan Overpeck
520-907-6480
Additional maps of the effects of sea-level rise — UA Department of Geosciences Environmental Studies Laboratory http://www.geo.arizona.edu/dgesl/
=========================================================
I’ve already debunked a similar story about sea level rise:
Freaking out about NYC sea level rise is easy to do when you don’t pay attention to history
But let’s do the exercise again.
OK current rate of sea level rise from UC’s website is:
Rate: 3.0 mm per year
2100-2011= 89 years
89 years * 3.0 mm/year = 267 mm
267 mm = 0.267 meter, or 10.51 inches, or .87 foot
1 meters – 0.267 meter = 0.73 meters short by 2100 at the current rate of sea level rise.
Let’s say the rate of sea level rise doubles:
we get 534 mm by 2100, still 0.46 meters short
Maybe the rate of sea level rise triples:
we get 801 mm by 2100, still 0.19 meters short
So far, there doesn’t seem to be any indication of accelerating sea level rise in the sea level data for the past 120 years. It seems rather linear, at 18.5 cm for the last 100 years.
The IPCC AR4 doesn’t seem to support 1 meter of sea level rise by 2100 either. While computer projections based on supposed temperature increases project out to 1 meter or more, the IPCC AR4 projections are much more conservative, at 20-60 centimeters.
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In lower Manhattan, Water Street is today two blocks from the water on the east side.
On the west side of downtown Manhattan, they discovered ships remain on the World Trade Center site when excavating to pour the new foundations. The WTC is two blocks from the water.
Wow! Cool! According to the map of the Tampa area, my property will be ocean front (or at least, “view”) property in a few short years. Hey, I’m holding out for a higher price if I decide to sell. /sarc
Now, back to reality. Nothing to see here folks, nothing to worry about, just keep moving along. Just a bunch of con men, opps, sorry – mad scientists trying to scaremonger you into forking over more of your hard earned money for their pet project. For my part, I’ll trust in what the military “knows” about the water that surrounds them on three sides down there at MacDill AFB that sits on the end of that peninsula there south of Tampa. Not to say it can’t be moved “in time” but they did just spend millions on new facilities relating to U.S. Central Command and Special Operations Command, making it one of the most important military installations anywhere in the world. You’ll have to trust me on how I know they keep a close eye on the water around them and that they are not worried about “sea level rise” except in the case of a Cat 4-5 hurricane coming up the mouth of Tampa Bay, as one did in 1921 and yes, that area was “under” water for a short time. Killed a lot of rattlesnakes. The area has a long history of being occupied going back to Native Americans long before the white man arrived and the water level has not changed measurably according to the Air Force.
http://www.macdill.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123168664
Mr. McGuirk gives a good example of the standard warmist propaganda. We really ought to have a bulleted list dealing with each one of those, with citations. The archives won’t really be searched. People really believe that stuff!
Stephen Brown says:
parts of our Roman coastline lay two miles inland from today’s coast
Absolutely right! I posted a comment similar to this on another thread a few weeks ago, but I think it bears repeating here. A little way along the coast from me here in the southern UK is Fishbourne Roman Palace (or at least the remains of it – the mosaic floors are amazing). You can see the surroundings if you access the Ordnance Survey Get a Map service (free), here:-
http://getamap.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/getamap/frames.htm
Put the postcode in (PO19 3QR) and you’ll see a little map of the area. You will also see the contour lines. Look very closely (best if you save the map) and you’ll see the 5 metre line right down by the sea inlet. The 10 metre one is up near the main (red) road towards the top of the map. The actual remains of the palace are at about 7 metres above sea level. Why is this important? Because if you visit, you’ll see maps and models depicting the palace as it was when built – with the sea inlet right next to its walls. In fact, there was a jetty right there where sea-going vessels could moor. At this time the palace was some two or three metres above sea level. Now it’s about seven metres! If sea level has been increasing inexorably for two thousand years since Roman times, the remains should be under water by now. My point? There must be many places like this, where the changes to local ground level make any changes to sea level insignificant.
Their 1 metre map is wrong. They show Bowness Common, Cumbria, UK to be entirely below 1 metre when in fact it rises to 24 metres, and I can count (on my Ordnance Survey map) 16 1km squares that are wholly above 10 metres.
Bowness is here…
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=england&aq=&sll=40.596749,-73.880568&sspn=0.01789,0.031972&gl=uk&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=England,+United+Kingdom&ll=54.927635,-3.244572&spn=0.054152,0.127888&z=13&iwloc=A
Steve McGuirk says:
February 15, 2011 at 9:43 am
Hey buddy, find yourself a comfy chair, do about 20 deep breaths, all the way in and all the way out, and try to relax. Nothing in even the worst case scenarios posited in this farce is going to “end the planet”. The 390 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere currently is indeed the highest we have ever measured, but we’ve only really been measuring it for a little over half a century. Those measurements seem to be accurate, but they are almost all based on a single methodology which is sufficiently problematic, that there remains a small, but not entirely insignificant, possibility that some bright boy in the near or distant future may prove they’re erroneous. I wouldn’t hold my breath for that but the possibility remains. The paleo record for CO2 levels is even more problematic and is being challenged in the present.
The sensitivity of global temperatures to increases in atmospheric CO2 is also a matter of some controversy and,though I don’t find any of the suggested values entirely convincing, the probabilities seem to be leaning more toward lower numbers and away from higher ones.
In general, most of what we “know” about the climate of the planet would more reasonably be characterized as stuff we have some reason to suspect. Some of those suspicions are strengthening, but not many. At present climate science is as confidence inspiring as sociology or psychology and in some areas doesn’t even approach that low hurdle.
The science is weakest in the one area that makes it more than an object of curiosity to the non-scientific community, that is in the projections of the impending doom that supposed awaits us as a result of our CO2 profligacy.Most all of these lok to be increasingly unlikely.
In the relatively short history of the planet for which we actually have instrumental data the planet has experienced a range of temperatures greater than the difference between a block of ice and the water boiling in a pressure cooker. In the Southern Hemispheric winter the planet is apt to experience a temp range of 200F or more on a daily basis. No matter what the GMT does in the future, the weather where you live will be varying over the same range it always has, in almost all circumstances.
Given the large uncertainties, the suggestion that we all surrender large parts of our personal liberty and standard of living to nameless bureaucrats at the UN and in governments everywhere so that they can implement plans which they all admit will have negligible effect in solving this phony crisis, seems to be the worst possible use of our very finite resources.
I would refer you to this website
http://www.co2science.org/index.php
They have a much good information available but I’d particularly recommend
http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/prudentpath/prudentpath.php
which discusses the actual observational data regarding the supposed pending climate catastrophes and this
http://www.co2science.org/education/book/2011/55BenefitsofCO2Pamphlet.pdf
which is an outline and precis of the book they produced to cover the largely unreported science of the positive effects of increasing CO2
Our computer model proves the oceans will have boiled away by 2100. The phenomenon of rising sea levels will be a mere short-term inconvenience. We wouldn’t even bother buying a new bathing suit, if we were you.
We suggest you all rush out and get a copy of Frank Herbert’s “Dune.” Also begin scouting good cave locations and water caches. This will buy you time to emigrate to the stars–unless you waste it watching the TeeVee.
Update to my last post re: Bowness
Here’s a screencap of 1 metre sea level, and an OS map to compare.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7360644@N07/5448535597/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7360644@N07/5449146528/
Note:
Bowness Hall 23 metre trig. point
Ravensceugh 24 metre spot height
Herd Hill 14 metre spot height
I live in Virginia Beach and my family have been Lynnhaven watermen since the late 1800s. My great-grandfather and grandfather both built bulkheads and piers and most of the bulkheads still exist. The high water marks haven’t budged. When my mother built her new house on our old family land on Lynnhaven Inlet, she was told by her insurance company that she had to have flood insurance, “because you live right next to the water”. My mom tried to explain that the land had been lived on by our family for 100 years and it had NEVER flooded there. We went through dozens of nor’easters and hurricanes (including the Ash Wednesday storm in the early ’60s) and no flooding. Their response? “But you live right next to the water. Do you realize how close you are to the water?” (very insulting since her back deck is about 40-50 feet from the water’s edge). This is when my mom called her some less than complimentary names and hung up on her.
My point is that money is made by studies like this. Oh, and that the Beach seems to not be going under.
DSW says:
February 15, 2011 at 1:25 pm
“My point is that money is made by studies like this.”
There’s far more money to be made selling flood insurance and raising insurance rates based on this alleged risk.
But clearly, you are just lucky that your family property has been rising at the same rate as the sea level, thus confusing you into a state of false security. You really must listen to what the insurance salesmen tells you [sarc].
I live in Tampa, on the water, and the level is where it was 30 years ago, or maybe lower.
The nerds who concoct these scenarios never bother to look at real water levels; they’re glued to computer screens, probably playing Armageddon games while working. To them, the computer fantasy is the real world, and imaginary disasters are the norm.
TonyK says:
February 15, 2011 at 11:37 am
Stephen Brown says: Coasts?
I wrote a bit for Tips & Notes about sea level after seeing photos in the WSJ regarding villages in GB.
What I wrote earlier is short so I’ll repeat it here:
In its Sat/Sun edition (Nov. 27-28) the Wall Street Journal had a review (by Ferdinand Mount) of a book titled “Villages of Britain” authored by Clive Aslet. An accompanying photo (b/w) of Tobermory, Isle of Mull (56.622691, -6.06716) shows a row of seaside buildings (very colorful in Web images). One web reference claims ‘Tobar Mhoire’ (Well of Mary) has been a small settlement here from the earliest times, while the modern Tobermory was established in 1789. This coast seems to be rather fixed relative to sea level. See the masthead photo here and the photo below that:
http://tour-scotland-photographs.blogspot.com/2010/04/old-photograph-tobermory-scotland.html
Another WSJ photo shows the ruins of Saint Andrew’s Church on the Suffolk coast at Covehithe (52.376516, 1.705589). This site has pictures, including of the hogs and their houses. Covehithe seems to have been a much larger settlement at one time, apparently washed away by the sea. This site
http://www.aboutbritain.com/towns/covehithe.asp
explains:
“The village of Covehithe was previously known as North Hales, in which time it was much larger than it is today due to the sea encroaching more and more each year, the extent of this can be seen with ordinance survey maps.”
There seems to be little on the Web regarding Covehithe but for this coast there is a long history and much information; here is a link to everybody’s favorite “don’t use” site:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunwich
This place is 12.3 km south of Covehithe (52.277197, 1.632324).
“Dunwich was the capital of East Anglia 1500 years ago and was a prosperous seaport and centre of the wool trade during the Early Middle Ages, with a natural harbour formed by the mouths of the River Blyth and the River Dunwich, but the harbour and most of the town has since been lost to coastal erosion. The town’s decline began in 1286 when a sea surge hit . . . ”
Examining these two places it is hard to draw the conclusion that one of Earth’s biggest threats is sea level rising because of the combustion of carbon based fuel.
The cost of protecting the US coasts from a 1 meter rise is roughly 400Billion.
I have no problem accepting a 1 meter sea level projection and taking prudent action
to mitigate the damages. People living in those areas have 100 years to get busy.
taxing my carbon so that you can live on the beach? aint happening. Assign the costs
of mitigation to the people who are at risk. They’ll respond rationally, one hopes.
Building codes that took notice of GW projections and coastal development laws would also be a good thing to look at.
The IPCC estimates in the most recent version did not use ice cap or Greenland melt rates, as they felt there was too little information available to make those estimates – hence their ocean rise estimates are extremely conservative (http://www.glaciology.net/Home/PDFs/Announcements/gslprojection).
Given the accelerating melt rates of Greenland and surface ice volume in Antarctica, current rates of sea level rise are also accelerating. I won’t make any guesses as to how fast, though – I don’t have the data. I certainly don’t think we’re heading for tidal waves of destruction.
However – We’re apparently heading for a 2C rise. The last time the Earth was 2C warmer, the oceans were 5-6 meters higher. It may take a number of centuries to reach that, depending on sea level rise rates – but I’m certainly not going to be making long term investments in Miami real estate…
Several commenters have asserted that the IPCC AR4 projections of 18-59cm sea level rise by 2100 do not include any contributions from the melt of the Greenland and Antarctice ice caps. This is simply false. From the AR4:
“The projections include a contribution due to increased ice flow from Greenland and Antarctica at the rates observed for 1993-2003, but these flow rates could increase or decrease in the future.”
So the projections not only include the contribution from these ice caps, but do so at the relatively high level of the decade preceding the report.
Steve McGuirk says:
February 15, 2011 at 9:43 am
“Climate change is not weather. We are at 389 part per million CO2, highest recored (sic)amount in 400,000 years and on track to reach 700 by end of the this century. ”
Let me help you out a little Steve. First on the CO2 debate…
“In every 85,800 molecules of air, 33 are CO2. Of those, humans just produce one. That the UN IPCC and Al Gore claim that one (1) molecule of CO2 in 85,800 molecules of air catastrophically warms the planet is nonsense. That the UN IPCC and Al Gore claim that one (1) molecule of human CO2 causes catastrophic warming while the remaining 32 molecules of Nature’s identical CO2 do not is insanity. ”
Hans Schreuder, retired analyst.
As for the “Whats wrong with wanting more miles per gallon”….care to show us where anyone argued against that? We want science that benefits mankind and the world but we are tired of reading words like…maybe, could, possibly, might!
Read the first sentence of this article and see if you can spot the climate science word that irritates!
Yes, Curt, the IPCC AR4 projections of sea levels are based on ice flow from Greenland and Antarctica at “the relatively high level of the decade preceding the report”.
Why is it relatively high? Because its increasing. So whatever the current period is, the rate will be relatively high compared to previous periods.
By the end of the century, anyone looking back at IPCC AR4 predictions will be saying that they were underestimates, because they used the relatively low level of the decade before the report.
John: The assumption that because there was an increase in a period means there will be more increases in future periods is very dubious — in the financial world, it was that type of thinking that got us into the fix we’re in now.
Since 2003, a lot of the ice flows studied that led to the proclamation of an increase have slowed, sea level rise has slowed, and ocean heat content increase has slowed, if not reversed. Not close to the exponential increases required for the apocalyptic forecasts.
Wasn’t the Climate Science Rapid Response Team supposed to nip this sort of thing in the bud to avoid embarrassment?
Steve McGuirck says:
“… what is wrong with getting more miles per gallon from our cars?”
Consider this:
Given that the Jason-2 satellite altimeter launched in 2008 is rated at 3.4 cm RMS error, how the devil can you measure 1-3 mm a year of sea surface rise? This is in the noise of the data. I don’t buy it.
20 cm is just short of the measurement of 2 newborn babies heads. That means for every 2 feet of shoreline, two babies would drown. We have to stop AGW for the babies! Or we could dredge the shoreline.
/sarc
Steve McGuirk says: February 15, 2011 at 9:43 am
Look at Venus… Is there a point of no return?
Hi Steve. If you mean an endless reinforcing heat spiral that boils the ocean away, then no, not for earth (or at least not until the sun is many billions of years older and far hotter than today.) The effect of increasing CO2 concentration is logarithmic and nobody has credibly shown there is enough combustible carbon to achieve such an effect AFAIK.
Given the ingenuity of mankind and our previous experience with stone, mortar and concrete and our modern serious ability to move dirt, I would imagine that a one metre wall would be rather easy to build with a one hundred year lag time. A shipload of holland is well bellow sea level. They are not overly fussed.
Cassandra King says: February 15, 2011 at 9:26 am
I suppose that when sea levels start to fall the CAGW alarmists will claim that they predicted this all along and their models are validated yet again.
Exactly! It will be shown that the increasing bulk of the oceans may not actually rise relative to land, but the pressure of the increased weight upon the malleable mantle, increases the height of the land relative to the seas. [/sarc]