By Kenneth Richard on 30. August 2021
A global-scale analysis of 221 islands in the tropical Pacific and Indian Oceans reveals “a predominantly stable or accretionary trend in the area of atoll islands worldwide” throughout the 21st century. The Maldives islands alone expanded by 37.5 km² from 2000 to 2017.
For over 3 decades we’ve been warned “entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed.”
But reality keeps on undermining this catastrophist narrative.
A 2019 global-scale analysis of 709 islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans revealed 89% were either stable or growing in size, and that no island larger than 10 ha (and only 1.2% of islands larger than 5 ha) had decreased in size since the 1980s (Duvat, 2019).
And now a new analysis of post-2000 trends also indicates global-scale stable to expanding shorelines for hundreds of Pacific and Indian Ocean islands, with over half of the net growth (39 km² of 62 km²) occurring from 2013 to 2017.
“Between the oldest (1999–2001 or 1999–2002) and most recent (2017) composite images, the land area on the 221 atolls examined increased by 61.74 km² from 1007.60 km² to 1069.35 km², a 6.1 % increase. Most of this increase, 38.89 km², occurred between 2013 and 2017. The global-scale change in atoll island landmass was largely a product of an increase of island area in the Maldives and South China Sea (SCS), which account for 54.05 km² (87.56 %) of the global increase in land area. Between 1999–2001 and 2017, the Maldives added 37.50 km² of land area, representing 60.74 % of the net global increase in atoll land area. Tokelau and Tuvalu, both small landmasses (9.65 km2 and 25.14 km²respectively), both increased by ∼7%, while the Marshalls, French Polynesia, Kiribati, Palau, Chagos and the Federated States of Micronesia all changed by less than 3%. At the national-scale French Polynesia and Palau were the only countries for which a net decrease in land area was observed (-1.46 km² or -0.48 % and -0.16 km² or -2.71 % respectively).”
Image Source: Holdaway et al., 2021
Two other separately-published studies by a team of scientists (Sengupta et al., 2021 and Sengupta et al., 2021) use aerial photographs dating to the 1940s (and 1960s and 1970s) of 104 and 71 reef islands in the equatorial Pacific (Micronesia, Gilbert Islands) to compare shoreline changes over time.
The scientists found there has been a net shoreline expansion of 3% and 2.45%, respectively, in the 104 and 71 islands analyzed in the last 50 to 75 years.
Once again, none of these studies support claims of catastrophic sea level rise engulfing island coasts as a consequence of global warming.
“This study presents an analysis of shoreline changes on 104 coral reef islands from 16 atolls in the western equatorial Pacific nation of the Federated States of Micronesia across a period coincident with rising local sea level and a high frequency of storm events. Aerial photographs from the mid-1940s and 1970s were analysed alongside recent high-resolution satellite imagery to document shoreline changes and planform morphological adjustments in islands. Results revealed accretion has been the predominant mode of shoreline change, with 46% of the studied shorelines showing statistically significant accretion leading to a net increase of 64.37 ha (~3%) of planform land area across the archipelago.”
Image Source: Sengupta et al., 2021
“Shoreline positions of 71 islands from 3 atolls and 4 mid-ocean reef platforms were analysed by comparing historical aerial photographs (from 1940s and 1960s) and recent satellite imagery covering a period of local sea-level rise rate of ~2.2 mm/year. Results show ~47% of the shorelines were characterised by statistically significant accretion leading to a net increase of 274.07 ha (2.45%) of planform land area.”
Earth is so ‘burning hot’ that Pacific and Indian Ocean are evaporating, sea level is going down.
Nah. The ice and snow accumulating on Antarctica as it cools are reducing sea level. 😇
I thought the oceans were boiling away.
That’s next week
Please pay attention to the science
Given the nature of atolls, if the coral grows faster than the sea level rise, the island will grow.
And if the occupiers of the atolls drag up material to make sea defenses or investment opportunities, the islands will grow.
Even slower growing corals grow between 5 and 25mm per year to their length. With a normal SLR of 2mm, coral attolls won’t disappear in a hurry.
Well, waddaya know… The Maldives are making new beach front property!
Not to mention 4 new airports, what a farce.
Those airports are for all the climate conferences.
This is a incredibly sad; the complete inability to understand that coral atolls are biological structures created by marine organisms and as a consequence atolls naturally grow larger when conditions are favourable to the corals, such as the increase in accommodation space for these organisms as sea level rises.
What the heck is “accommodation space”?
The world’s oceans cover 70% of the planet surface.
Coral reef growth and island building have no limits imposed by “space”. They grow because that’s what they do.
accomodation space is that space which any rock erosion products can be dumped into .
In coral atols the fringing reefs grow up to see level, and during storms inevitably get knocked back . THe debris lands in two bits of accomodation space 1) the fore reef facing open ocean 2) the back reef where the debris is dumped back into the lagoon and then wave action spreasds it up on teh beaches .Accomodation space is to rock fragments what habitat is to critters.
A standard geological term, used in sequence stratigraphy, to identify the vertical or lateral space into which sediments accumulate.
Coral reef growth is not a geological process – it is a biological process, that only initially requires a geologic base to start. Corals will adapt to however much space they need laterally within the range of depths in which they live. They will continue to build reefs forever. That is how coral reefs build up in places like the Hawaiian islands, on the steep slopes of volcanoes … and/or in the shallow seas of oceanic banks in places like the Bahamas.
Corals, and the biota who have symbiotic relations with corals, build their own sediments, in fact, not requiring any geologic process. The coral skeletons are eaten by parrot fish who poop out grains of hard coral. In some places like the Bahamas Banks such biota-produced “sands” have built up over time to thousands of feet of thickness in what was once deep ocean.
Duane,
No marine coral can live above sea level, so there is always a vertical limit to the biological growth.
However, the above sea-level growth of carbonate aeolian oolitic dune sands is a well documented geological process that I have personally seen in action on the east side of West Caicos island.
At least 30% of carbonates in the geological record are geochemical oolites caused by a none biological process.
Sorry Phillip everyone with a modicum of scientific knowledge knows you are right, and Darwin pointed this out in the 1850s.
Dont expect this paper to see the light of day in the media , and the “disappearing Pacific atols” is just too good a meme to let go This one will run and run despite the lack of any scientific confirmation.
Alastair,
I know, that is the reason for my sadness.
See The Oceanic Central Heating Effect
With so much space underwater for corals to grow, why woul dthey bother to grow above water?
Did you post that with tongue-in-cheek?
“Ocean islands shorlines are expanding and will take over surrounding countries within 20 years…because of global warming” …new alarmist headlines.
Is Guam safe from tipping and capsizing ?
If the islands grow too much on one side, they might be in danger of tipping over. Representative Johnson is an expert on island tipping-over matters, I believe.
“global warming & shoreline expansion is causing our above water cabanas, to become on shore cabanas … please give us money so we can relocate the cabanas back into the water.”
How long before the CNN reporters mention this? balanced reporting? No? Gotta love these Reality Checks.
They’re too busy hyperventilating about Hurricane Ida – “the worst hurricane ever recorded in Louisiana” – funny, I seem to recall another worse hurricane, called “Katrina” that was just 16 years ago.
Ida would not even make the top 30 hurricanes of the last half century landfalling on the US, as measured by central eye pressure.
Nobody who has seen what “Andrews” left in its wake, and sees photos of the damage left by Ida will believe that Ida was anywhere near Category 5, (or 4 for that matter).
Hurricane Ida was an astoundingly slow hurricane as it approached Louisiana and made multiple landfalls.
If Katrina had taken so long to cross Grand Isle, it wouldn’t even be a sandbar anymore.
Hurricane Ida managed to take most of the day to pass New Orleans on the west and then move Northeast to the north of New Orleans.
Again, Hurricane Katrina, Camille, Andrew would have scoured the ground down to below sea level.
Although hurricanes are widely advertised with good reason for their erosion, hurricane Andrew was estimated to put enough sediment in Louisiana marshes to last an estimated 35-50 years. This was just east of the rapidly encroaching Atchafalaya delta and they did this without parrotfish. Nyman, J. A., et al. 1995. Roles and patterns of hurricane sedimentation in an estuarine marsh landscape. Estuarine Coastal Shelf Science.. 40(6):665-679. https://doi.org/10.1006/ecss.1995.0045
Now we have this to worry about. I hope they don’t get so big that they capsize.
They probably won’t capsize, but it is certainly a disaster in the making. Tourists will have to walk further from their hotels to reach the sea. Oh, the humanity….
Chris
So is the Western side of the Pacific Plate rising upward ?
(Are we nearing the creation of a new moon ?)
Could this explain all those airfields, hotels, marinas etc in the sinking Maldives?
Can we get a refund?
The reality is rather more prosaic. The good news is that the atholls themselves do seem to be resistant to erosion, however the increase in area is due to islanders responding to rising sea level, boundary disputes and airport projects by artificial island construction and land reclamation projects. At the moment this is cost effective. From the Holdaway paper…
Most of the global-scale change in atoll island landmass has been driven by large increases in land area on a small number of atolls(Figs. 5 & 6). It is clear from Landsat imagery in the study record that these large changes in island areas are directly attributable to the artificial building of islands, which was observed prior, during and after construction (Fig. 6). For example, widespread island-building on North Malé atoll in the Maldives increased by 9.58 km2,which accounts for 15.51 % of the global land area increase.
[..]
The majority of atolls examined in this study are sparsely or unpopulated atolls. They have little existing or likely future large-scale construction similar to that observed in the Maldives and South China Sea. That atoll nations have demonstrated the desire and ability to manipulate densely populated urban atoll islands is evident, however, to foster economic growth and in cases adapt to sea level rise. For example, island building in the Maldives has, in places, been designed not only to increase the planform area of the islands, but also to raise the land levels to potentially mitigate future impacts of sea level rise (Brown et al., 2020). In the case of Hulhumalé, an artificial island in the Maldives with a population of 17,000, incorporating future sea level rise as a design criterion was deemed economically viable, with revenue generated from sales of real estate likely to cover the costs of construction.
Uhhh, where do you think any fill material comes from on all those islands? You think they import it from New York or California or Germany? I’ll tell you – any earthfill in those islands is simply existing sediments dredged from along the beaches or in the channels, which are constantly filling in on their own.
Not sure what point you’re making?
In the case of Hulhumalé it was constructed by pumping millons of cubic metres of sand from the seabed.
In the late 1990s a new 1.9km2 1.8 m high artificial island, Hulhumalé was created for urban expansion, including an allowance for sea-level rise. This paper assesses flood exposure through an extreme water level scenario on Hulhumalé taking into account sea-level rise and analyses potential adaptation options to extend island life. Results indicate that overtopping is likely to occur with 0.6 ± 0.2 m of sea-level rise, with more severe, widespread flooding with 0.9 ± 0.2 m of sea-level rise. If the Paris Agreement goals are met, flooding is not anticipated this century. However, under a non-mitigation scenario, flooding could occur by the 2090s.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jfr3.12567
There you go.
To make “Hulhumalé, an artificial island”, they pumped sand/gravel/shells from the seabed into an island over 2 meters (six feet) higher than sea level.
And they plan to expand.
Now that volume of solid material is no longer displacing sea water and contribute to the dreaded SLD, Sea Level Decline.
Alarmists causing the opposite of their alleged fears.
If there really was a problem they wouldn’t be building more resorts
That’s obvious
The new island land is THINNER than the old land. (LOL)
Quote from the Holdaway et al paper:
Highlights
Before we all get tooooo carried away and make Complete Tits of ourselves, notice Point #4 in the above quote
Where do you think the “land reclamation” comes from? … and leave my tits out of this.
Any and all reclaimed land comes entirely from dredging of existing channels, harbors, and beach areas, using naturally deposited sediments. They don’t import land from Kansas.
I’d like to see some real numbers on point 4. That would be a huge amount of construction activity. And satellite pics show beach growth exceeding beach erosion in a number of studies.
It’s all in the paper.
…., due primarily to the construction of artificial islands, considerably more land on atolls is present now than in the year 2000, an increase of 61.74 km2. This increase represents an area over twice as large as the entire land area of the nation of Tuvalu. Most of the increase in land area resulted from the construction of islands on a small number of atolls in the Maldives and South China Sea (SCS). When we exclude the ten atolls with the largest land area increases, all of which are in the South China Sea and Maldives and showed evidence of island building, we noted only a 19.59 km2 increase in land area. Of those 211 atolls, the average increase in land area was 0.09 km2, with a median value of 0.03 km2 per atoll. When we excluded the atolls in the South China Sea and considered all other atolls in the Pacific Ocean, we saw a 6.00 km2 increase, with a per atoll average increase of just 0.04 km2 with a median value of 0.01 km2.
Increase, not decrease, Phishlips. The (obvious) bottom line is that many more islands have INCREASING shoreline than decreasing. Islands disappearing as a result of (slowly) rising seas is NOT the climate “crisis” that was so dishonestly claimed by alarmists like you. It’s obvious that you Alarmists (fecklessly) try to minimize any study that establishes that there is no climate crisis; the majority of all studies based on actual data. What’s in it for you?
If you read my comment above you’ll see I started by celebrating the good news. To be absolutely clear I totally welcome the basic conclusion of this study (and others) that the feared erosion of the atholls has not been observed.
But if you are interested in honest reporting, anyone reading the headline and post would be misled. The line ‘The Maldives islands alone expanded by 37.5 km² from 2000 to 2017′ for example without mentioning that this was nearly all due to land reclamation and artificial island construction does not strike me as particularly good reporting.
Note also that of the observed 61.74 km2 increase, 54.05 km2, or 87% is manmade, leaving just 7.69 km2 of ‘natural’ increase. The atholls that decreased in area lost a total of 6.49 km2, which puts things in perspective, something lacking from the ironically named No Tricks Zone.
Which still amounts to about half an acre per year per atoll.
I had a back garden bigger than that once.
Whoop de do.
Totally useless information without credibility.
South China Seas… yes… and we all know why THOSE islands are getting bigger.
However if the sea levels WERE actually rising at the rates claimed then wherever there wasn’t land reclamation the islands would be getting smaller.
And if there was islands, or even a single island getting smaller, do we think the Gretas of this world would rant from the rooftops, or keep silent?
Disappearing islands is a claim. Should any actual report be released that actually demonstrates provable examples of shrinking the Global Warming(tm) faction would be going public and hard.
From the Holdaway et al paper:
In spite of their intimating occupied and built islands were the sources for island accretion, the authors admit that island building and island alterations were only substantial contributions to the new island area. The rest of the accretions were smaller and often unoccupied islands.
Your Point #4 only explains a number of substantial island building examples. The rest of the identified accreted areas were not on manmade or occupied islands.
This is further identified:
“Basically, except for a few, 68 atolls, the rest gained land. Those that lost land, lost land minimally.”
“Despite a net increase in land area some atolls experienced a reduction in land area, with 31 atolls losing >10 ha of landmass each, which in total accounted for a 6.48 km2 reduction.”
Total gain was 61.74 km2. Of this 54.05km was manmade. So 7.69 km2 natural accretion. If 6.48 is minimal, what is 7.69?
I remember BBC Shukman’s many-layered lying when Trump pulled the American taxpayer out of the Paris Agreement. One of the lies was that Trump would drown Pacific islands. And aaargh not again Miami streets.
Bleaching extinction non-event.
But but, in 2009, President Mohammed Nasheed and 13 government officials of the Maldives held an underwater cabinet meeting, to illustrate how dire things were, and that soon the island would be gone. So what do these scientists know?
That was really a stupid shot of them sitting around a table underwater, breathing through air tanks.
I bet they thought they were really clever with this stunt.
When the facts come in, it makes them look foolish. Like now.
Well, we do know that South China Sea islands are growing because of ChiCom construction of military bases.
So the residents of the Maldives and Tuvalu are dredging up sand from the ocean bottom to build safer, wider beaches. They’re adapting to the situation, similar to what the Dutch did in the 17th and 18th centuries with their dikes. And if what they built is overtopped in the 2090’s, they have 70 years to come up with another adaptation.
This reminds me of a totally natural phenomenon in a bay near the mouth of the Loire River in western France. From the north bank of the river, the coastline extends west (with south-facing beaches), which are popular tourist destinations (such as La Baule) with expensive hotels and casinos. From the south bank of the river, the coastline extends south, with west-facing beaches in Saint-Brevin and Tharon, where houses and rents are relatively cheap.
Some years ago, owners of beachfront property in La Baule were complaining that sand was eroding from their beaches, and the beaches were becoming more rocky and less pleasant to walk on barefoot. However, soft sand was accumulating on west-facing Tharon Plage, at the rate of about 5 cm per year of new sand depth, as measured relative to a fixed concrete wall.
Since the La Baule community had much more money than Tharon, they commissioned hundreds of dump trucks to transport sand from sand-rich (but financially poorer) Tharon and dump it on the gravelly beaches of La Baule so the tourists would come back. But with the strong prevailing westerlies over the bay, that sand will probably be back in Tharon in another few years…
So the residents of the Maldives and Tuvalu are dredging up sand from the ocean bottom to build safer, wider beaches. They’re adapting to the situation, similar to what the Dutch did in the 17th and 18th centuries with their dikes. And if what they built is overtopped in the 2090’s, they have 70 years to come up with another adaptation.
A somewhat Panglossian remark. Thay are having to spend $millions to address a problem largely brought about by the actions of others. At current rates of sea level rise it is cost-effective to create artificial islands and reclaim land on which to site new airstrips and resorts, that will become less so as SLR accelerates.
“that will become less so as SLR accelerates.”
Oh, you are expecting it to accelerate, are you?
Why?
https://www.pnas.org/content/115/9/2022
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0531-8
John, believing in satellite altimetry as superior to long term tide gauges is not smart and in actual fact the MSL in the South Pacific is LOWER today than it was at its first measurement in 1914:
http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO70000/IDO70000_60370_SLD.shtml
https://meridian.allenpress.com/jcr/article-abstract/37/2/272/450977/Sea-Level-Acceleration-Analysis-of-the-World-s
“ in actual fact the MSL in the South Pacific is LOWER today than it was at its first measurement in 1914:”
https://sealevel.info/You_Zai-Jin_et_al_2009.pdf
Yes, that Fort Denison gauge is in a stilling pond adjacent to the biggest ocean in the world and your Fort Denison data is showing almost no SLR and no acceleration and my Fort Denison data is showing no increase in MSL since 1914.
As a builder of sea front infrastructure since 1946 I can assure you that BP corrected king tide levels are currently and for the last 10 years consistently LOWER than for the period between 1946 and 1953.
For small amount of money from the government, I volunteer to sit on the beach at the Maldives and observe the waves and the tides, walk the beach daily, and keep a close eye on the coral. If I happen to see anything alarming, I will let Willis know immediately!
Oh Daddy, I WANT my own island, why can’t I have one?
Where else can I put my pony?
I love my pony.
Thank you Daddy.
Further supporting the fact that technically there is no global sea level rise. Most beaches are prograding and some are regressing, that means global sea level is at stillstand.
I want to know more about the horizontal stabilizer on the tail of the plane in the picture
Gosh – Under Climate Change children of the future may not know what the Pacific Ocean is!!!
(end snark)
Coral isn’t well known for growing above water.
It takes an incredible amount of people and pebble throwing to increase island shorelines along much of their islands.
This situation brings up the dreaded, by alarmists and other charlatans, SLD; i.e. Sea Level Decline.
“It takes an incredible amount of people and pebble throwing to increase island shorelines along much of their islands.”
Not so much. The island of Hulhumalé was constructed by pumping sand at a construction cost of just USD 33 million. It is now the 4th largest island in the Maldives with a population over 100,000. You do the math.
Of course costs will rise with sea level and as suitable sites become rarer but at the moment island building is economically viable. That may explain why 87% of the land area increase identified by this study was manmade.
‘Holdaway et al’ identified Hulhumalé as included in that 87.56% of island increase. Hulhumalé is a large portion of that increase.
The remaining 12.44% were all small atolls, often unoccupied.
Beside the industrial scale island building using heavy machinery, islands grew by small amounts on the majority of the atolls studied.
Very few decreased in size.
So much for your using Hulhumalé as a general response to the island/atoll increased area.
I do not understand your response. I was simply highlighting the result from the paper than the majority of the land area increase is artificial,
The global-scale change in atoll island landmass was largely a product of an increase of island area in the Maldives and South China Sea (SCS), which account for 54.05 km2 (87.56 %) of the global increase in land area. …
Most of the global-scale change in atoll island landmass has been driven by large increases in land area on a small number of atolls (Figs. 5 & 6). It is clear from Landsat imagery in the study record that these large changes in island areas are directly attributable to the artificial building of islands, which was observed prior, during and after construction.
Note also that this was a survey of slightly over 50% of all atolls, and during the 17 years of the study sea level rise in the Maldives was around 26mm at most.
You gotta love science! It keeps throwing reality in your face and destroying your meta narrative! Haha, epic stuff! I love seeing meta narrative on the ropes!
The alarmists’ prediction score is still zero. Nothing they predicted would come true, has come true. Now we can add Island sinking because of CO2 to that list.
One hundred percent wrong! All the time! What must that be like?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-58396975
https://www.science.org/news/2020/11/seas-are-rising-faster-ever
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/united-nations-report-shows-climate-change-accelerating-180977860/
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/climate-change-increases-risk-fires-western-us
https://www.pnas.org/content/117/24/13194
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01869-0
Considering that Coral is comprised of Calcium Carbonate, and that there is abundant Calcium in the Oceans and that a CO2 is slightly soluble in water, one could hypothesize that higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere would lead to greater rates of Coral growth and hence, growth of Coral Atolls.