Natural Defences Can Sharply Limit Coastal Damage
Coastal forests, coral reefs, sand dunes, marshes and wetlands are just a few of the natural habitats that protect two-thirds of the US coastline from hazards such as hurricane, and are key to protecting lives and property against storm surges and long-term sea-level rise.
Sea levels may rise 2.3 metres per degree of global warming, report says
Seas will remain high for centuries after temperatures have risen, with the likelihood of more frequent and damaging storms…
Pakistan’s Coast And Encroaching Seas
Encroaching seas are leaving farmland increasingly saline and water-logged, and leading to a decline in fresh water fish stocks. These trends are being studied by the World Wide Fund for Nature Pakistan (WWF-P) which is in the middle of a five-year project to build climate change resistance on Pakistan’s coastline, where communities are vulnerable to cyclones, rising sea levels and storm surges.
Hurricanes Likely to Get Stronger and More Frequent
Hurricanes are Mother Nature’s largest and most destructive storms. Fed by warm ocean waters and moist atmospheric conditions, about 90 such storms, also known as tropical cyclones, form worldwide each year. With the population of coastal areas growing daily and sea level on the rise, how these monster storms may change as the climate continues to warm is an increasingly urgent question facing climate scientists, insurance companies, and public officials.
Scientists Image Vast Subglacial Water System
In a development that will help predict potential sea level rise from the Antarctic ice sheet, scientists have used an innovation in radar analysis to accurately image the vast subglacial water system under West Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier. On its own, Thwaites contains enough fresh water to raise oceans by about a meter.
Sinking Islands
In the south of Bangladesh, one of the countries most at threat from climate change, entire islands are being washed away by tidal surges and storms leaving their inhabitants in increasingly desperate straits. A IRIN video documentary.
Sustainable Energy On Sinking Islands: United Arab Emirates Puts Wind Turbines In Seychelles
The project links a pair of strange bedfellows: One is an oil-rich Persian Gulf state of 8 million ruled by a dynastic monarchy, and the other is a democratically governed island nation of 86,000 where tropical beaches and hotels lure more than 200,000 well-heeled tourists every year.
Simultaneous Disasters Batter Pacific Islands
High tides have surged over sea walls defending the capital of the Marshall Islands, adding to the crisis situation in this tiny Pacific nation, where a state of emergency was declared only last month because of a devastating drought in the scattered northern atolls.
Predicting Hurricane-Induced Coastal Change
The probability of hurricane-induced coastal change on sandy beaches from Florida to New York has been assessed for the first time in two U.S. Geological Survey studies.