01/06/2020

(AU) Land Projected To Be Below Annual Flood Level In 2050

Climate Central

Coastal Risk Screening Tool
Click here for land in Australia projected to be below annual flood level in 2050
Improved elevation data indicate far greater global threats from sea level rise
and coastal flooding than previously thought, and thus greater benefits from reducing their causes.

FLOODED FUTURE
Global vulnerability to sea level rise worse than previously understood (pdf)
Full Report (pdf)

SUMMARY
  • As a result of heat-trapping pollution from human activities, rising sea levels could within three decades push chronic floods higher than land currently home to 300 million people
  • By 2100, areas now home to 200 million people could fall permanently below the high tide line
  • The new figures are the result of an improved global elevation dataset produced by Climate Central using machine learning, and revealing that coastal elevations are significantly lower than previously understood across wide areas
  • The threat is concentrated in coastal Asia and could have profound economic and political consequences within the lifetimes of people alive today
  • Findings are documented in a new peer-reviewed paper in the journal Nature Communications
Sea level rise is one of the best known of climate change’s many dangers.

As humanity pollutes the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, the planet warms. And as it does so, ice sheets and glaciers melt and warming sea water expands, increasing the volume of the world’s oceans.

The consequences range from near-term increases in coastal flooding that can damage infrastructure and crops to the permanent displacement of coastal communities.

Over the course of the twenty-first century, global sea levels are projected to rise between about 2 and 7 feet, and possibly more.

The key variables will be how much warming pollution humanity dumps into the atmosphere and how quickly the land-based ice sheets in Greenland and especially Antarctica destabilize.

Projecting where and when that rise could translate into increased flooding and permanent inundation is profoundly important for coastal planning and for reckoning the costs of humanity’s emissions.

Projecting flood risk involves not only estimating future sea level rise but also comparing it against land elevations.

However, sufficiently accurate elevation data are either unavailable or inaccessible to the public, or prohibitively expensive in most of the world outside the United States, Australia, and parts of Europe.

This clouds understanding of where and when sea level rise could affect coastal communities in the most vulnerable parts of the world.A new digital elevation model produced by Climate Central helps fill the gap.

That model, CoastalDEM, shows that many of the world’s coastlines are far lower than has been generally known and that sea level rise could affect hundreds of millions of more people in the coming decades than previously understood.

Based on sea level projections for 2050, land currently home to 300 million people will fall below the elevation of an average annual coastal flood. By 2100, land now home to 200 million people could sit permanently below the high tide line.

Adaptive measures such as construction of levees and other defenses or relocation to higher ground could lessen these threats.

In fact, based on CoastalDEM, roughly 110 million people currently live on land below high tide line. This population is almost certainly protected to some degree by existing coastal defenses, which may or may not be adequate for future sea levels.

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BBC Science & Environment - Roger Harrabin

Switching to a vegan diet can help but doesn't quite have the impact of other measures. Getty Images



Climate change can still be tackled – but only if people are willing to embrace major shifts in the way we live, a report says.

The authors have put together a list of the best ways for people to reduce their carbon footprints.

The response to the Covid-19 crisis has shown that the public is willing to accept radical change if they consider it necessary, they explain.

And the report adds that government priorities must be re-ordered.

Protecting the planet must become the first duty of all decision-makers, the researchers argue.

The authors urge the public to contribute by adopting the carbon-cutting measures in the report, which is based on an analysis of 7,000 other studies.



Top of the list is living car-free, which saves an average of 2.04 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per person annually.

This is followed by driving a battery electric car - 1.95 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per person annually - and taking one less long-haul flight each year - 1.68 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per person.

Switching to a vegan diet will help - but less than tackling transport, the research shows.

It says popular activities such as recycling are worthwhile, but don’t cut emissions by as much.

Change of mindset

The lead author, Dr Diana Ivanova from Leeds University, told BBC News: “We need a complete change of mindset.

“We have to agree how much carbon we can each emit within the limits of what the planet can bear – then make good lives within those boundaries.

“The top 10 options are available to us now, without the need for controversial and expensive new technologies.”



Dr Ivanova said the coronavirus lockdown has shown that many people could live without cars if public transport, walking and cycling were improved.

Her research highlights rich people who typically take more flights, drive bigger cars and consume the most.

A 'moral issue'

She said: “All the world suffers from climate change, but it’s not the average person who flies regularly – it’s a small group, yet aviation is under-taxed. It’s a moral issue.”



In her league table, buying renewable power and using public transport rank fourth and fifth.

Sixth is insulating your home well, which saves 0.895 tonnes of CO2 equivalent.

Seventh is switching to a vegan diet, which saves 0.8 tonnes.

Effectively insulating your home is an important step. PA Media



Other top actions are using heat pumps; switching from polluting cookstoves (in developing countries) to better methods of cooking, and heating buildings with renewable energy.

Dr Ivanova said that if people implemented the measures, it would save around nine tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) per person per year.

Current annual household emissions are around 10 tonnes in the UK, and 17 in the US.

'Valuable' study

The study, out soon in the journal Environmental Research Letters, says the following are worthwhile, but of lesser benefit to the climate: green roofs; using less paper; buying more durable items; turning down the thermostat - and recycling, which saves 0.01 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year, according to Dr Ivanova.

Outside of lockdown, taking fewer flights can make a major contribution to cutting carbon. Reuters



Some of the findings will be questioned. Polls suggest some people think climate is as important as the virus, for instance, but some don’t.

Professor Tommy Wiedmann from the University of New South Wales in Australia, said: “This is a valuable study. But it only looks at the carbon footprint and not at other impacts like water scarcity because of lithium mining for electric car batteries.

Libby Peake, from the Green Alliance think tank, told BBC News: “People shouldn’t stop good habits like recycling, which saves some carbon while preventing waste and conserving resources.”

“Better design allows people to buy fewer but higher-quality things and to live in buildings with lower carbon footprints. These savings aren’t necessarily covered by this study.”

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India Is Facing A Locust Invasion Directly Related To Climate Change

One Green Planet - Eliza Erskine

Image Source : Jen Watson/ Shutterstock.com

India is being swarmed with locusts, according to the Indian Express. Jaipur is experiencing a locust invasion that’s eating crops.

Farmers told news outlets that the invasion is the worst one they’ve seen.

Images and videos show hoards of insects on multiple surfaces. In Jaipur, locusts have not been seen since 1993.

While swarms have been spotted in Rajasthan in the past twenty years, the insects have spread to other parts of the country, including Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

Locusts have amazing appetites and a single swarm in a square kilometer can eat as much as 35,000 people. As India already deals with the effects of COVID-19 and subsequent lockdowns, this is another problem for the country.

Akhilesh Litoria owns a farm in Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh.

He told The Wire about the swarms, “It looked like someone had placed a huge white sheet on top of the entire field. They finished the entire crop in the area. We had planted moong and they ate all of it. They did not even spare leaves on trees. Some of them sat on trees and ate all the leaves.”

Climate scientists say that warm waters due to heavy rainfall made the areas susceptible to the swarms.

Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, told The Wire in an email, ” Heavy rain triggers the growth of vegetation in arid areas where desert locusts can then grow and breed. These locusts which migrated to India early this year might have found greener pastures as the pre-monsoon rains during March-May were in excess over north India this year.”


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