Josh Willis, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, added another concern, noting “the rate of rise is getting faster and faster.” How do the scientists at JPL know the rate of rise? Earth observation satellites use an onboard radar altimeter that bounces radio and microwave pulses off the ocean’s surface and reads the returning results. The satellites precisely measure the time between sending and receiving the pulses to calculate distance to the ocean surface. If the timing is shorter than previously observed, it means the oceans are rising. If the timing is longer, the oceans are sinking.

New algorithms integrated into the satellite’s programming can now measure sea level changes to coastal areas to millimetre accuracy, even in the face of winter ice and extreme weather events like hurricanes.

NASA scientists also validate satellite readings by comparing them to the data coming from the Argo Program, 3,500 floating platforms deployed across the world’s oceans.

The majority of sea level rise in recent years has been attributed to the melting of glaciers, not thermal expansion, which is caused by an increase in temperature of seawater from heat-trapping greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere.

The ocean is the largest global carbon sink. GHG molecules, as they warm, become more active and interact with the ocean surface before being absorbed. The molecular motion then gets transferred to the seawater.

GHG molecular motion decreases seawater density and increases ocean volume. The interaction begins in the upper layers but eventually is transferred throughout the water column down to the seabed.

The process of ocean thermal expansion is normally slow because seawater has a much greater heat capacity than the atmosphere. That should set off alarm bells because, right now, the rate of sea level rise is speeding up. Climatologists describe the impact of GHGs on the ocean as a challenge that will continue well after we begin to lower emissions.

In a June 3, 2025, article appearing in Inside Climate News, Emilie Lounsberry writes about sunny day flooding along New Jersey’s shores with sea levels rising almost double the global mean.

New Jersey has seen sea level rise more than 45 centimetres (18 inches) since the early 1900s. Future projections to 2050 add another 30 centimetres (a foot) to the rise. The implications for the Jersey shore are dire, especially from the mid-state to the south, beginning with Atlantic City and ending at Cape May and Delaware Bay.

What is sunny day flooding? It is the inundation of low-lying coastal areas caused by the ocean’s daily tidal movements, exacerbated by thermal expansion. In Lounsberry’s article, she writes that the flooding is becoming more frequent and reaching more locations. What she doesn’t write is the impact the flooding is having on the aquifer beneath the surface.

Nor does she mention how isostatic rebound from the last Ice Age is tipping the southern part of the state downward, causing subsidence. The combination of sinking land and rising sea levels makes New Jersey a good candidate for a planned retreat for many of its coastal communities.

In 2012, Hurricane Sandy devastated the New Jersey shore. No effort was made to move back en masse from the shoreline. Instead, communities in the state rebuilt homes in situ and added seawalls, built up beaches by adding dunes, installed drainage pumps, and did some wetland restoration. In the town of Wildwood, just north of Cape May, best known for its plastic palm trees lining the main street (I’ve been there and seen them), citizens in the western half of the town installed concrete ramps and elevated driveways. None of these measures has kept the water from rising. As one New Jersey citizen stated, ‘This is something that’s chronic and getting worse — and not going away.”

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The Pacific Ocean contains 25,000 islands with their territorial waters and land covering 15% of the planet’s surface. Many of these islands lie atop coral reefs. They are called atolls and stand on average no more than a metre or two above sea level. At these heights, storm waves and high tides can overwhelm the land, saturate the soils with saltwater, and contaminate freshwater surface and underground sources.

Even when measured in centimetres per decade, sea level rise represents an existential threat. Add atmospheric and ocean heating, and the periodicity of El Niño–Southern Oscillations (ENSO) to the mix, and the future of these island communities surviving is dire. Climatologists’ forecasts show Pacific Ocean sea levels rising between 25 and 58 centimetres (10 inches to nearly two feet) by 2050.

For the island nations of Fiji, Kiribati, Palau, Vanuatu, Tuvalu, the Marshall and Solomon Islands, sea level rise and extreme tides and weather events are forcing communities to relocate. Walande’s former island home is gone. Its 800 residents now live on Malaita, one of the six main islands in the 900-plus that are part of the Solomon Islands nation. The story of Walande has been captured in a video. The community now resides on 18.6 hectares (46 acres) of higher ground. For World War Two buffs, better known Solomon islands include Guadalcanal and New Georgia, where the Americans and Japanese clashed.

In 2022, the Solomon Islands’ government published “Planned Relocation Guidelines” to ensure communities facing sea level rise would have new homes, and retain living standards and their community culture. Although the guidelines have yet to be fully adhered to, nonetheless, Walande has found a new home.

Joining the Solomon Islands with formal relocation guidelines are Fiji, Vanuatu, and Kiribati. The Marshall Islands and Tuvalu, although facing the threat of rising sea levels, have yet to establish guidelines.

Tuvalu’s approach has been to arrange with the New Zealand government a managed migration strategy to allow the entire nation to relocate to the latter.

The Marshall Islands government has no formal plan other than to stay and fight the rising Pacific. The nation has a Compact of Free Association with the United States that allows Marshallese to live and work in America without a visa. It is not a full-out migration, but one done in drips and drabs.

What is the status of sea level rise for other Pacific island nations other than the Solomon Islands? The Pacific is experiencing accelerated sea level rise. In 2024, the surge amounted to 0.59 centimetres, with 3.9 millimetres attributed to ocean warming causing thermal expansion and accelerated melting of Antarctica and Greenland contributing to the rise of the Pacific.

For Tuvalu with a mean elevation of 1.5 metres above sea level, and Kiribati at 2 metres above sea level, the rise in the Pacific is 3 to 4 times faster than the global average, largely attributed to El Niños and ocean heat uptake. The two island nations, along with Fiji, expect a 15 centimetre (6 inch) sea level rise by 2050.

Already, the Solomon Islands have seen five islands disappear with six of its larger islands shrinking by more than 20%. Palau has watched a third of its coral reefs vanish.

What about the islands of Hawai’i? Are they equally vulnerable? Not so much since all of the islands are volcanic in origin rather than built up on coral reefs. That doesn’t mean Hawai’i will escape sea level rise predicted to be in the medium range between 0.15 metres (0.7 feet) and 0.45 metres (1.5 feet) higher by 2050. For Hawai’i, the damage will come from higher tides, coastal flooding and saltwater intrusion into freshwater sources and extreme weather events.

Archeological studies of Pacific Ocean island populations in the past indicate sea level changes have had dramatic impacts on their societies. The islands were first populated by South Asian migrants travelling thousands of kilometres across the ocean, island hopping one at a time. These people were fishers and foragers who took advantage of the abundant life around the coral atolls and inland. The archeological record shows a pattern of civilization rise and fall linked to sea level changes. Initial colonization appears to have coincided with a cooler period in the Pacific with sea levels dropping by as much as 2 metres (6.6 feet) between 4,000 and 1,200 years ago. A similar cooling around 1300 AD, however, harmed Pacific island native cultures with the abandonment of shoreline settlements. Why? Rapid sea level falls caused freshwater tables to drop, negatively impacted seawater circulation within the island’s atolls and reefs, and caused massive die-offs. The competition to survive is seen in warlike evidence in the archeological record as food and resource abundance turned into scarcity.

What can we conclude from the archeological record? Pacific island nations have been dramatically impacted by sea level change in the past and are once again undergoing the existential stresses that come with it in the present. The tragedy is that 25 Pacific island nations that contribute a mere 0.06% of the greenhouse gasses responsible for global warming and sea level rise will vanish, while those remaining on the islands will see water supplies, food production and fisheries all negatively impacted.

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All of this meltwater contributes to the rise of sea levels around the world. The Southeastern United States from Tidewater Virginia to the Texas coastline on the Gulf of Mexico bears evidence of how much the seas are rising. Chesapeake Bay provides an interesting example of the dynamic changes caused by continental ice sheets dating from 20,000 years ago, at the penultimate Pleistocene maximum, to 11,700 years ago when North America’s land ice vanished, to the present day.

The phenomenon is known as isostatic rebound or isostatic adjustment. The interior of the continent where the ice sheets lay before melting has been rising for more than 11,000 years and deforming those areas along the edge. That means where some parts of the continent rise, other parts get distorted and fall. This is the same phenomenon we observe when we leave our beds in the morning and our mattresses readjust to not being weighed down by us.

The sections of the North American continent where ice sheets existed including the Northeast and Great Lakes regions are seeing a rise in elevation. The areas on their fringes are experiencing the opposite. In the case of Chesapeake Bay and Norfolk, the continental edge and shelf upon which they sit is tilting downward. That means the land around Chesapeake Bay including the Delmarva peninsula and Tidewater Virginia to the south is subsiding. Combined with ocean thermal expansion and meltwater produced by diminishing sea ice in the Arctic and the thinning of Greenland’s ice sheet, it spells trouble for places like Norfolk and further inland, Washington, DC. Norfolk is home to America’s largest East Coast naval base. Measuring sea level rise there shows it is happening faster than anywhere else on the U.S. Eastern Seaboard. Since 1992, the rise has been twice the global average.

At some point, once the isostatic rebound ends for the areas once under ice, the continent should see a levelling out. But we are talking in terms of geological time which involves thousands to tens of thousands of years. Until then the deformation will continue.

Studying this phenomenon and sea level rise from melting polar, alpine and sea ice is producing some interesting hypotheses. A study undertaken by scientists at Ohio State University published on August 2, 2024, in the journal, Science Advances, has looked at isostatic rebound and global sea level changes into the next few centuries. It concludes that the relatively rapid uplift of Antarctica as its ice sheets melt needs to be accounted for if we are to continue to do a managed retreat from coastlines facing rising seas.

The study begins by stating:

“With nearly 700 million people living in coastal areas and estimates of the cost of sea-level rise reaching ~14 trillion dollars by the end of the century, understanding the future contribution of the polar ice sheets to global sea levels in coming years is of critical societal importance.”

It then looks at what the melting of the Antarctic ice sheets causing isostatic rebound in Antarctica could do to sea levels. The study notes that as the ice starts melting and rebound begins, the uplift can act to preserve the remaining ice and reduce the southern continent’s contribution to rising oceans by as much as 40% over current climate model predictions.

The study further notes that Antarctica’s changing shape could prove to speed up isostatic rebound so that uplifted surfaces from reduced ice volumes happen in decades and not in centuries or thousands of years. In other words, we are no longer working at the snail’s pace of geological time as in the Pleistocene, the Ice Age that preceded the Holocene.

GPS data from the Antarctic ice sheets and North America shows that the isostatic rebound of the former is currently five times faster at 5 centimetres (nearly 2 inches) compared to the latter at 1 centimetre (0.4 inches) per year. Literally, in Antarctica, once the weight of the ice is removed, the continent bobs back up. This rebound is lowering sea levels adjacent to where the ice is melting and may have unforeseen impacts elsewhere on sea levels around the world.

In other studies that look at the combination of melt and rebound another effect has been noted. The two are altering Earth’s gravitational field. A paper previously discussed appearing in Geophysical Research Letters in September 2017, described findings that showed Antarctic ice melt was causing gravitational changes elsewhere while producing enormous volumes of water that were ending up impacting shorelines far removed from the southern continent. It correlated with a 52% faster rate of sea level rise off California and Florida’s coasts equating the cause being gravitational changes occurring from the melting ice and upward bounce of Antarctica’s landmass.

The current research described here includes an expression of the need to do much more research to better understand the complex relationships between the Earth’s crust and the impact climate change has atop it. Scientists need to do more data gathering and research to help us better understand the wide-ranging influences that rising greenhouse gas emissions are having on our world for both the short and long term.

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The move to mainland Panama has been long in planning with financial and technical support in place from the Inter-American Development Bank. The 300 families will live in a new community that has been built for them. It is called Isber Yala and lies on the coast within view of their old home. It isn’t quite finished with the unavailability of electricity still a challenge. But the village homes are better than what they were living in on Gardi Sugdub.

Some islanders are staying. They don’t want to leave their homes. But the rising seas will eventually claim them. A June 1, 2024 article appearing in The Christian Science Monitor quotes Steven Paton, Director of the Smithsonian Institution’s physical monitoring program in Panama, who describes their plight. Paton points to the current move as “a direct consequence of climate change through the increase in sea level…the Gunas are going to have to abandon all of the islands almost surely by the end of the century or earlier.” He continues, “All of the world’s coasts are being affected by this at different speeds.”

People are moving inland or away from island homes in many places on the planet. It is happening on Pacific and Indian Ocean islands. It is happening on the Mexican coastline, in Italy, New Zealand, Bangladesh and the United States.

In South Florida, sea levels rose 0.3 metres (12 inches) in the last 80 years. A third of that rise has happened in the last 30 years. Brian McNoldy, a research associate at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Science notes that the rise is speeding up.

Joining the Panamanian island exodus are citizens of Pacific and Indian Ocean island nations who are already experiencing inundations. Some of these small countries are planning to move their entire populations to places hundreds of kilometres from their sinking homes. They have bought land in other countries for resettlement.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tracks sea level rise and even its projections aren’t matching reality. The seas off Florida’s coasts are rising faster, as much as 0.6 metres (2 feet) forecasted by 2060 when compared to today. For the City of Miami with an average elevation of less than a metre (3 feet), retreat is not in the cards for the short term. The city and state are fending off the rising seas by spending tens of billions of dollars.

To further complicate Miami’s future is subsidence. South Florida is sinking and although the decline in elevation is tiny, in combination with rising seas, it doesn’t bode well for a state whose population is growing faster than anywhere else in the U.S. This influx of new Floridians with a propensity to live on the coast will put more Americans at risk because of climate-change-producing sea level rise, high tides and storm surges from hurricanes.

NASA whose Cape Canaveral facilities lie on Florida’s Atlantic coast is keenly aware of the threat. The agency is relocating structures to higher ground and building dunes and shoreline obstructions. It is installing flood-resistant doors in some structures in the hope that they can withstand storm surges and high tide-induced flooding.

Meanwhile, NASA Earth-observing satellites are tracking sea level rise around the world and at home.  In the U.S., the entire coastline from Maine on the Atlantic Ocean to Texas on the Gulf of Mexico is under threat. Anywhere relatively low, flat land abuts shallow water, the risks are great. NASA forecasts that beyond 2100, sea level rise around the world may force communities along coastlines to retreat to higher ground. It projects rising sea levels after 2100 between 1 and 2 metres (3 to 6.5 feet) will cause widespread coastal damage. By 2150, it projects storm surges to be twice as high as they are today. The strategic adaptations being attempted in Florida by NASA and the City of Miami may help in the short term. Hardening coastal infrastructure and building up dunes and seawalls, however, will only be a stopgap.

What the people on Gardi Sugdub are experiencing now will be a far more common occurrence by the end of the century. We can mitigate it if we can stop putting greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere which means stopping the burning of fossil fuels. The great unknown states McNoldy is human behaviour. If we can slow down or stop releasing greenhouse gasses we can keep the rise to the lower thresholds indicated by forecasters. It will still mean significant population displacement and disruption but at a more manageable level and cost.

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The latest satellite data based on 25 years of observation shows that sea level rise by 2100 will double the original projections based on climate models. Originally the increase was expected to be a steady rate. But the data says something entirely different.

The cause is accelerated melting in Greenland and Antarctica with current projections indicating mean global sea levels will rise by 65 centimetres (26 inches). The implications for cities lying on coastlines are significant.

Steve Nerem, a professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at The University of Colorado – Boulder, who is working with NASA’s Sea Level Change project, believes the projected rise is a conservative estimate based on changes seen in the Arctic and Antarctic.

How is sea level measured? Since 1992, a series of satellites have been remotely monitoring the ocean surface using onboard altimeters. They initially observed an annual rise of 1.8 millimetres (0.07 inches) in 1993. Today the rise is 4.2 millimetres (0.17 inches) per year. The total rise since 1993 is 9.4 centimetres (4 inches).

The satellite data has been supplemented by tide gauge data collected for more than three decades. What is a tide gauge? It is an Earth-bound piece of monitoring equipment with sensors to record surrounding water level heights. Before we started measuring global sea level rise, tide gauges were used to support safe navigation along coastlines.

Gary Mitchum, at the College of Marine Science, University of South Florida, notes that the tide gauge data is “essential for determining the uncertainty in the global mean sea level acceleration estimate.” These Earth-based metrics provide backup to the satellite observations.

In the past, sea levels have dropped after volcanic eruptions and La Niña Southern Ocean oscillations, and have risen from thermal expansion during El Niños like the current strong one which no doubt has raised ocean levels temporarily.

The melting of polar ice from Greenland and Antarctica isn’t just contributing to rising seas. A 2021 Harvard study notes that when the glacial ice from these two areas melts it impacts the land lying beneath. We are still witnessing a phenomenon called isostatic rebound in North America from the last Ice Age which started 2.6 million years ago and ended in geological time very recently a mere 11,000 years ago.

Sophie Coulson is the lead author of the 2021 Harvard study published in Geophysical Research Letters. In an article in The Harvard Gazette, Coulson talked about the various forces imposed on Earth’s crust by tectonic movement. She stated, “We need to be able to separate…motion generated by modern-day ice-mass loss.” In addition, she noted that “Earth is actually still rebounding from that ice melting.”

Coulson is making reference to an observed phenomenon, that parts of North America continue to rise from the disappearance of the ice causing warping of the continental landmass hundreds of kilometres away. A good example is the land around the Chesapeake Bay warping downward as Pennsylvania does the opposite and rises to the northwest.

Another consequence of melting polar ice is changes to the composition of ocean surface water. Freshwater ice melt is diluting the saltwater. Freshwater’s lower specific gravity causes it to overlay heavier saltwater layers.

In addition, the land ice melt contributes to changes in the amount of sea ice exposing more surface water to the atmosphere with its increasing burden of carbon dioxide (CO2) from anthropogenic sources of pollution. The greater exposure means a warmer ocean surface which can then absorb more CO2 which creates carbonic acid which makes the Arctic Ocean more acidic, threatening regional biodiversity.

For humans on land, these dynamic forces represent a variety of challenges. If sea levels are accelerating, coastal communities will be further subjected to flooding. It means coastal freshwater aquifers will experience more saltwater intrusion. And if biodiversity within the ocean is negatively impacted, it means that communities dependent on the largesse of the ocean will face greater food insecurity.

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To reduce such impacts the U.S. is looking at whether to rebuild in place, shore up coastal defences, or relocate communities, assets and people to take them out of harm’s way in what is being called a “managed retreat.”

Where are the Plans?

When it comes to disaster planning, the U.S. government is a laggard at almost every level. Little attention is paid to prevention, pre-disaster planning and adaptation. The issue of retreating from the country’s coastlines is seen by many as a defeat rather than as a responsible act of self-preservation.

The Gulf of Mexico shoreline, despite increasing environmental threats, has witnessed a population increase over the last 50 years. The coastline is increasingly being gentrified. Property values have steadily risen. High-rise condominium construction in many communities is replacing low-rise businesses and housing.

The Gulf coastline features older communities with history and established relationships with the flora and fauna of the area. The accumulated knowledge and expertise of locals and their understanding of the Gulf and its characteristics are being lost when these communities get uprooted. The demographic of these communities is not high-income. Much of the population lacks access to significant financial resources if faced with climate disasters. Also, these populations are inclined to be more culturally attached to their locations making it harder to convince them of the need to retreat.

Relocating and resettling involves more than the physical act of moving. It requires planning, cooperation, problem-solving, and coordination. In some cases, towns that get uprooted will become part of an existing community, or they may situate themselves where no town currently exists. Either way, infrastructure and institutional capacity will be needed to ensure essential services such as housing, water treatment and water supply, power and fuel distribution, broadband, education, health services, employment, and transportation are either in place or will be created. To date, in the United States and in many other countries where rising sea levels will negatively impact coastal communities, there is neither planning nor funding for population relocation.

In 2022, the White House launched a Subcommittee of its National Climate Task Force involving FEMA and the Department of the Interior to support moving Americans away from high-risk regions. Funding for voluntary relocation amounting to $111 million was made available to 11 indigenous communities impacted by wildfire and drought, and Alaskan coastal communities inundated by Pacific extreme weather events. This could be the model for future relocation programs, or a one-off.

The Gulf of Mexico Isn’t the Only Coastline in Trouble

Back in 2018, I wrote about how two coastal communities in the U.S. were coping with ocean inundation. Norfolk, Virginia was one. The other was Del Mar, California.

Norfolk’s plans involved abandoning areas that would flood as sea levels rise and fortifying other areas requiring new construction to be elevated one metre above a 100-year flood line. Norfolk is a good example of towns and cities along the Atlantic Ocean seaboard where it is expected to see rising sea levels displace millions by century’s end causing social disruption and negative economic consequences amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars.

Del Mar has a plan to manage its retreat from the Pacific ahead of rising seas beginning with 600 homes within a few years, all in danger of vanishing into the Pacific. The city’s retreat includes eliminating seawalls, roads, and other infrastructure using a risk model to help make choices. A buy-back program and other forms of financial are being put in place.

Del Mar is a fairly wealthy community, but coastal towns by the Gulf of Mexico are anything but, particularly many in Louisiana. There, funding for buy-back programs will likely exceed the capacity of the communities being affected. Even state and federal government assistance may be insufficient to cover the loss of property and relocation costs. Then add in mental health costs from uprooting people from places where they have lived for centuries. Medical resources will have to be beefed up to deal with the fallout.

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This region of the planet is currently dealing with the latest El Niño traversing the mid-Pacific Ocean which weakens prevailing trade winds, moves warmer water to the east and clouds to the west causing changes in precipitation and sea levels. Many in the group are threatened by drought when El Niño events occur. Add atmospheric warming from greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) produced elsewhere and the region’s environmental challenges start to add up. Most members of the forum, Australia and New Zealand being the outliers, are seeking the help of richer countries to finance mitigation and adaptation, in addition to receiving loss and damage compensation promised at the time of the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015.

Rising sea levels pose a particular challenge to many of the Pacific island nations. The Pacific is rising faster than other oceans. The rate amounts to 4 millimetres (0.157 inches) annually compared to 3.4 being the average globally. That doesn’t sound like a lot but it translates to 92 millimetres (3.62 inches) since the turn of the 21st century.

Here are a few examples:

• Kiribati, is a nation of 33 small island atolls with a little over 2 metres (6.5 feet) of clearance between current altitude and sea levels. Every high tide and Pacific storm erodes more of the nation away.
• The Solomon Islands include 992 distinct islands and atolls. of which 5 have disappeared since 1947 as Pacific Ocean levels climb and six more have seen erosion remove 20% of their land areas.
• The 274 Torres Strait Islands that lie between Australia and New Guinea have watched rising sea levels invade freshwater aquifers and cause coastal erosion.
• The five Carteret Islands that are part of Papua New Guinea lie at or near sea level. The highest point of land stands 1.5 metres (5 feet) above the encroaching waters of the Pacific Ocean. The inhabitants are already migrating as the waters rise.
• The 1,225 Marshall Islands spread over 29 coral atolls with most less than 2.1 metres (7 feet) above sea level are disappearing at an alarming rate.
• And then there is Tuvalu whose atolls and islands on average stand just under 2 metres (6.5 feet) above sea level. The rising Pacific poses an immediate threat to its citizens who have been putting up a fight building up dunes and coral debris that washes ashore to hold back the ocean.

So what will happen as our warming planet and rising oceans devour these nations? The migration of their inhabitants is inevitable. Will they then cease to be citizens of their respective nations?

Tuvalu has been looking at the nature of its continued existence after the Pacific wipes it out. Current international law defines a nation as having a physical presence and a permanent population. But Tuvalu wants that definition to change by creating a digital version of itself. The digital Tuvalu would preserve its cultural heritage and provide continuing services to its citizens regardless of where they end up.

Tuvalu also wants its patch of the Pacific Ocean to remain an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) even when the islands are no longer there. EEZs were established by the United Nations Law of the Sea, agreed to in 1982. The EEZ gives a nation sovereign rights to explore, exploit, conserve, and manage a physical area of the ocean from below its seabed to the waters above. The current definition of EEZ is measured from a nation’s shoreline to a distance of 321 kilometres (200 miles). But what happens when there no longer is a shoreline from which to measure? Tuvalu is claiming that the EEZ should survive its physical disappearance which means an area of the Pacific Ocean amounting to almost 750,000 square kilometres (almost 290,000 square miles) can remain a source of income for the diaspora. The tuna industry has been a mainstay of the island nation’s economy. worth billions of dollars annually, the earnings from it would continue to provide Tuvalu citizens with healthcare, pensions and other government services regardless of where they end up living.

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This summer in the Northern Hemisphere, temperatures have never been hotter. Is this because of a strong El Niño happening in the Pacific, or is this more evidence that we are losing the battle to mitigate global warming?

The warming isn’t just happening north of the equator. Scientists monitoring sea ice surrounding Antarctica indicated that the maximum reached as of September 13, 2023, was 1.75 million square kilometres (676,000 square miles) less in extent than the mean based on data collected between 1981 and 2010. Antarctica has seen rainy days over the past few years, a rare phenomenon for a continent encased in snow and ice. With less sea ice, the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica is warming which accelerates the loss even more.

The Arctic Ocean, in recent years, has seen some of its lowest sea ice maximums but compared to the Antarctic appears more stable. Greenland, however, is exhibiting losses similar to those observed at the southern pole. Named Greenland by early Viking explorers who colonized areas along the coast during the Medieval Optimum, the island may soon begin to earn its green moniker again as it experiences accelerated meltdowns of the island-wide ice sheet. The question that climatologists are asking is can the Greenland ice loss be reversed even if mean global atmospheric temperatures rise beyond 1.5 Celsius?

The latest climate modelling points to abrupt and rapid acceleration should mean atmospheric temperatures rise 2.3 Celsius (4.1 Fahrenheit). Nils Bochow, a climate scientist from The Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø, who is the lead author of a study appearing in Nature doesn’t believe that we are beyond the ability to stabilize and reverse the island’s ice loss even if we surpass these temperature thresholds. He notes, however, that acting now to mitigate global warming will be a good “bet against time” because “it gets only harder the longer we wait.”

The biggest threat from Greenland’s accelerating ice melt is the impact it is having on sea level rise now and in the future. The island contains enough ice to raise ocean levels by 7 metres (almost 23 feet). The current annual ice loss of 270 billion tons is raising sea levels by 4 millimetres (0.157 inches) per year. If the anticipated acceleration from rising temperatures occurs (highly likely) climatologists do not believe the entire Greenland ice sheet will vanish. And if climate mitigating actions throughout the rest of the century were to occur, mean global temperature rise could reverse. But ocean level rise amounting to several metres will be with us for centuries if not millennia in the future.

The Antarctic picture has enormous implications for the fragile wildlife that depends on the preservation of the Southern Ocean sea ice and stable climate conditions. The latest victims of warming in Antarctica are Emperor Penguins who have seen significant losses in numbers with the threat of extinction. And seal populations dependent on sea ice as their habitat are also imperilled.

Vishnu Nandan and Robbie Mallett, from the Universities of Calgary and Manitoba respectively, have been in the Antarctic working with a British project called DEFIANT (Drivers and Effects of Fluctuations in sea Ice in the ANTarctic) with plans to deploy ground-based radar to track sea ice conditions. The data the two have been collecting shows that Antarctic sea ice is thinning. As it thins it loses its white colour, becoming opaque and eventually translucent. When white the ice reflects solar radiation. When opaque and translucent, it absorbs solar radiation converting it to heat. Polar oceans that warm are linked to climate disasters happening elsewhere on the planet.

All in all, the longer we wait to mitigate global warming, the more devastating the consequences. We can reverse temperature rise by eliminating the burning of fossil fuels. But the polar regions will have warmer oceans and changes to the life that has adapted and thrived there since the onset of the Ice Age some 2.58 million years ago.

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Anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming isn’t evenly distributing sea level increases around the planet. Different physical geography makes some areas more susceptible to coastal flooding and high tides. Rising seas speed up coastal erosion which is becoming increasingly evident around the world.

Rising seas also are impacting the Earth’s polar lands. In the Antarctic and Greenland, the combination of the warming atmosphere and warming sea surface temperatures are causing increased melting of land-based ice. This is having a destabilizing impact with NASA fingering Greenland ice melt as the major culprit in accelerating sea level rise.

Sea Level Rise is Best Tracked from Space

Why rely on a space agency to tell us about the state of our ocean? Isn’t there enough data from harbours and tide charts from around the world to tell us the current state of sea level rise?

Remote sensing satellites that monitor the ocean surface are a mere three decades old, whereas terrestrial-based observations have been providing almost a century of historical measurement. The latter is important for doing trend analysis but for tracking what is happening across the entire ocean surface, the data is largely non-existent.

That’s why the consensus is unanimous to measure sea level changes best can only be done from space. Since 1993, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have put remote-sensing Earth-orbiting satellites to continuously monitor ocean surface heights. The satellites use sensitive radar altimeters to take precise measurements of the most minute changes over the entire marine surface. No terrestrial-based measuring system can capture what the satellites do.

Mid-Century or Sooner Consequences

In past posts of which I have highlighted one, (there are more than 400 in total based on a “sea level rise” search result, I have written about the growing threat to coastal communities in the United States and around the planet.  So just how vulnerable are we to a 0.27-centimetre annual rise or an accelerated increase of 0.66 centimetres?

In a publication by the Union of Concerned Scientists, it lists the material peril of rising sea levels to Americans:

• More than 300,000 of today’s coastal homes in the U.S., with a collective market value of about $117.5 billion will be at risk of chronic inundation by 2045, a timeframe falling within the lifespan of 30-year mortgages issued in 2018.
• Approximately 14,000 coastal commercial properties, assessed in 2018 at a value of roughly $18.5 billion will also be at risk by 2045.
• Homes and commercial properties valued at $1 trillion in 2018, will by the end of the century all be at risk. That’s as many homes as can be found today in the cities of Los Angeles and Houston combined.
• The states with the most homes at risk by 2100 include Florida, at a million, or more than 10% of current residential properties, followed by New Jersey, at 250,000 homes, and then New York with 143,000 homes.

A Call to Action

Measuring carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas levels has always been the common measure of anthropogenic climate change. But states Josh Willis who is an oceanographer with NASA JPL in California, “Tracking the greenhouse gasses that we add to the atmosphere tells us how hard we’re pushing the climate, but sea levels show us how much it’s responding.” 

So 9.1 centimetres does matter and the best way to slow the rate of increase is through collective global action to drive down carbon emissions as rapidly as possible. Tell that to the banks that continue to fund fossil fuel projects, and to the governments that grant leases to oil companies to drill exploratory wells or finance the building of pipelines.

The post Seas Are Rising Over 9 Centimetres In The Last Three Decades And Why This Matters appeared first on Techso Mogro.

The data leading to these forecasts combine observed satellite altimeter and Earth-based tidal gauge measurements. Satellites have detected accelerating rates of sea level rise since 1993 which suggests the higher numbers in these forecasts will be closer to the likely outcome.

For coastal towns and cities, the foreknowledge should allow them to consider one of two strategies:

1. An organized retreat inland to higher ground that involves both above and below-ground infrastructure relocation.
2. A buildup of coastal defences that includes artificial and natural barriers to deal with inundations from catastrophic weather events and nuisance floods that accompany high tides.

Rising sea level is associated with global climate change. As atmospheric temperatures rise, so does the temperature of the ocean causing thermal expansion. Also, a warming atmosphere causes glacial melt which today can be observed both in alpine and continental glaciers.

But there is something else playing a part. That’s the Moon. Every 18.6 years the oceans of the world experience higher tides because of what is a wobble in our lunar companion’s orbit. The wobble causes higher tides in one part of the cycle, and lower tides at another point in time. The 2030s should have us at the high point just when global warming will likely have exceeded 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) in mean temperature rise, the IPCC’s stated low-threshold target that it wants us not to exceed. Not to throw a wet sponge on this, a new forecast states that the next El Nino cycle beginning in 2024 may push us over the 1.5 mark, a frightening consequence coming from our procrastination to address climate change.

Tools for Policymakers and Planners

Although the reports are foreboding, NASA wants to help homeowners and community planners to better deal with the threat of sea level rise. It has established a Sea Level Change portal as well as a Sea Level Projection Tool to provide real-time observations and global projections that go out as far past 2150. These projections cover six different climate models looking at the latest scientific research and data collection for ocean thermal expansion, alpine, Greenland and Antarctic deglaciation, and contributions from other land water storage sources (rivers, lakes, aquifers).

For homeowners and municipal planners of coastal communities, the coastal threat is being well documented by science. Those contemplating ownership of a home next to the sea should be going into these types of transactions with eyes wide open. But rising sea levels seem to have little to no impact on coastal home purchases.

A new publication, “Housing Market Response to Sea-Level Rise in Florida,” written by Georgia State University professors Risa Palm and Toby Bolsen illustrates just how little sea level rise is impacting consumers. In a survey of 680 Miami realtors, the researchers asked if buying and selling of homes were being influenced by new flood maps that projected future areas of risk in South Florida. The realtors surveyed stated that the market remained hot for coastal properties and that they were optimistic about future sales even though media coverage in South Florida continued to report stories on sea level rise.

When asked about property insurance, realtors noted that there may be a time in the future when the risk cost could negatively impact sales. But coastal property purchases, they stated, were not about the risk for most buyers, but rather about the amenity of being by the sea.

Despite realtor optimism, the cost of flood policies continues to rise as do the minimum deductibles. Is this uniform across all U.S. seaboards? No. In some high-risk-identified flood zip code areas, some insurers have stopped offering policies. But most continue to provide give high-risk areas with insurance coverage. What’s changed is that insurers are instituting stricter underwriting guidelines making it more difficult to qualify upon renewal which then leaves homeowners dependent on government relief in the event of a flood. Other insurers are providing homeowners with guidance about home upgrades to plumbing, electrical and HVAC systems, and even flood protection landscaping advice.

There will be a tipping point when insurers and homeowners will no longer find common ground. But based on the Georgia State study for South Florida, we are still not there. But as sea levels rise into the 2030s, that tipping point may soon arrive.

The post Retreat or Build Up by 2050 Are the Two Choices for Those Living on Coastlines appeared first on Techso Mogro.