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to rd ing a s h ri s id it o ls ve v le a a e s

Local and state governments are in trouble trying to work out what to do about sea-level rises and planning laws, making it an effective issue to further engage with the public. We dont have to sell the topic, its already a hot potato. There are court cases and administrative appeals and local election campaigns about the issue; developers and real estate agents are moaning; and local residents are confused about whether they want low estimates for likely sea-level rises (to keep property values up) or high estimates (so that migitation works will be done to stop flooding). And people dont want to buy and build where future sea-surges will flood houses and degrade land. There is local community concern and activism on the issue from coast to coast: Vulnerable house owners in Byron Bay fight the council to build barriers at the expense of public beaches, but studies show a sea wall built in one spot is likely to transfer erosion to another; The risk of rising sea levels has put an end to plans for residential development at Victorias Port Fairy after an advisory committee told the State government that the sand-dune development should not go ahead, and other cases are being contested; At Old Bar on the NSW mid-north coast, landowners threaten to sue council as houses are condemned as unsafe because sea surges are eating into sand dunes on which the residences are built; The South Australian Supreme Court rules that predicted sea level rises are a valid reason to reject beachfront housing developments in a subdivision on Yorke Peninsula, with cases in other States; Under pressure from land-owners along 90 Mile Beach, the Wellington Shire in East Gippsland says it is not responsible for preventing construction in areas vulnerable to rising sea levels, as councillors overturn a planning panel recommendation to prevent construction in low-lying coastal areas; On the other hand, Pittwater council is looking at planning for sea-level rises beyond the benchmarks set by the State government, because they may be too low; and

It is one of four Sydney councils calling for consistency in government guidelines, saying the variations (State government sea-level estimates of 0.9 metres by 2100, but the federal figure is 1.1 metre) leaves the councils at risk of legal action. State governments dont want to ring alarm bells by talking about the bad possibilities (the opposite approach they take to bushfires), but they risk huge litigation costs if a planning standard is set too low, and building is permitted where it can later be shown the state has been negligent in ignoring the available scientific evidence. And local councils, although subject to State government planning guidelines, dont want to be sued in the future for allowing developments and buildings where they were clearly inappropriate. The climate movement should intervene in this public debate to highlight the concrete impacts of the climate crisis and the failure of government to act responsibly. Different standards Recently the NSW Government set a planning benchmark for sea levels of 0.9 metres by 2100. In Victoria it is 0.8 metres based on recommendations of the (since abolished) Victorian Coastal Council, but the state is now looking at scenarios for 1.1 and 1.4 metres. In South Australia the benchmark is 1 metre, and the federal government is basing its predicted impacts (247,600 individual buildings valued at $63 billion could be damaged or lost, while major infrastructure, including Sydney and Brisbane airports, are at risk of being flooded by increasingly damaging storms) on a 1.1-metre sea level rise by 2100. While these differing standards indicate confusion, and may also be a legal minefield, they are all too low. The November 2009 issue of Science Update 2009 published by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology reported that current estimates of sea-level rise range from 0.50 metre to over 2 metres by 2100. A federal government report (1) authored by Prof. Will Steffen says that: Sea-level rise larger than the 0.51.0 metre range perhaps towards 1.5 metre ... cannot be ruled out. There is still considerable uncertainty surrounding estimates of future sea-level rise. Nearly all of these uncertainties,

its hard to avoid rising sea-levels

its hard to avoid rising sea levels

its hard to avoid rising sea-levels

however, operate in one direction, towards higher rather than lower estimates. And the outcomes of the March 2009 Copenhagen climate science conference (2) give an estimate of 0.751.9 metres by 2100, based on peerreviewed research (3). So if up to two metres is acknowledged, why set planning guidelines around one metre? Just after the federal government released its sea-level report (4) last year, Senator Wong told ABC Insiders on 15 April that 1.1 metres .is about the upper end of the risk (emphasis added). This was an untruth. What the report actually says is: Recent research, presented at the Copenhagen climate congress in March 2009, projected sea-level rise from 0.75 to 1.90 metres relative to 1990, with 1.11.2 metres the mid-range of the projection. Based on this recent science 1.1 metres was selected as a plausible value for sea-level rise for this risk assessment (emphasis added). This is not risk management, but betting against the laws of nature. It seems that plausible value is a weaselword for mid-range! But we dont base our fire preparedness on a mid-range plausible value. A safety-first approach means we plan for the worst possible outcome, which all levels of government are clearly failing to do. At the March 2010 Australian Coastal Councils Conference Dr John Church, who is Australias pre-eminent expert, said sea levels will rise by close to a metre by the end of the century no matter what the world does to combat climate change, but warned [that] things could get much worse if rising air and ocean temperatures caused a massive ice sheet covering Greenland so big it could, by itself, lift sea levels by seven metres to melt. (5). An upper boundary to 2100 As the worlds oceans warm, they expand and sea-levels rise, but how quickly the loss of polar ice sheets will add to the rise is difficult to estimate, principally because icesheet and sea-ice dynamics are not sufficiently well understood, and they are subject to non-linear (rapid and unexpected) changes, such as is now occurring with Arctic

sea-ice. The estimate of the 2007 IPCC report of about a half-metre sea-level rise by 2100 is now too conservative. The general scientific view is now for a rise of 12 metres, but higher levels of 3-5 metres cannot be excluded. The IPCC 2007 report was conservative because it failed to factor in some melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Yet the question is no longer whether the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass (they are!), but if and when they pass tipping points for large, irreversible ice mass loss, and how fast that will occur. New satellite data shows that both Greenland and Antarctica are losing ice mass at an accelerating rate (6). Arctic sea-ice in summer is in a death spiral according to Dr Mark Serreze, head of the US National Snow and Ice Date Centre (7); as it becomes thinner (8) and as its volume continues to decrease, the data suggests total summer sea-ice loss in the next three to ten years (9) [See chart, page 13]. As NASAs James Hansen notes in his recently published book, Storms of my Grandchildren: It is difficult to imagine how the Greenland ice sheet could survive if Arctic sea ice is lost entirely in the warm season (page 164). So how fast? One recent study (10) found that a 2-metre sea-level rise was the upper bound on how much ice could physically be lost from Greenland and Antarctica this century, but this was based on assumptions that all ice shelves would remain intact, but in fact many are already retreating (11). And a 2009 study by Siddall et al. which suggested a sea-level rise of only 782 cms to 2100, and which was criticised as being too conservative, has just been withdrawn due to technical errors (12). On the other hand, recent research (13) examining the paleoclimate record shows sea-level rises of 3 metres in 50 years due to the rapid melting of ice sheets 120,000 years ago, when climate conditions very similar to today. Mike Kearney, of the University of Maryland, said its within the realm of possibility that global warming will trigger a sudden collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which could lead to a rapid increase in sea levels like that predicted by the study. And recent Antarctic ice-core studies of the Pliocene over the last 14 million years (14) have led Timothy Naish of Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand to conclude: We know that [when] CO2 was around 400 or 450 parts per million in the atmosphere...there was no ice sheet on West Antarctica...Thats where were almost at now. Then on 13 January this year, New Scientist published a story (15) about calculations that the Pine Island glacier (PIG) in the West Antarctic has likely passed its tipping point, with estimates that this one glacier alone could add a quarter of a metre to sea levels by 2100.

Sea level rises in the long run It was thought that long-term climate feedbacks would only kick in on century to millenia time-scales, but they are on the cards right now. Will Steffen, in his recent report for the federal government (17), notes that:
Long-term feedbacks in the climate system may be starting to develop now; the most important of these include dynamical processes in the large polar ice sheets, and the behaviour of natural carbon sinks and potential new natural sources of carbon, such as the carbon stored in the permafrost of the northern high latitudes. Once thresholds in ice sheet and carbon cycle dynamics are crossed, such processes cannot be stopped or reversed by human intervention, and will lead to more severe and ultimately irreversible climate change from the perspective of human timeframes.

An unmanned autonomous submarine has discovered a sea-floor ridge that may have been the last hope for stopping the now-accelerating retreat of the Pine Island Glacier, a crumbling keystone of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The ridge appears to have once protected the glacier, but no more. The submarine found the glacier floating well off the ridge and warmer, ice-melting water passing over the ridge and farther under the ice. And no survey, underwater or airborne, has found another such glacier-preserving obstacle for the next 250 kilometers landward.

Several years ago, the experienced climate science journalist Fred Pearce reported geologist Richard Alley as saying there is a possibility that the West Antarctic ice sheet could collapse and raise sea levels by 6 yards [5.5 metres] this century, leading Pearce to conclude that the Pine Island Glacier is primed for runaway destruction. The evidence is now heading his way, and suggesting that 0.8 or 1.1 metres is a risk-averse foundation for sealevel rise planning and policy-making is now way behind

Given the catastrophic failure to date of global climate policy-making (Copenhagen outcome: a 4-degree warmer world by 2100), big sea-level rises are on the way for the sorts of temperature increases now on the table. NASAs James Hansen wrote in New Scientist on 25 July 2007 that:
Oxygen isotopes in the deep-ocean fossil plankton known as foraminifera reveal that the Earth was last 2C to 3C warmer around 3 million years ago, with carbon

Arctic sea-ice loss: ice volume projections and observations

Modelled monthly mean sea-ice volume (blue line) over the Arctic Ocean for the period 19792004. Green line is the mean model ice volume for 19791995. Stars show minimum OctoberNovember values from the model (blue) and observational estimates (magenta: Kwok and Cunnihgham 2008; cyan: Kwok et al. 2009). Read and black striped lines: calculated (NPS/K08 and NPS/K09) linear trend through 19952007. Blue dashed line: model trend through 19952004. Projecting the trend into the future indicates that autumn could be ice-free between 2011 and 2016 (Maslowski, 2009). Purple line: An unknown minimum amount of ice volume expected to survive summer melt beyond that time. PAPRERS: Kwok, R., and G. F. Cunningham (2008), ICESat over Arctic sea ice: Estimation of snow depth and ice thickness, J. Geophys. Res., 113, C08010, doi:10.1029/2008JC004753. Kwok, R., G. F. Cunningham, M. Wensnahan, I. Rigor, H. J. Zwally, and D. Yi (2009), Thinning and volume loss of the Arctic Ocean sea ice cover: 20032008, J. Geophys.Res., 114, C07005, doi:10.1029/2009JC005312. Maslowski, W., J. Clement Kinney, J. Jakacki, Toward Prediction of Environmental Arctic Change, Computing in Science and Engineering, vol. 9, no. 6, pp. 29-34, Nov./Dec.2007, doi:10.1109/MCSE.2007.125. Maslowski, W., State and Future Projections of Arctic Sea Ice, Changes of the Greenland Cryosphere Workshop and the Arctic Freshwater Budget International Symposium, Nuuk, Greenland, 25-27 August, 2009. Source: freshnor.dmi.dk/handout_freshnor.pdf

its hard to avoid rising sea-levels

Richard Hindmarsh of the British Antarctic Survey says PIG could disappear entirely, and if Thwaites glacier, which sits alongside PIG, also retreats, PIGs grounding line could retreat even further back to a second crest, causing sea levels to rise by 52 centimetres. The modelling suggests Thwaites glacier has also passed its tipping point. Pine Island and Thwaites drain about 40 per cent of the West Antarctic ice Sheet into the sea and are the key to its future. And now comes a new report in Science (16) that an undersea ridge that may have once helped slow the loss of the Pine Island Glacier is no longer doing so:

the times. James Hansen said three years ago that he would bet a thousand dollars to a donut that his estimate of a 5-metre rise by 2100 (based on recent climate history) would be closer to the mark that the 2007 IPCC figure of less than a metre, and the grim reality is that he is likely to be right given the worlds continued failed to sharply mitigate.

its hard to avoid rising sea-levels

dioxide levels of perhaps 350 to 450 parts per million. It was a dramatically different planet then, with no Arctic sea-ice in the warm seasons and sea level about 25 meters higher, give or take 10 meters.

And we are now almost at 400 parts per million! The simple fact that seems to evade policymakers is that sea-level rises measured in tens of metres are in the pipeline for current greenhouse levels. Even more compelling, Professor Eelco Rohling of University of Southampton says: Even if we would curb all CO2 emissions today, and stabilise at the modern level (387 parts per million by volume), then our natural relationship suggests that sea level would continue to rise to about 25 metres above the present, based on his research (18). These predictions fit a simple but alarming pattern evident in the climate history. During the last ice age 20,000 years ago temperatures were 56 degrees cooler and sea levels 120 metres lower. If human emissions continue along their current path, global temperatures will be 4-5 degrees warmer, enough to eventually melt all the polar ice caps and push sea levels 70 metres higher than today, as was the case in the Oligocene, 30 million years ago. While ice-sheets can take long periods of centuries and more to disintegrate, the conclusion is unavoidable: On average, each one-degree temperature rise will in the long run increase sea-levels by 1520 metres. On average, the coast line retreats 100 metres for every 1 metre of sea level rise. The Insurance Council says 425,000 Australian addresses less than 4 metres above sea level and within 3 km of shoreline are vulnerable this century. Already houses and property in Australia are being abandoned. Much of our infrastructure and many of the worlds largest cities are on the coast and huge river deltas are densely-populated farming lands. Climate scientist prof. Konrad Steffen says A onemeter sea-level rise by 2100... will affect up to 600 million people. And Sir Nicholas Stern says rising sea-levels will result in forced migrations: Youd see hundreds of millions people, probably billions of people who would have to move and (probably) cause conflict around the world (for) decades or centuries. DAVID SPRATT

1. Climate change 2009: Faster change & more serious risks, Department of Climate Change, May 2009 2. Synthesis report: Climate change - Global risks, challenges and decisions, Copenhagen, March 2009, International Alliance of Research Universities, June 2009, www.climatecongress.ku.dk 3. Vermeer and Rahmstorf, Global sea level linked to global temperature, PNAS, 7 December 2009 4. Climate change risks to Australias coast: A first pass national assessment, Department of Climate Change, April 2009 5. Rising sea levels put us at risk, Northern Star, 3 March 2010, http://www.northernstar.com.au/story/2010/03/03/its-a-seachange-our-coast-could-well-do-without 6. Velicogna, Increasing rates of ice mass loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets revealed in GRACE, GRL 36:19503 7. www.grist.org/.../exclusive-new-nsidc-director-explains-thedeath-spiral-of-arctic-ice-brushe 8. Kwok & Rothrock, Decline in Arctic sea ice thickness from submarine and ICESat records: 1958-2008, GRL 36:15501 9. The freshwater budget of the Nordic Seas, freshnor.dmi.dk/ handout_freshnor.pdf 10. Pfeffer, Harper et al, Kinematic constraints on glacier contributions to 21st-century sea-level rise, Science 321:1340-43 11. Climate change melts Antarctic ice shelves: USGS, Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters, 22 February 2010, http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61L5OH20100222; Coastal-Change and Glaciological Map of the Palmer Land Area, Antarctica: 1947 - 2009, US Geological Survey, http://pubs.usgs. gov/imap/i-2600-c/ 12. Climate scientists withdraw journal claims of rising sea levels, David Adam, Guardian, 21 February 2010, http://www. guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/21/sea-level-geoscienceretract-siddall 13. Blanchon et al., Rapid sea-level rise and reef-stepping at the close of the last interglacial highstand, Nature 458:881-84 14. Naish, Powell et al, Obliquity-paced Pliocene West Antarctic ice sheet oscillations, Nature 458: 322 15. Katz and Worster, Stability of ice-sheet grounding lines, PRSA, 13 January 2010 16. Kerr, Antarctic Glacier Off Its Leash, Science 327:409 17. Climate change 2009: Faster change & more serious risks, Department of Climate Change, May 2009 18. Rohling, Grant et al., ,Antarctic temperature and global sea level closely coupled over the past five glacial cycles, Nature Geoscience, 21 June 2009

Notes

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