7 May 2016, The Conversation, Sea-level rise has claimed five whole islands in the Pacific: first scientific evidence. Sea-level rise, erosion and coastal flooding are some of the greatest challenges facing humanity from climate change. Recently at least five reef islands in the remote Solomon Islands have been lost completely to sea-level rise and coastal erosion, and a further six islands have been severely eroded. These islands lost to the sea range in size from one to five hectares. They supported dense tropical vegetation that was at least 300 years old. Nuatambu Island, home to 25 families, has lost more than half of its habitable area, with 11 houses washed into the sea since 2011. This is the first scientific evidence, published in Environmental Research Letters, that confirms the numerous anecdotal accounts from across the Pacific of the dramatic impacts of climate change on coastlines and people. A warning for the world Previous studies examining the risk of coastal inundation in the Pacific region have found that islands can actually keep pace with sea-level riseand sometimes even expand. However, these studies have been conducted in areas of the Pacific with rates of sea level rise of 3-5 mm per year – broadly in line with the global average of 3 mm per year. For the past 20 years, the Solomon Islands have been a hotspot for sea-level rise. Here the sea has risen at almost three times the global average, around 7-10 mm per year since 1993. This higher local rate is partly the result of natural climate variability. These higher rates are in line with what we can expect across much of the Pacific in the second half of this century as a result of human-induced sea-level rise. Many areas will experience long-term rates of sea-level rise similar to that already experienced in Solomon Islands in all but the very lowest-emission scenarios. Read More here
Category Archives: Impacts Observed & Projected
4 May 2016, BBC News, The chasm cutting an Antarctic base adrift. Thirty-six years after he first went there as a young meteorologist, BBC Weather’s Peter Gibbs returned to the current, sixth incarnation of the British Antarctic Survey’s Halley Research Station. There, on “a day with no horizon”, he explored the chasm threatening to cast it adrift. The Brunt Ice Shelf feels like another planet even on the sunniest of days, but when the cloud closes in it turns downright eerie as sky, snow and ice blend into one diffuse white light. Approaching the chasm, the only hint of this 100m-wide gash is a neon glint of blue from the depths of a crevasse in its far wall. Read More here
4 May 2016, The Guardian, Fort McMurray: Canada wildfires force evacuation of oil sands city. The entire population of a northern Alberta city has been ordered to evacuate as a wildfire whipped by high winds engulfed homes and sent ash raining down on residents. All of Fort McMurray, with the exception of Parson’s Creek, was under a mandatory evacuation order on Tuesday, said Robin Smith, press secretary for the regional municipality of Wood Buffalo in the Canadian province. More than 80,000 residents were being directed to evacuation centres outside Fort McMurray, but journeys were made difficult as the main road out of the city – Highway 63 – was licked by flames. One evacuation centre, on an island in the Athabasca river, had filled up, Smith said. Entire neighbourhoods were destroyed, emergency officials said, but there were no reports of injuries….. Unseasonably hot temperatures combined with dry conditions have transformed the boreal forest in much of Alberta into a tinder box. The wildfire threat is ranging from very high to extreme. Read More here
3 May 2016, New York times, Resettling the First American ‘Climate Refugees’. ISLE DE JEAN CHARLES, La. — Each morning at 3:30, when Joann Bourg leaves the mildewed and rusted house that her parents built on her grandfather’s property, she worries that the bridge connecting this spit of waterlogged land to Louisiana’s terra firma will again be flooded and she will miss another day’s work. Ms. Bourg, a custodian at a sporting goods store on the mainland, lives with her two sisters, 82-year-old mother, son and niece on land where her ancestors, members of the Native American tribes of southeastern Louisiana, have lived for generations. That earth is now dying, drowning in salt and sinking into the sea, and she is ready to leave. With a first-of-its-kind “climate resilience” grant to resettle the island’s native residents, Washington is ready to help. “Yes, this is our grandpa’s land,” Ms. Bourg said. “But it’s going under one way or another.” In January, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced grants totaling $1 billion in 13 states to help communities adapt to climate change, by building stronger levees, dams and drainage systems. One of those grants, $48 million for Isle de Jean Charles, is something new: the first allocation of federal tax dollars to move an entire community struggling with the impacts of climate change. The divisions the effort has exposed and the logistical and moral dilemmas it has presented point up in microcosm the massive problems the world could face in the coming decades as it confronts a new category of displaced people who have become known as climate refugees. Read More here