Sea level rise will happen much sooner than anyone realized. It’s not that the water is rising faster; it’s that the land was lower to begin with. (via hakaimagazine)
But they may need to pick up the pace. As new research shows, in many places, sea level rise will cause coastal flooding and other disruptions much sooner than anyone realized. It’s not that the water is rising faster; it’s that the land was lower to begin with.
The problem stems from limitations in the technology typically used to measure elevation: radar. Radar blankets an area in radio waves, then measures how long it takes the waves to bounce back. But radar isn’t precise enough to separate treetops from terra firmaand a patch of pines or cluster of condos can easily exaggerate the elevation. Many studies of sea level rise still use radar elevation data collected by theLidar is a lot like radar, but it uses lasers instead of radio waves.
The scientists’ big finding is that forests and buildings along the coast have skewed radar maps, presenting planners with inaccurate elevation data. Lidar showed coastlines often lower than first realized. This has two important implications: the same amount of sea level rise will be able to reach much farther inland, and it’s going to happen a lot sooner than expected.
The risk is greatest for river deltas in tropical regions where the land is flat, the population is often high, and the data tends to be old. With two meters of sea level rise, by around the year 2150 under a high-emission scenario, the Niger Delta in West Africa and Myanmar’s Irrawaddy Delta will have five times more land underwater than the older radar-based estimates suggested. The same is true for the Chao Phraya delta, which spans metropolitan Bangkok, Thailand’s capital of 11 million.
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