Latest news with #risingsealevels
Yahoo
17 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
An Entire Country Has to Be Evacuated Because of Climate Change
Going Under Tuvalu, a small island nation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, is planning to evacuate all of its over 11,000 inhabitants, due to rising sea levels caused by climate change that mean, essentially, that the low-lying country has no feasible future. As Wired reports, the nation signed an agreement with Australia in 2023 to set up a migration scheme in which 280 residents will permanently settle on the continent per year through a climate visa program. It's a sobering reminder of the incredibly damaging effects that global warming is having on our planet. Tuvalu is only 6.5 feet above sea level on average, meaning that rising tides will almost certainly be devastating to the region. Fierce storms, facilitated by rising temperatures, could make matters even worse for an already very vulnerable population. Rising Tides Australia's climate visas are allocated based on a lottery system. This week, the Australian High Commission of Tuvalu revealed that it had received "extremely high levels of interest in the ballot with 8,750 registrations, which includes family members of primary registrants." In other words, moving every Tuvaluan is taking on increasing urgency even as demand for the program spikes. "When combined with other Pacific pathways to Australia and New Zealand, nearly 4 percent of the population could migrate each year," UNSW Sydney research fellow Jane McAdam wrote in a recent piece for The Conversation. "Within a decade, close to 40 percent of the population could have moved — although some people may return home or go backwards and forwards." Besides relocating all its residents, Tuvalu has attempted to 3D-scan its islands to preserve its cultural heritage if they're lost to the waters. Tuvalu is far from the only nation facing a crisis caused by sea levels that are rising even faster than predicted. According to the UN Human Development Program, increased coastal flooding could endanger over 70 million people worldwide. By 2050, hundreds of highly populated cities will face increased risks of flooding thanks to climate change. According to the UN, rising sea levels are already impacting one billion people worldwide. "The existential threat we face is not of our making," said Tuvalu's prime minister, Feleti Teo, during a September speech at the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "But it will remake us." More on rising sea levels: Scientists Horrified by What They Found Under the Doomsday Glacier
Yahoo
18 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
An Entire Country Has to Be Evacuated Because of Climate Change
Going Under Tuvalu, a small island nation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, is planning to evacuate all of its over 11,000 inhabitants, due to rising sea levels caused by climate change that mean, essentially, that the low-lying country has no feasible future. As Wired reports, the nation signed an agreement with Australia in 2023 to set up a migration scheme in which 280 residents will permanently settle on the continent per year through a climate visa program. It's a sobering reminder of the incredibly damaging effects that global warming is having on our planet. Tuvalu is only 6.5 feet above sea level on average, meaning that rising tides will almost certainly be devastating to the region. Fierce storms, facilitated by rising temperatures, could make matters even worse for an already very vulnerable population. Rising Tides Australia's climate visas are allocated based on a lottery system. This week, the Australian High Commission of Tuvalu revealed that it had received "extremely high levels of interest in the ballot with 8,750 registrations, which includes family members of primary registrants." In other words, moving every Tuvaluan is taking on increasing urgency even as demand for the program spikes. "When combined with other Pacific pathways to Australia and New Zealand, nearly 4 percent of the population could migrate each year," UNSW Sydney research fellow Jane McAdam wrote in a recent piece for The Conversation. "Within a decade, close to 40 percent of the population could have moved — although some people may return home or go backwards and forwards." Besides relocating all its residents, Tuvalu has attempted to 3D-scan its islands to preserve its cultural heritage if they're lost to the waters. Tuvalu is far from the only nation facing a crisis caused by sea levels that are rising even faster than predicted. According to the UN Human Development Program, increased coastal flooding could endanger over 70 million people worldwide. By 2050, hundreds of highly populated cities will face increased risks of flooding thanks to climate change. According to the UN, rising sea levels are already impacting one billion people worldwide. "The existential threat we face is not of our making," said Tuvalu's prime minister, Feleti Teo, during a September speech at the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "But it will remake us." More on rising sea levels: Scientists Horrified by What They Found Under the Doomsday Glacier
Japan Times
20 hours ago
- Science
- Japan Times
Rising seas and shifting sands attack ancient Alexandria from below
From her ninth-floor balcony over Alexandria's seafront, Eman Mabrouk looked down at the strip of sand that used to be the wide beach where she played as a child. "The picture is completely different now," she said. The sea has crept closer, the concrete barriers have got longer and the buildings around her have cracked and shifted. Every year, 40 of them collapse across Egypt's second city, up from one on average a decade ago, a study shows. The storied settlement that survived everything from bombardment by the British in the 1880s to attacks by crusaders in the 1160s is succumbing to a subtler foe infiltrating its foundations. The warming waters of the Mediterranean are rising, part of a global phenomenon driven by climate change. In Alexandria, that is leading to coastal erosion and sending saltwater seeping through the sandy substrate, undermining buildings from below, researchers say. "This is why we see the buildings in Alexandria being eroded from the bottom up," said Essam Heggy, a water scientist at the University of Southern California who co-wrote a study published in February describing a growing crisis in Alexandria and along the whole coast. The combination of continuous seawater rises, ground subsidence and coastal erosion means Alexandria's coastline has receded an average of 3.5 meters a year over the last 20 years, he said. Eman Mabrouk, 50, stands on her ninth-floor balcony overlooking Alexandria's corniche, in Alexandria, on April 19. | REUTERS "For many people who see that climatic change is something that will happen in the future and we don't need to worry about it, it's actually happening right now, right here," Heggy said. The situation is alarming enough when set out in the report — "Soaring Building Collapses in Southern Mediterranean Coasts" in the journal "Earth's Future". For Mabrouk, 50, it has been part of day-to-day life for years. She had to leave her last apartment when the building started moving. "It eventually got slanted. I mean, after two years, we were all ... leaning," she said. "If you put something on the table, you would feel like it was rolling." Egypt's government has acknowledged the problem and promised action. Submerged breakwaters reduce coastal wave action and truckloads of sand replenish stripped beaches. Nine concrete sea barriers have been set up "to protect the delta and Alexandria from the impact of rising sea waves," Alexandria's governor, Ahmed Khaled Hassan, said. The barriers stretch out to sea, piles of striking geometric shapes, their clear curves and lines standing out against the crumbling, flaking apartment blocks on the land. Authorities are trying to get in ahead of the collapses by demolishing buildings at risk. Around 7,500 were marked for destruction and 55,000 new housing units will be built, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly told a crowd as he stood on one of the concrete barriers on July 14. "There isn't a day that passes without a partial or complete collapse of at least one building that already had a demolition order," Madbouly said. A man fishes by the Mediterranean city of Alexandria on April 20. Sea levels are rising across the world, but they are rising faster in the Mediterranean than in many other bodies of water due partly to the relative shallowness of its basin. | REUTERS Some are hopeful the measures can make a difference. "There are no dangers now ... They have made their calculations," coffee shop owner Shady Mostafa said as he watched builders working on one of the barriers. Others are less sure. Alexandria's 70-kilometer-long coastal zone was marked down as the most vulnerable in the whole Mediterranean basin in the February report. Around 2% of the city's housing stock — or about 7,000 buildings — were probably unsafe, it added. Every day, more people are pouring into the city — Alexandria's population has nearly doubled to about 5.8 million in the last 25 years, swollen by workers and tourists, according to Egypt's statistics agency, CAPMAS. Property prices keep going up, despite all the risks, trackers show. Sea levels are rising across the world, but they are rising faster in the Mediterranean than in many other bodies of water, partly because the relative shallowness of its basin makes it warm up faster. The causes may be global, but the impacts are local, said 26-year-old Alexandria resident Ahmed al-Ashry. "There's a change in the buildings, there's a change in the streets," he said. "Every now and then we try to renovate the buildings, and in less than a month, the renovations start to fall apart. Our neighbours have started saying the same thing, that cracks have started to appear."
Yahoo
a day ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Experts warn drastic action may be necessary in communities along US East Coast: 'We're dealing with something completely unprecedented'
Experts warn drastic action may be necessary in communities along US East Coast: 'We're dealing with something completely unprecedented' A climate adaptation scientist is warning that drastic changes may be necessary along the American East Coast. What's happening? According to EcoRI, Emma Gildesgame, a climate adaptation scientist for The Nature Conservancy, believes that it's time to start talking about managed retreat as a response to climate-induced coastal change. Managed retreat is when coastal buildings and towns pull back from their original locations, relocating further inland in an attempt to avoid being submerged by the rising oceans as our planet gets warmer. The practice is often seen as a last-ditch attempt to salvage areas that are most impacted by rising oceans as our coastlines shrink. However, per EcoRI, Gildesgame says the time is coming sooner than we think and that the goal right now is to "work with nature to keep people safer from climate change." Why is managed retreat important? For the United States, sea levels are expected to rise by a foot by 2050 if we continue along our current path, according to the Earth Information Center. That means that as time goes on, more and more coastal towns and cities are going to find themselves threatened by the same seas that they've relied on to thrive for decades or longer. On top of that, with sea levels rising, issues like flooding become more commonplace, with storms needing to be less and less severe to cause widespread flooding and damage. Managed retreat is a way to stave off those problems and keep towns safe from our changing climate. While extreme weather events have always existed, experts have found that human activities like burning dirty fuels have caused our planet to heat up, supercharging weather events and creating the need for proactive safety measures as temperatures rise. What's being done about managed retreat and rising ocean levels? Gildesgame said she's been having conversations for years about starting the process of managed retreat from coastal towns in New England. "I think it was like 2022 that I started having these conversations," she told EcoRI. "People were like, 'Oh, we can't talk about that. It's too complicated.' Governments don't want to be in the business of telling people where they can and can't live. There's deep, deep, deep trauma around government relocation in a lot of communities." However, she noted that people are realizing the severity of the situation. Do you think our power grid needs to be upgraded? Definitely Only in some states Not really I'm not sure Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. "We're tough New Englanders. We'll be fine. We'll just build stronger," Gildesgame said. "But we're dealing with something completely unprecedented." The hope is that by moving communities away from the shore, it will reduce the strain on the natural ecosystem in the area, restoring natural beaches, salt marshes, and sand dunes to mitigate the spread of flooding. As for the wider issue of coastal erosion and rising oceans, our best course of action is to continue prioritizing the reduction of carbon pollution, in the hopes of slowing our changing climate down. Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
An Entire Country Has to Be Evacuated Because of Climate Change
Going Under Tuvalu, a small island nation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, is planning to evacuate all of its over 11,000 inhabitants, due to rising sea levels caused by climate change that mean, essentially, that the low-lying country has no feasible future. As Wired reports, the nation signed an agreement with Australia in 2023 to set up a migration scheme in which 280 residents will permanently settle on the continent per year through a climate visa program. It's a sobering reminder of the incredibly damaging effects that global warming is having on our planet. Tuvalu is only 6.5 feet above sea level on average, meaning that rising tides will almost certainly be devastating to the region. Fierce storms, facilitated by rising temperatures, could make matters even worse for an already very vulnerable population. Rising Tides Australia's climate visas are allocated based on a lottery system. This week, the Australian High Commission of Tuvalu revealed that it had received "extremely high levels of interest in the ballot with 8,750 registrations, which includes family members of primary registrants." In other words, moving every Tuvaluan is taking on increasing urgency even as demand for the program spikes. "When combined with other Pacific pathways to Australia and New Zealand, nearly 4 percent of the population could migrate each year," UNSW Sydney research fellow Jane McAdam wrote in a recent piece for The Conversation. "Within a decade, close to 40 percent of the population could have moved — although some people may return home or go backwards and forwards." Besides relocating all its residents, Tuvalu has attempted to 3D-scan its islands to preserve its cultural heritage if they're lost to the waters. Tuvalu is far from the only nation facing a crisis caused by sea levels that are rising even faster than predicted. According to the UN Human Development Program, increased coastal flooding could endanger over 70 million people worldwide. By 2050, hundreds of highly populated cities will face increased risks of flooding thanks to climate change. According to the UN, rising sea levels are already impacting one billion people worldwide. "The existential threat we face is not of our making," said Tuvalu's prime minister, Feleti Teo, during a September speech at the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "But it will remake us." More on rising sea levels: Scientists Horrified by What They Found Under the Doomsday Glacier Solve the daily Crossword
