sea level rise

groundwater depletion

Depletion of groundwater reserves has more than doubled in recent decades as a result of population growth and the increased demand on groundwater reservoirs for drinking water and the irrigation of croplands.[read more]

silver bullet for climate change?

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion offers a reprieve, converting the surface heat that powers tropical storms to mechanical energy and moves many times more surface heat to colder, deeper, water.[read more]

sea-level rise

One of the most important and threatening risks of climate change is sea-level rise. The mechanisms are well understood, and the direction of changes in sea-level is highly certain.[read more]

Hurricane Sandy and a series of noreasters have combined with an apparently unprecedented one year jump in sea level to cause a wave of destruction on the U.S. east coast. The one year change of the average sea level of the North Atlantic ocean from fall 2011 to fall 2012 is about 32mm which absolutely dwarfs the computed trend of 1.7 mm...[read more]

Some North Carolina GOP legislators want to stop the use of science to plan for the future. They are circulating a bill that would force coastal counties to ignore actual observations and the best science-based projections in planning for future sea level rise.King Canute thought he had the power to hold back the tide (in the...[read more]

Tarawa, Kiribati - This is my fifth time visiting Kiribati for research. I'm here working on a coral monitoring project together with my colleagues at the local government. For more, check out my Scifund site, which is dedicated to raising funds for the in-country side of the coral research. People at home often ask whether I have seen...[read more]

  Could Calvin Be Underwater?The rate of sea level rise along the U.S. Atlantic coast is greater now than at any time in the past 2,000 years, according to a new study published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The study suggests a consistent link between changes in global mean...[read more]

The New York Times has a splashy front-page story on some of the latest research on sea level rise today.  The graphics above make clear the paper gets a big part of the story right — the latest science says we are facing 3 to 6 feet of sea level rise this century. Kudos to the NYT for featuring such an important story.  Given...[read more]

As CO2 levels in the atmosphere continue to rise (and given the current state of global action they could quite possibly go on rising for much of this century) we hear a great deal about storms and droughts but not a huge amount about the really difficult issue that most countries face, rising sea levels.[read more]

Stefan Rahmstorf has an exceelent post on RealClimate about the curiously low sea level rise projection in the latest IPCC report, Sealevelgate: Imagine this. In its latest report, the IPCC has predicted up to 3 meters of sea level rise by the end of this century. But “climate sceptics” websites were quick to reveal a few problems (...[read more]

Just when you thought the news in Copenhagen couldn't get worse, a brand new paper released in Nature suggests that the polar ice sheets are more vulnerable to global warming than previously feared.  2 degrees Celsius of global warming could commit us to 6-9 meters (20-30 feet) of long-term sea level rise. The study is based on an...[read more]

It has been a while since this blog ranted about destabilizing feedback. So, let’s step off-screen, shall we, and pull in James Lovelock, father of the Gaia Theory. In an interview with the New Scientist, Lovelock explained that his latest book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia, examines five dreaded positive feedback loops. Those processes...[read more]

Subtitle: CAUTION: Floridians, Please Don Your Depends Before Viewing Remy Chevalier relays announcement of a one hour HDTV Special, entitled “The Rising Sea“. CHANGE IS EVERYWHERE The stakes are rising in the debate over climate change, fueled by rapidly retreating glaciers around the world, a record freeze in Europe, punishing...[read more]

The AP just released the following story:Global warming — through a combination of melting glaciers, disappearing ice sheets and warmer waters expanding — is expected to cause oceans to rise by one meter, or about 39 inches. It will happen regardless of any future actions to curb greenhouse gases, several leading scientists say. And it...[read more]