I’ve been on vacation this week, but I wanted to offer some
brief notes on issues that have grabbed my attention.
First, a new report on sea-level rise along the West Coast is a
must-read for anyone interested in climate change. The report,
written by a committee of the National Research Council, is well
organized to serve all levels of interest. Download the report on
the National Academies
website.
An initial summary at the beginning of the report provides an
intriguing overview of the many factors that went into predicting
future sea-level changes. Each chapter summary delves a level
deeper. If you read the full report, you’ll gain an understanding
of the uncertainty of every assumption that goes into calculating a
range of possible scenarios.
According to the report, most of California is expected to
experience a sea-level rise of a meter over the next century —
greater than the worldwide average.
On the other hand, the change for Washington, Oregon and
Northern California is likely to be about 60 centimeters over that
same period. That is because tectonic forces are pushing up land
masses north of Cape Mendocino in California — possibly faster than
the sea is rising.
Over time, ocean levels in the Northwest will rise increasingly
faster than uplift of the land, the report predicts. Eventually, a
subduction earthquake could drop the land masses by a meter or
more, suddenly raising the sea level dramatically in coastal
areas.
Robert Dalrymple, who chaired the study committee, said in a
news release:
“As the average sea level rises, the number and duration of
extreme storm surges and high waves are expected to escalate, and
this increases the risk of flooding, coastal erosion, and wetland
loss.”
The report discusses effects on nearshore areas along the coast
and in various estuaries. Some land areas in Puget Sound are rising
while others are falling, which adds to localized variations beyond
those caused by the shape and depth of the bays and tidal
marshes.
Because of the holidays, I did not get an immediate response
from several climate experts I contacted following
Nels Sultan’s comments about sea level rise in a blog post
regarding
“king tides.”
Earth at the winter
solstice, Dec. 22, 2011 / NOAA
photo
If you recall, Nels was making the point that the sea level in
Seattle has been rising at a steady rate of .68 feet, or about 8
inches, per century since 1898, as reported by the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
His post included this statement:
“There is no real basis for the claims that sea levels will rise
by 2.6 feet or 7 feet, or more. Globally, sea level rise has NOT
accelerated. As found and reported by many researchers who
specialize in this, including the eminent professor Bob Dean and
other coastal experts.”
As a reporter, I’m not inclined to shoot back a response. I’d
rather discuss the issue with experts in the field. That is what I
did, and I think I have a better handle on the issue.
What I’m hearing is that the original estimates by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — a rise of between 7
inches and 2 feet by the end of the century — remain reasonable,
but conservative given that they did not account for increased
melting of the Greenland ice sheet. See this
explanation by Stefan Rahmstorf soon after the release of the
2007 IPCC report. By the way, the range above accounts for the
minimum and maximum across six climate-change scenarios.
Ever since, researchers have been trying to find ways to account
for the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, but the uncertainties
remain high. A widely cited paper by
W.T. Pfeffer, J.T. Harper and S. O’Neel suggests that “most
likely” starting point for further refinement is .8 meter, or 31
inches, of sea level rise by 2100.
In some ways, the authors of the Pfeffer paper were trying to
limit some of the extremes being reported by others, so they
concluded that sea level rise could not be more than 6 feet by
2100. Some folks have reported 6 feet as the top of the range, as
unlikely as that extreme may be. Check out this explanation posed
by
Real Climate and this
response by Pfeffer and his collaborators.
As for the Houston-Dean paper that Nels Sultan mentioned, those
authors created “various problems” in their assumptions, according
to Eric Steig, professor of Earth and Space Sciences at the
University of Washington. One major problem was the starting date
of 1930, as explained by
Stefan Rahmstorf in Real Climate:
“Other start dates either before or after this minimum show
positive acceleration. Picking 1930 for this analysis is thus a
classic cherry-pick, and according to the authors that is no
accident. They write in the paper: ‘Since the worldwide data of
Church and White (2006)…appear to have a linear rise since around
1930, we analyzed the period 1930 to 2010.’ The interval was thus
hand-picked to show a linear rise rather than acceleration.
“Houston & Dean use their result to question the future
acceleration of sea level rise predicted by Vermeer & Rahmstorf
(2009) for the 21st Century as a consequence of global warming.
They argue that the 1930s acceleration minimum calls into question
the semi-empirical link between global temperature and global sea
level proposed by us in that paper. However, it is clear they never
bothered to check this, because quite the opposite is the case: our
semi-empirical formula predicts this acceleration minimum,
as the graph above shows. As it turns out, this is an expected
outcome of the mid-20th-Century plateau in global temperature.”
I also discussed this issue of sea level rise with Lara Whitely
Binder, outreach specialist for the UW’s Climate Impacts Group.
While sea level rise means one thing on the world scale, she told
me, the local impacts can be quite different.
If you live in Neah Bay on the Olympic Peninsula, for example,
you are not likely to see any sea level rise until at least 2080.
That’s because the entire land mass is uplifting as a result of
movement along the tectonic plates, and the uplift is predicted to
be faster than sea level rise until late in the century.
On the other hand, Central and South Puget Sound may not be
uplifting at all and could be sinking, which would intensify the
effects of sea level rise. Areas built on fill, including portions
of Olympia, also could be sinking as the fill settles, Lara
said.
In addition to global rise in sea level and local tectonic
shifts, factors affecting regional sea level rise include thermal
expansion of ocean waters and changes in onshore and offshore wind
patterns.
During El Niño events, sea level can rise as much as 12 inches
for several months at a time. The Climate Impacts Group analyzed
more than 30 scenarios from global climate models and concluded
that the change in wind patterns as a result of climate change
could decrease sea level by as much as 1 inch or possibly increase
it by as much as 6 inches. Review the white paper
“Sea Level Rise in the Coastal Waters of Washington State” (PDF 2.4
mb) for more details.
How much an individual property is affected by sea level rise
depends on the slope of the beach. Given the same rate of rise,
water will affect a house sooner when it is built on a gradually
sloping beach as opposed to a steep slope. In any case, tides and
weather will always play a major role in water levels.
Lara told me that a group of West Coast researchers is working
on a new report about sea level for publication later this year by
the National Academy of Sciences. I’ll try to review that paper
when it comes out.
I wish to thank Eric Steig, Lara Whitely Binder, Cliff Mass,
David Montgomery and Nate Mantua for responding to my inquiry.
