Tuesday night, Halifax city staffers Roger Wells and John Charles and Bedford Institute of Oceanography scientist Don Forbes teamed to give a presentation to city council on climate change and sea level rise, and what we should do to prepare for it.
I’d seen most of the material before, but the presentation was well-done, and I’d encourage everyone to have a look at the PowerPoint slides that were presented.
I’ve placed the entire presentation here.
The slides of the various projections are very cool– see pages 20 through 37.
The bottom line is this: over the next 100 years, we can expect a sea level rise of 57 cm, but as Nova Scotia is sinking at a rate of 1.6 mm a year (16 cm over a century), the total apparent rate of sea level rise is 73 cm. Add to that storm surges, and that’s what we need to prepare for.
There’s a very important caveat to this: the 57 cm figure is based on the “worst case” IPCC projections, but as page 11 shows, that “worst case” projection is already being exceeded, because the IPCC assumed that the Greenland and Antarctic ice shelves would remain stable—they haven’t, and the ice melt from them is increasing sea levels beyond expectations.
This article appears in Feb 4-10, 2010.
It saddens me that so many people will assume this is ever so much “hippy garbage”. This picture especially bring it home for me because I used to work at the Marriott Harbourfront. I’ve seen firsthand what storm surge can do to the downtown waterfront when most people have enough common sense to stay at home and away from it.
The worst part of this worst-case scenario is that, when faced with the daunting financial cost of doing anything about this, most governments would almost definitely first consider burying their hands in the sand on the issue and ignoring it.
Unfortunately, when 3/4 of a meter of water flows over their buried heads and turns the sand into mud, it’ll be too late to do much about it.
Unless scientists invent magic in the next 100 years.
I wonder if Wadih Fares is taking this into account with his King’s Landing development? Realistically that’s going to have to be planned for that kind of sea level rise plus the storm surge that you’d get with another Hurricane Juan.
.webstravaganza – would love to talk to you regarding your thoughts about this today – I’m a student researching the sea-level rise
Hello,
Does anybody know if the Province has any programs for assisting property owners with the installation of storm walls, and such, along the coast?