/****************************************
This program is based on the recent
paper by Jim Hansen and 12 other
scientists who state that "with a
ten year doubling, a 10 ft [3.048 m]
sea level rise could take place by
the year 2050."
------------------------------------
all sea level values are in meters
*****************************************/ int main() {
/** current highest sea level since 1750 @ East Coast U.S.A. */ double meanSLR = 0.4572;
/** current SLR per year @ East Coast (0.866141732 inches) */ double incPerYear = 0.022;
cout << pColumnNames; /** write column names at top of page */
for (int year = 0; year < 36; year++) /** 2015 -> 2050 */ { if (meanSLR < maxMeanSLR) { meanSLR += incPerYear; cout << year + 2015 << "\t" << setprecision(5) << meanSLR << "\t" << incPerYear << endl;
switch (year) { case 9: case 19: case 29: case 39: case 49: incPerYear += incPerYear; /** doubles every ~ten years */ break; default: break; } } else { cout << year + 2015 << " - maximum reached" << endl; } } return 0; }
Wildfires in California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Canada, and Siberia are draining the coffers used to pay fire fighters (Cost Of Wildfires Burns Through Budgets).
And the president says that there is such a thing as "too late" when it comes to climate change.
Sea level rise (SLR) and sea level fall (SLF) are threatening civilization as we know it (You Are Here - 5).
Take a load off if you can, and put it on Oil-Qaeda, who have masterminded all of this unforgivable carnage for decade upon decade. The Band, sings about heavy weight:
The U.S. has, for years now, been devastated by natural disasters and economic impact as a result of the damage that has been done to The Global Climate System (The Damaged Global Climate System, 2, 3).
At 26:35 on one of the videos below, Professor Mitrovica points out that this reality we live in now is going to continue, because the U.S. is a focal point of Global Warming Induced Climate Change, specifically by sea level rise (SLR)now (cf. Fig. 1).
The American East Coast today, now, is a center of the high point of SLR, and will continue to be so (ibid, cf. Will This Float Your Boat - 10).
At an ecological conference considering those economic damage factors (which these climate change events are creating now, and have been creating for decades), it was pointed out by an "insurance specialist" (in the first video below).
The world renowned insurance company, Munich RE, sent Dr. Peter Hoeppe to explain how insurance company payouts now, due to climate change, have sky-rocketed.
He points out that these now accelerating payouts involve economic calamities that have been going on for "thirty years."
He closes the video presentation by explaining that current computer software models have habitually projected worsening conditions, however, they have also habitually underestimated the degree of those worsening conditions (A Paper From Hansen et al. Is Now Open For Discussion).
The fact is that SLR is a clear and present economic danger now, yesterday, and tomorrow:
"The surge that's scheduled to hit the American coastline Wednesday isn't coming from a hurricane, but it could still leave a feeling of helplessness in its wake. Flood insurance rates are set to skyrocket when a new bill goes into effect on April 1. Known as the Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act of 2014 (HFIAA), it's going to drive the prices of flood insurance plans through the roof for residents of all U.S. coastlines. How much could they increase? In some areas where flood maps show maximum risk, premiums that were previously $500 could be raised to as much as $20,000 a year or more, according to estimates released in 2013. "My insurance is more than my mortgage," said Nancy Loft-Powers, a resident of Deerfield Beach, Florida, who told the Washington Post that her premium will be raised from the $7,500 she already pays annually. "I live by the beach in an old neighborhood. I pay [too much] insurance for a crap house that’s not great." (Flood Insurance Rates To Increase, emphasis added)
"McLaughlins’ flood insurance renewal came with a whopping rate hike of $21,000. McLaughlin said he’s convinced FEMA intentionally kept consumers and real estate and mortgage companies in the dark about the rate increases. The astronomical increase also took McLaughlin’s mortgage holder by surprise. An oversight of this magnitude tends to expose lenders to more risk because homeowners likely can’t afford to pay for the new policies." ($24,000 Insurance Policy, emphasis added).
"Congress ordered a rate increase because the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) managed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency is $24 billion in debt. It reached that historic amount because revenue from the discounted premiums could not cover payments on flood claims, particularly after two devastating hurricanes, Katrina and Sandy, on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts.
... Rising sea levels from climate change make coastal living even more dangerous, conservationists say. And the flood-insurance program that went into the red paying flood claims is deep in debt to a U.S. treasury funded by taxpayers, advocates say." (Rising Waters, Flood Debt, emphasis added)
Go ahead and tell those people who are suffering an economic impact now, that they need to worry about their great, great, grandchildren when it comes to SLR and other climate change factors.
Tell them that they are only imagining this, because it is not an economic problem now.
Experts in the field of risk management would tell you the same thing:
The sea-level rise scenarios of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) do not necessarily provide the right information for high-risk coastal decision-making and management, according to new research involving scientists from the Global Climate Forum in Berlin. A commentary, published today in the journal Nature Climate Change, warns that the IPCC scenarios are often inappropriate or incomplete for the management of high-risk coastal areas as they exclude the potential for extreme sea-level rises.This missing information is also crucial for a number of policy processes, such as discussions by G7 countries to establish climate insurance policies and allocations of adaptation funding by the Green Climate Funds. “Although the IPCC scenarios are a big step forward in understanding how the climate system works, these scenarios are not designed from the perspective of coastal risk management and, unfortunately, this is not spelled out clearly both within and beyond the IPCC reports,” says lead author Dr Jochen Hinkel from the Global Climate Forum. Dr Hinkel is also Lead Author of the coastal chapter of the Working Group 2 contribution to the latest IPCC report. The IPCC sea-level rise scenarios are developed for the purpose of understanding the physics of the earth system through so called process-based models, which are models based on the laws of physics. As a consequence, these scenarios cover only the central range of possible sea-level rise. For example, the scenarios of IPCC Fifth Assessment Report estimate that by 2100 global mean sea-level is likely to rise by 0.28–0.98m relative to 1986–2005. The probability of staying within this range is, however, estimated to be only at least 66 per cent. ... “Consider, for example, the situation of London,” explains Dr Hinkel, “which is protected against coastal floods through the Thames Estuary Barrier. There was concern that rapid sea-level rise would not allow sufficient time to upgrade or replace the Thames Estuary Barrier because such large engineering tasks require 25–30 years for planning and implementation.” For such a situation, the IPCC scenario range is not the right piece of information, because there is a 0–33 per cent probability of sea-level rise lying outside of this range. Such a high residual risk is not tolerable from the perspective of protecting major cities from sea-level rise. These situations require high-end scenarios in order to make sure that there are options available that can be realised even in the worst case to come. Co-author Professor Carlo Jaeger from the Beijing Normal University says: “Ongoing work on projecting the central range of sea-level rise should be complemented with the development of high-end scenarios for different time horizons that correspond to different real-world coastal management decisions.” “Such scenarios should also consider all the information on future sea levels including semi-empirical models, physical constraints on ice-sheet dynamics and paleo-records of sea-level change, because coastal high-risk management requires an analysis of decisions against all available knowledge, including all uncertainties and also ambiguities amongst expert opinions and their distinct approaches,” says Dr Hinkel.
(Global Climate Forum, emphasis added, cf. this PDF). Those "paleo-records of sea-level change" mentioned in the quote contain records of abrupt SLR.
This is a very serious economic problem now, not just for the millions who have homes and other buildings on the sea coast which are being damaged now, or to those whose economic safety is endangered by a $24,000 a year flood insurance policy.
Economic impact is growing at an exponential rate as billions of dollars are being spent now by federal, state, county, and municipal sea port authorities and other infrastructure regulators and risk managers.
Those officials are hiring architectural and construction companies to present plans to cope with the now, and with the future (New Climate Catastrophe Policy: Triage - 12).
The problem they feel now, and will face continually into the future, has recently been exacerbated by the addition of SLF understanding to the sea level change (SLC) phenomenon.
Trillions upon trillions of dollars, euros, yuans, marks, rubles, pesos, and other currencies have been, are now, and will continue to be, spent by port authorities to contemplate, design, remodel, reconstruct, and/or relocate sea ports.
That is, once they figure out if their particular sea port is going to suffer from the now ongoing SLF or the now ongoing SLR form of SLC (Peak Sea Level - 2).
The East Coast of America, now, has the highest SLR, and has had it for years.
Read these too (miscellaneous sea port problems foreseen by somewhat aware people):
"On a humid March day, trucks laden with goods bump through pools of seawater on roads to the sinking Dutch-era port." (Indonesia)
"More than 130 port cities around the world are at increasing risk from severe storm-surge flooding, damage from high storm winds, rising and warming global seas and local land subsidence." (130 Port Cities)
"In a survey posed to port authorities around the world, the Stanford team found that most officials are unsure how best to protect their facilities from rising sea levels ..." (Seaports need a plan)
"For example, if relative sea levels rise 4 feet, 72 percent of ports in the region will be at least partially inundated." (EPA Says, p.3)
"Port Perceptions of Sea Level Rise ... Seaport managers concerned and under informed" (Stanford Ocean Council says ...)
"Ports have a special need to look ahead, assess their risks and begin adapting to climate change. With truly massive fixed infrastructure, large port facilities worldwide are starting to pay particular attention to the new outlook that sea level rise has only just started. With a useful life of a half century or longer for their assets, it is very relevant to start planning ahead for the new reality. " (Seaport Magazine, Englander says ...)
"Using a mid-range scenario for future sea level rise, we find that, by 2030, more than half of the 52 communities we analyzed on the East and Gulf Coasts can expect to average more than two dozen tidal floods per year. Importantly, the rise in the frequency of tidal flooding represents an extremely steep increase for many of these communities. In the next 15 years alone, two-thirds of these communities could see a tripling or more in the number of high-tide floods each year. The mid-Atlantic coast is expected to see some of the greatest increases in flood frequency. Because many communities are already coping with tidal floods, a tripling in their frequency means that, by 2030, such floods could occur more than once a week." (Union of Concerned Scientists, see third video below).
The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here
Prof. Dr. Peter Hoeppe:
Regular readers and I know that the Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS) is getting curiouser and curiouser as we learn more and more about it.
In that department, the latest in the past few weeks around here has been a discussion about the sea level around Greenland going to fall a lot lower (Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 48).
Yes, you read that correctly, the sea level around Greenland, counter-intuitively, is not going to rise as its ice sheet melts (The SLC Software Model Beta).
Don't feel alone in not knowing that.
It is not even well known to port professionals, some of whom are planning to build cargo shipping ports in Iceland where there will likely not be adequate sea water to fill the sea port when all the ice sheet on Greenland finally melts (Peak Sea Level - 2).
That is, unless Antarctica can send some sea water up that far, as the sea level around Antarctica falls lower too (The Gravity of Sea Level Change).
The sea level fall (SLF) around those two ice sheets will cause sea level rise (SLR) many miles away from their coastlines (A Timeline of Endangered Sea Ports).
II. Growing Controversy
But, there is some controversy about what impact, other than SLF, will be caused to the
buttressing ice shelves around Greenland and Antarctica.
Traditionally those ice shelves slow down the ice sheet flow toward the sea (Peak Sea Level - 3).
IMO, any damage to those buttressing ice shelves will allow the ice streams, which those ice shelves have been holding back, to speed up.
Anyway, the march of the ice sheets to the sea continues (Robert Scribbler, h/t Tom).
Peak sea level has been reached along the coasts of Greenland & Antarctica, so the water exiting that area now, as the ice sheet gravity diminishes, is perhaps headed for a sea port along the East Coast of America (Greenland & Antarctica Invade The United States).
III. Dredd Blog Software Design Holds Up
Regular readers know that I designed an SLR projection program designed around the concept of ice sheet zones (The Evolution of Models - 5), and that it is being updated to deal with all SLC (The SLC Software Model Beta).
The reality of the zone concept, which that software model uses, can be seen by noting that the melt this year is mainly in the coastal zone (Fig. 1).
Both the Jakobshavn and NEGIS ice streams are melting at their terminus.
The Pacific "Blob" area of warm water does flow through the Bering Strait to the Chukchi Sea, over to the Beufort Sea, and also up "over the top" via the Arctic Ocean.
The ice streams shown in Fig. 2 are being impacted by those dynamics this year, as shown in Fig. 1 (the software is designed with a "the coastal zone melts first" bias that is holding up).
I think the other bias in that software, which is that the ice buttressing will suffer from SLF near the coasts, will hold up too.
The software model will be shown to be correct in not projecting a slow down of ice stream flow toward the sea.
Any loss of, or damage to, ice shelves connected to the ice sheet but also floating on the sea, as its level falls, will be more likely to allow the ice streams on the land to accelerate (Peak Sea Level - 3).
IV. The Lowering Sea Level May Destabilize Methane Clathrates
It seems intuitive that as the Arctic Ocean and other seas within the Arctic Circle go through SLF, more methane hydrate / clathrate release will take place.
For one thing, the pressure level at the bottom will decrease as the volume of water atop the sea floor gets shallower.
Methane hydrates / clathrates are sensitive to pressure, so the cages may crumble at some pressure point, to allow the methane to enter the water column, then float upward toward the surface.
The piercing rays of the Sun will penetrate closer to the bottom as the sea becomes shallower, and the shallower water will likely warm up more easily during the summers.
Professor Mitrovica, when he spoke in Washington, D.C., pointed out that the focus of SLC is just off the east coast of the U.S., near where he was speaking (see video below).
The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.
Professor Mitrovica, @ Harvard
In Fig. 1 the concentric curved lines represent two gravitational dynamics.
One of those dynamics is the pull of the ice sheet generated gravity of Greenland (green lines around Greenland) and the pull of ice sheet generated gravity of Antarctica (black lines around Antarctica).
The other dynamic they represent is what happens as those ice sheets melt or calve into the sea (in which case those lines then represent the moving "hinge point" (see e.g. The Gravity of Sea Level Change).
The hinge point is where there is zero sea level fall (SLF) and sea level rise (SLR), which is kinda like the short time when there is "slack water" between high and low tides.
Fig. 2 SLC by Ice Sheet gravity
The hinge point moves away from the land, and the ice sheet on it, as the mass of the ice sheet decreases when melting and calving into the sea.
However, on either side of the moving hinge line there is both SLF and SLR, depending on which side of the line we are talking about (see Fig. 2).
There are positive and negative quantities shown in Fig. 2 in gradients for SLF and SLR.
The negative values, representing SLF are on the side of the hinge line toward the ice sheet, while the positive values, representing SLR, are on the side of the hinge line away from the ice sheet.
The hinge line moves in imperceptible slow motion, much, much slower than normal tides caused by the Moon.
Remember, in the case of ice sheet related hinge lines, we are only talking about ice sheet gravitational effects on the sea level.
Fig. 3 Global mean SLR
That is, we are not talking about SLR caused by the flow of ice melt water and ice bergs into the ocean.
Which are then adjusted by axial repositioning, the Earth's rotation, and Sun and Moon generated tides.
To further elaborate on that distinction, notice Fig. 3, Fig. 4, and Fig. 5 which were generated by the new beta software.
Those three graphs depict: a) the global mean SLR, an imaginary mathematical
Fig. 4 Ice Mass Loss Per year
construct used by scientists, b) the projected future ice mass loss of the ice sheets, and c) the distances which the hinge point moves as the ice sheets lose mass.
In Fig. 5 the miles to the hinge point from the center of the ice sheet determines diminishing ice sheet gravity's impact on the sea surface.
Fig. 5 Hinge Line movement
The convergence of the hinge points as diminishing Greenland and Antarctica ice sheet gravity extends them, and the result of that SLC tug of war, will be left for the next increment of the beta version.
It can be envisioned by imagining additional concentric lines expanding out toward each other until they meet.
Before closing, let me remind you of the gentleness of the slope of the negative or the positive SLF and SLR levels.
For example, the "20-25 meter drop" (I use avg. 22.5) in sea level at Greenland where the hinge point is "2000 km" according to Professor Mitrovica, has the following slope (22.5÷2000 = 0.01125).
That is .01125 meters per kilometer (0.03690944882 feet; x 12 = .443 inches) or 0.443 inches per kilometer.
It is not like driving a boat uphill folks.
But, what this serves to show is that public works people literally have a moving target when they consider "adapting" to SLC.
And don't forget that the uncertainty they face is increased the most by the amount of acceleration that governs the amount of, and time for, ice sheet melt to take place as the globe warms (A Timeline of Endangered Sea Ports).
What happens once the ice sheets melt and calve into the sea is academic, when it happens is the projection of mystics and SLC software models (binary mystics).
Acceleration of SLC is happening now, and the variations of SLF and SLR are real.
