CSIRO - Effects Of Sea Level Rise Only Just Beginning - Sydney Morning Herald

[hatrack]

Rising sea levels caused by the warming of the oceans are affecting the Australian coast and governments need to start working out how to adapt to the change, because it's likely to get more severe, a leading scientist has told the Greenhouse 2007 conference.

Dr John Church, from CSIRO, said other causes of sea-level rise include the melting of glaciers and the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. The ice-sheet melts, he said, needed urgent attention because their affect on sea-level rise was unknown. "Will we pass a major tipping point in the 21st century?" he asked the conference. Sea-level rise, combined with more severe weather events caused by climate change, will lead to storm surges that will greatly magnify flooding and erosion along coastal communities with devastating consequences, says the report Climate Change in Australia.

Presenting his research on sea-level rise, Dr Church, one of Australia's leading oceanographers, told the conference the story of a CSIRO secretary whose owns a house on Roches Beach near Hobart - one of the beaches he examined that shows coastal erosion at 100 times the rate of sea-level rise. Dr Church said the secretary keeps asking him when she should sell her house.

"When you see dramatic pictures of ice falling off Greenland, this is where it's biting - in your backyard," he explained. "Our research shows sea-level rise is an issue, it's occurring now, it's having an impact now and it's going to be increasingly felt in the 21st century and the longer term."

EDIT

http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/effects-of-sealevel-rise-only-just-beginning/2007/10/02/1191091115328.html

[rodeodance]

1. unless, climate change affects people in their backyard, little will be done.

[redqueen]

2. "it's likely to get more severe"

I'm actually starting to find the all too frequent understatement of these things almost amusing.

[Bobbieo]

3. Several years ago, Venice Italy was suffering from a rise in the sea level.

It must be really suffering, now.