Yet, Englander says: "The good news is that we have time to adapt. The bad news is it's going to change harbors; it's going to change every coastline from big cities like Jakarta and New York to rural fishing villages in Thailand and Africa."
A leading institution for ocean studies is NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which will increasingly be an important resource for civil engineers around the world. A recent NASA JPL seminar provides perspective: (1) sea level change (2) how fast it is rising (3) contributing factors, and (4) the influence of land hydrology and melting ice. Josh Willis an oceanographer at NASA JPL recently conducted the following seminar: Rising Tide: Tackling Sea Level Rise from Above and Below, California Institute of Technology, 2022.
The ocean's cover more than 2/3rds of the planet's surface, and they are rising. In Willis's view, "it's a bit of a startling idea that 2/3rds of the planet is rising." The rising sea level is a well-documented event since the early nineties by a series of satellites that have been launched to give a record of how sea levels change all across the planet. The satellites with launch dates: Sentinel 6 (2020) Jason 3 (2016) OSTM/Jason 2 (2008) Jason 1 (2001) and TOPEX/Poseidon (1992).
Thereby, NASA has tools to measure sea level rise as well as its causes. In precise fashion, satellite measurements of the ocean repeatedly occur every second of the hour. This produces an entire map of the ocean once every ten days, providing a global picture of the ocean, similar to tidal gauges of the world.
According to Willis: The planet has been warming pretty rapidly for the past 100 years. And on an historic basis, it's happening very quickly. What's different today is that over the last 150 years we've changed the composition of the atmosphere radically and increased CO2 by almost a factor of two, meaning we're running at double the rate of CO2 of the past one-half million years. This is a major global change that will not go away for a long time.
As such, we are changing how the climate works as most of the excessive energy or heat that's trapped by greenhouse gases goes into the ocean; it's actually 93%. Thus the oceans get warmer as well as bigger as heated water expands, which accounts for 1/3rd of modern day sea level rise. In total (1) melting inland glaciers and (2) melting ice sheets and (3) warming of the water account for sea level rise.
Significantly, the past 150 years of sea level rise is unprecedented in human history. A graph of the last 30 years of satellite recordings demonstrates the rate of rise increasing during the first 10 years at 2mm per year followed by 3mm in the middle 10 years and 4.5mm per year over the past 10 years. That rate of rise has more than doubled in only 30 years. NASA views this as one of the most comprehensive indicators of how much human influence has changed the climate.
Additionally, Grace satellite missions are another source that actually weigh the land. For example, since the early 2000s, Greenland (20+ feet of water trapped in ice) has lost 5,000,000,000 (five trillion) tons of ice. The heated oceans are responsible for melting Greenland around the edges of the island, which is the major contributor to sea level rise.
New research by the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland claims that anthropogenic-influenced climate change has set in motion irreversible Greenland ice loses amounting to 110 trillion tons, which would trigger nearly a one-foot global sea level rise this century on its own. (Source: Jason E. Box, et al, Greenland Ice Sheet Climate Disequilibrium and Committee Sea-Level Rise, Nature Climate Change, August 29, 2022).
Moreover, the National Ocean Service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) 2022 Sea Level Rise Report technical analysis provides an updated projection for U.S. coastal waters thru the year 2150. Accordingly, the next 30 years or today's generation will see sea level rise of 10-12 inches or one solid foot along U.S. coastlines. This projection is equivalent to the sea level rise of the past 100 years, 1920-2020 happening in only 30 years. This is one more example of acceleration.
Making matters much more tenuous, NOAA warns: "Failing to curb future emissions (ed.- which is about where mitigation efforts stand today) could cause an additional 1.5-5.0 feet of rise for a total of 3.5-7.0 feet by the end of this century." (Source: 2022 Sea Level Rise Technical Report, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).
Adaptation to Higher Sea Levels
According to John Englander, society needs a new vision of the planet. It needs to learn to "build higher and smarter."
For example, Korea is building the first floating community for thousands of homes. Busan Metropolitan City, Korea, the second-largest city in South Korea and home to the country's largest port is home to Oceanix Busan, a floating city prototype to house 12,000 people. The floating city will be dependent upon its own energy, water, and food without relying upon city resources. Completion date is set for 2025. The design will help regenerate marine ecosystems by promoting coral reef growth underneath the complex.
In the Netherlands, floating homes of Schoonschip in Amsterdam rise up during flood periods with utilities attached via an umbilical that absorbs movement. During flooding episodes, homes float and then settle back down to the ground able to handle 6-8 feet of sea level rise.
Finest Bay Area Development (Finnish/Estonian), Shimizu Corporation (Japanese), and Blue21 (Dutch) have plans to build Green Float Tallinn, a floating island city for 40,000 inhabitants on the Baltic Sea. The floating island will not generate waste. Resources will either be reused, recycled, or upcycled. The objective is to achieve food self-sufficiency, energy autarky, circular water systems, and carbon positivity within a closed loop system.
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