Oceans Rising: Exploring the Effects of Sea Level Rise on Coastal Communities and Ecosystems

In the natural world, rising sea level creates stress on coastal ecosystems that provide recreation, protection from storms, and habitat for fish and wildlife, including commercially valuable fisheries. As seas rise, saltwater is also contaminating freshwater aquifers, many of which sustain municipal and agricultural water supplies and natural ecosystems.

Already, flooding in low-lying coastal areas is forcing people to migrate to higher ground, and millions more are vulnerable from flood risk and other climate change effects. The prospect of higher coastal water levels threatens basic services such as Internet access, since much of the underlying communications infrastructure lies in the path of rising seas.

Oceans Rising

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Of course, communities vulnerable to rising seas can only go so far in holding back the tide. In the Marshall Islands, where rising sea levels are forcing a choice between relocating or building up the land, residents will need help from other nations if they decide to undertake the expensive latter option.

Most predictions say the warming of the planet will continue and is likely to accelerate, causing the oceans to keep rising. This means hundreds of coastal cities face flooding. But forecasting how much and how soon seas will rise remains an area of ongoing research.

The rising seas pose both a direct risk of flooding unprotected areas and indirect threats of higher storm surges, king tides, and tsunamis. They are also associated with the detrimental second-order effects such as the loss of coastal ecosystems like mangroves, losses in crop production due to freshwater salinization of groundwater and irrigation water or the disruption of sea trade due to damaged ports.[6][7][8] Globally, just the projected sea level rise by 2050 will expose places currently inhabited by tens of millions of people to annual flooding and this can increase to hundreds of millions in the latter decades of the century if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced drastically.[9] While modest increases in sea level are likely to be offset when cities adapt by constructing sea walls or through relocating people,[10] many coastal areas have large population growth, which results in more people at risk from sea level rise. Later in the century, millions of people will be affected in cities such as Miami, Rio de Janeiro, Osaka and Shanghai under the warming of 3 C (5.4 F), which is close to the current trajectory.[8][11]

Societies can adapt to sea level rise in three different ways: implement managed retreat, accommodate coastal change, or protect against sea level rise through hard-construction practices like seawalls or soft approaches such as dune rehabilitation and beach nourishment. Sometimes these adaptation strategies go hand in hand, but at other times choices have to be made among different strategies.[19] For instance, a managed retreat strategy is difficult if the population in the area is quickly increasing: this is a particularly acute problem for Africa, where the population of low-lying coastal areas is projected to increase by around 100 million people within the next 40 years.[20] Poorer nations may also struggle to implement the same approaches to adapt to sea level rise as richer states, and sea level rise at some locations may be compounded by other environmental issues, such as subsidence in so-called sinking cities.[21] Coastal ecosystems typically adapt to rising sea levels by moving inland; however, they might not always be able to do so, due to natural or artificial barriers.[22]

Sea level rise is not uniform around the globe. Some land masses are moving up or down as a consequence of subsidence (land sinking or settling) or post-glacial rebound (land rising due to the loss of the weight of ice after melting), so that local relative sea level rise may be higher or lower than the global average. Furthermore, gravitational effects of changing ice masses and spatially varying patterns of warming lead to differences in the distribution of sea water around the globe.[24][25]

There are broadly two ways of modelling sea level rise and making future projections. In one approach, scientists use process-based modelling, where all relevant and well-understood physical processes are included in a global physical model. An ice-sheet model is used to calculate the contributions of ice sheets and a general circulation model is used to compute the rising sea temperature and its expansion. A disadvantage of this method is that not all relevant processes might be understood to a sufficient level, but it can predict non-linearities and long delays in the response which studies of the recent past will miss.

The oceans store more than 90% of the extra heat added to Earth's climate system by climate change and act as a buffer against its effects. The amount of heat needed to increase average temperature of the entire world ocean by 0.01 C (0.018 F) would increase atmospheric temperature by approximately 10 C (18 F):[58] a small change in the mean temperature of the ocean represents a very large change in the total heat content of the climate system.

Sea level changes can be driven either by variations in the amount of water in the oceans, the volume of the ocean or by changes of the land compared to the sea surface. Over a consistent time period, conducting assessments can source contributions to sea level rise and provide early indications of change in trajectory. This type of surveillance can inform plans of prevention.[116] The different techniques used to measure changes in sea level do not measure exactly the same level. Tide gauges can only measure relative sea level, whilst satellites can also measure absolute sea level changes.[26] To get precise measurements for sea level, researchers studying the ice and the oceans on our planet factor in ongoing deformations of the solid Earth, in particular due to landmasses still rising from past ice masses retreating, and also the Earth's gravity and rotation.[4]

Some regional differences are also visible in the tide gauge data. Some of the recorded regional differences are due to differences in the actual sea level, while other are due to vertical land movements. In Europe for instance, considerable variation is found because some land areas are rising while others are sinking. Since 1970, most tidal stations have measured higher seas, but sea levels along the northern Baltic Sea have dropped due to post-glacial rebound.[130]

While some ecosystems can move land inward with the high-water mark, many are prevented from migrating due to natural or artificial barriers. This coastal narrowing, sometimes called 'coastal squeeze' when considering human-made barriers, could result in the loss of habitats such as mudflats and tidal marshes.[22][149] Mangrove ecosystems on the mudflats of tropical coasts nurture high biodiversity, yet they are particularly vulnerable due to mangrove plants' relliance on breathing roots or pneumatophores, which might grow to be half a metre tall.[150][151] While mangroves can adjust to rising sea levels by migrating inland and building vertically using accumulated sediment and organic matter, they will be submerged if the rate is too rapid, resulting in the loss of an ecosystem.[152][153][151] Both mangroves and tidal marshes protect against storm surges, waves and tsunamis, so their loss makes the effects of sea level rise worse.[154][155] Human activities, such as dam building, may restrict sediment supplies to wetlands, and thereby prevent natural adaptation processes. The loss of some tidal marshes is unavoidable as a consequence.[156]

Likewise, corals, important for bird and fish life, need to grow vertically to remain close to the sea surface in order to get enough energy from sunlight. The corals have so far been able to keep up the vertical growth with the rising seas, but might not be able to do so in the future.[157]

Adaptation to sea level rise is costly for small island nations as a large portion of their population lives in areas that are at risk.[199] Nations like Maldives, Kiribati and Tuvalu are already forced to consider controlled international migration of their population in response to rising seas, [200] since the alternative of uncontrolled migration threatens to exacerbate the humanitarian crisis of climate refugees.[201] In 2014, Kiribati had purchased 20 square kilometers of land (an area 6 times greater than the current area of Kiribati) on the Fijian island of Vanua Levu to relocate its population there once their own islands are lost to the sea.[202]

Since the last glacial maximum about 20,000 years ago, the sea level has risen by more than 125 metres (410 ft), with rates varying from less than a mm/year during the pre-industrial era to 40+ mm/year when major ice sheets over Canada and Eurasia melted. Rapid disintegration of these ice sheets led to so called 'meltwater pulses', periods during which sea level rose rapidly. The rate of rise started to slow down about 8,200 years before present; the sea level was then almost constant in the last 2,500 years, before the recent rising trend that started at the end of the 19th century or in the beginning of the 20th.[209]

Long-term measurements of tide gauges and recent satellite data show that global sea level is rising, with the best estimate of the rate of global-average rise over the last decade being 3.6 mm per year (0.14 inches per year). The rate of sea level rise has increased since measurements using altimetry from space were started in 1992; the dominant factor in global-average sea level rise since 1970 is human-caused warming. The overall observed rise since 1902 is about 16 cm (6 inches) [Figure 6].

The effects of rising sea level are felt most acutely in the increased frequency and intensity of occasional storm surges. If CO2 and other greenhouse gases continue to increase on their current trajectories, it is projected that sea level may rise, at minimum, by a further 0.4 to 0.8 m (1.3 to 2.6 feet) by 2100, although future ice sheet melt could make these values considerably higher. Moreover, rising sea levels will not stop in 2100; sea levels will be much higher in the following centuries as the sea continues to take up heat and glaciers continue to retreat. It remains difficult to predict the details of how the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets will respond to continued warming, but it is thought that Greenland and perhaps West Antarctica will continue to lose mass, whereas the colder parts of Antarctica could gain mass as they receive more snowfall from warmer air that contains more moisture. Sea level in the last interglacial (warm) period around 125,000 years ago peaked at probably 5 to 10 m above the present level. During this period, the polar regions were warmer than they are today. This suggests that, over millennia, long periods of increased warmth will lead to very significant loss of parts of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets and to consequent sea level rise. 2ff7e9595c