Monday 22 August 2011

For all those contrarians out there: a word on rising sea levels in Australian waters




From the Australian Climate Commission’s May 2011 report THE CRITICAL DECADE Climate science, risks and responses:

Global average values of sea-level rise mask large regional differences.
For example, around Australia (Figure 8) recent sea level rise (from the early 1990s to 2008) has been below the global average along the east coast, near the global average along the much of the southern coast, but at least double the global average along much of the northern coastline.
Such regional differences are important in assessing the risks posed by sea-level rise at particular locations…….

The observed sea-level rise of about 20 cm from 1880 to 2000 should already have led to an increase in the incidence of extreme sea-level events. Such increases have indeed been observed at places with very long records, such as Fremantle and Fort Denison, where a 3-fold increase in inundation events has occurred (Church et al. 2006).  

Download report here.

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