Instead of inundation from sea level rise, 80% of assessed Florida Bay (USA) islands grew in area during 1953-2014, prototyping a global-scale trend in island resistance to rising seas.
Image Source: Zhai et al., 2019
Back in 1989, the United Nations issued a dire warning: either reverse the ongoing global warming by the year 2000, or “entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels” and “coastal regions will be inundated“.
The U.N. specifically referenced Bangladesh’s looming fate, forecasting coastal flooding will dispace 23 million Bangladeshi people.
Now, forty years later, we can assess the effect global warming has had on Bangladesh.
From 1985 to 2015, not only did the coastal regions avoid inundation from rising sea levels, Bangladesh’s coastal land area grew at a pace of 7.9 km² per year during this span!
Image Source(s): AP News (1989) and Ahmed et al., (2018)
The trend in stable or growing coastal land area amid rising seas has not just been limited to Bangladesh. Indeed, the overall expansion of coastlines for both islands and mainlands has been global in scope.
Between 1985 and 2015, for example, satellite observations indicated the world’s coasts gained 13,565 km² more land area than they had lost to the seas. This surprised scientists, as they “expected the coast would start to retreat due to sea level rise,” but instead they observed “coasts are growing all over the world.”
Image Source(s): Donchyts et al., 2016 and BBC (press release)
An analysis of 709 islands from across the globe revealed that no island larger than 10 ha (~25 acres) – which includes the “vulnerable” Maldives, Tuvalu, Fiji, etc. – has decreased in size since the 1980s. In fact, 89% of islands assessed are stable or growing.
Image Source: Duvat et al., 2019
A new paper assessing the area of 15 Florida Bay islands between 1953 and 2014 finds 12 of the 15 grew in size during this timespan, which is consistent with the global trend.
The authors are keen to point out that much of this expansion can be attributed to heavy mangrove forest growth. They apparently don’t view mangrove expansion as a positive development (an “unhelpful resiliance”) due to the tendencies for mangroves to crowd out non-mangrove habitats.
Regardless, Zhai et al. (2019) adds to the growing body of evidence indicating rising seas haven’t been the inundation disaster threat they’ve been made out to be for the last 40 years.
An analysis of 709 islands from across the globe revealed that no island larger than 10 ha (~2.5 acres) – which includes the “vulnerable” Maldives, Tuvalu, Fiji, etc. – has decreased in size since the 1980s. In fact, 89% of islands assessed are stable or growing.
Shouldn’t that be ~25 acres as opposed to “(~2.5 acres)” ?
Looks like…
https://www.metric-conversions.org/area/hectares-to-acres.htm
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Are there any theories as to why they are growing in size??
Geological processes (uplift vs. subsidence) are more of the determinative factor in relative sea level than climate or ice-melt-related factors. Antarctica and Greenland combined to contribute just 1.52 cm to sea levels since 1958, so vertical land motions didn’t have much to compete with.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0787-6
Origin of spatial variation in US East Coast sea-level trends during 1900–2017
“Here we analyse instrumental data and proxy reconstructions using probabilistic methods16,17,18 to show that vertical motions of Earth’s crust exerted the dominant control on regional spatial differences in relative sea-level trends along the US East Coast during 1900–2017. … Our results indicate that the majority of large-scale spatial variation in long-term rates of relative sea-level rise on the US East Coast is due to geological processes that will persist at similar rates for centuries.”
Global Warming warms up the islands, so they expand. If Global Warming continues, they will expand so much that they fill Florida Bay. I’m sure this will be a disaster in some way or other. We’re doomed.
The expansion of arctic ice parallels the expansion of sea islands all the way to the equator. Even emminent scientist Al Gore’s mansion, built at sea level by the ocean, is now a little bit further from his beach. This is all due to the increased atmospheric CO2, created by termite and cow farts, heating up the earth’s atmosphere and core to the point where the Earth will soon explode. We’re all DOOMED !!! … AOL agrees, so it must be true.
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[…] these trends are consistent with a pattern of shoreline growth “all over the world” for the most recent […]
[…] these trends are consistent with a pattern of shoreline growth “all over the world” for the most recent […]