It’s Urgent. The Impact of Coastal Flooding from Global Warming is Accelerating

March 27, 2009 by mike.

A rise of sea level by a meter or more by 2100 would be catastrophic. That’s where we are headed. Every day we delay increases the global cost of dealing with this problem

Every day around the globe we see communities struggling in the here and now with the impact of global warming.

The folks and dogs in Fargo believe there is something wrong today.

They are correct:    in 2004, the Journal of Hydrometeorology published an analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center that found “Over the contiguous United States, precipitation, temperature, streamflow, and heavy and very heavy precipitation have increased during the twentieth century.” [And yes, this applies to snow, depending on the location, see below.]  Thanks as always to Climate Progress, the indispensable blog, for coverage.

clipped from www.theage.com.au Coastal flooding threat now ‘urgent’ SEA levels could rise by more than a metre by 2100, significantly more than previously predicted, according to Australian research presented at an international climate change conference. The new estimate appears to significantly worsen the predictions presented two years ago in a UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which projected a sea-level rise of between 18 and 59 centimetres by 2100. Co-chairman of the session, Konrad Steffen, of the University of Colorado, said the projected rise of up to one metre by 2100 was a global average. Meanwhile, leading climate change expert Michael Raupach told the conference that the stabilising influence carbon sinks have had on rising carbon emissions was weakening, and could even be reversed. This would lead to the effects of climate change accelerating about 1� times as fast as predicted. There would be regional differences, depending on where the source of ice loss occurred, he said.

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