Talk:Sea level rise

Miami - most vulnerable city in the world?

In an edit summary DocRuby (talk · contribs) said the basis of this revert was that "The cited RS article compares Miami's risk to only [sic] US cities, not any outside the US" That appears to be untrue.

My prior text, which Doc reverted, stated

"In terms of property damage, Miami has been listed as the world's city most vulnerable to sea level rise."

This is based on RS text, which I have since quoted in the ref itself. See this edit, in which the quote I added states

"The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development lists Miami as the number-one most vulnerable city worldwide in terms of property damage, with more than $416 billion in assets at risk to storm-related flooding and sea-level rise."

I have no problem adding RS-based text to talk about other US cities, or other worldwide cities, or ways of measuring risk other than property damage. Nonetheless the RS says exactly what I wrote, and Doc's stated reason for reverting appears to be an error.

Doc, please self revert to restore my text, and if you like to supplement with other RS based text, that would be great. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 21:13, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

I agree, NAEG, and have made a change to bring the text there into line with the cited source. --Nigelj (talk) 12:30, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

ThanksNewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 00:16, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

I just got the message about this discussion. I missed that statement in the RS article, and your revision is closer to accurate than mine was. However, the RS article itself is poorly worded. The OECD said it's the world's city with the largest property value vulnerable to flooding and sealevel rise. That's not quite the same as the most vulnerable city; it's the most vulnerable property value. Or, still somewhat ambiguously but still more accurate to the OECD's statement, it's the city most vulnerable in terms of property value. Alternately, the OECD said it's the city most exposed to flooding and sealevel rise in terms of property damage. The point is that "vulnerable" is a measure of the probability of the event, not the size of the loss, or the combination of the two that is exposure. DocRuby (talk) 01:24, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Related point - The section is titled "Cities" but mentions only Miami. Can someone add a link to information (in or out of Wikipedia) about the vulnerability of other major cities to flooding with sea level rise? E.g, what percent of city X would be flooded if sea levels rose by 50 cm? By 100 cm? That sort of thing. Thanks Wanderer57 (talk) 16:29, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

There are 100 major East Coast coastal cities with populations of 100,000 or greater whose infrastructure can't be saved from the leaked IPCC projections for sea level rise by 2100 with sea walls, levees, jetties, barrier islands, or other mediation. Rising sea levels pollute aquifers with salt, undermine the soil bearing capacity of coastal highrises, take out buried utilities such as water, sewer, gas, electric, and communications; destroy roads, and buildings, wharves, marinas, power plants (some nuclear), sewage treatment plants, and overcome the barriers for hazardous materials, landfills, bridges, tunnels, airports, seaports, and the inter coastal waterway. The same applies to the Gulf Coast only worse. 12.187.95.244 (talk) 14:12, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. It would seem from this that rising sea levels can make some coastal areas "practically uninhabitable" even though the sea water level has not reached a point where the land is flooded. Is this a fair statement? Wanderer57 (talk) 03:16, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

I believe there was a recent mention in Nature as Miami being one of seven (?) cities in the world most vulnerable to sea-level rise. But a good point has been raised here, which should be considered further: is vulnerability to be measured by the cost of possible damage (losses) without taking any measures of mitigation (that is, how much value is at risk)? Or by the cost of mitigation? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:37, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi JJ. Long time. Those are good questions for those who produce what we eventually see as RSs. If we have RSs to cover both ways of looking at the question, that's what we should do. If we so far have RSs for only one way of looking at it then for now, that's what we should do. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 00:02, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

The cost of relocating a major city has been established by costs of repairing the damage from Katrina and Sandy. Allowing we begin now while some things can still be salvaged and simply relocated rather than demolished and then in many cases dragged off and entombed as hazardous wastes, and only then rebuilt, and the relocation is accomplished by 2100 we would be spending between 2 and 10 billion dollars a year per city for 100 cities for 87 years. One way to look at that is urban renewal and an economic stimulus that would provide construction jobs for many decades, indeed the better part of a century. Since many cities like New York have aging infrastructure which is about to fail anyway, a Master plan for relocation should be a part of every cities planning. Its likely the design planning by architects, engineers, urban planners, and politicians would take 25 years and the actual relocation construction another 50 - 60 years by which time its earlier portions would already be aging again. Lets say somewhere in the range of 100 trillion in round numbers with a likely inflation of costs in the range of a factor of ten over the next century. Most likely that would be too little too late as there are complications including what other countries do for their mediation.12.187.94.209 (talk) 09:05, 12 September 2013 (UTC)

Unfamiliar - dare I say "weird"? - structure to the archives

Can anyone explain the archive structure? (Q1) I like having them subdivided by year, but why are some integers skipped, for example as I a type this comment, the index to archives includes this

"2012 / 1, 2, 4, 6, 7"

What happened to #3 and #5?

(Q2) When you open an archive, there is no "next" or "back" link to move forward and back in the archives. That is a useful feature. Could we easily turn it on? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 14:47, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Graphs needed

Could we post some graphs which show the 3 mm/year sea level rise? I'd like readers to be able to see at a glance the difference between the "current" sea level rise and the decades or centuries before it.

The graphs would also help to clarify what current means. Are we talking about the last 3 years, last decade, last couple of decades, or what?

I'm a math teacher, so I'd like to show this article to my class - but not yet: it would just confuse them at this point. --Uncle Ed (talk) 16:57, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks for the question. I'm currently working on an edit to clarify what time periods these rates apply to. In the mean time, you can find up-to-date data and graphs here: CU Sea Level Research Group, University of Colorado. You might also want to look at the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group I report (Summary for Policymakers, pp.8-9; Chapter 3, p.5). Enescot (talk) 07:00, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll take a look. --Uncle Ed (talk) 15:29, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Should a section be added for Glacial Isostatic Adjustment?

Several of the groups reporting Sea Level add in a Glacial Isostatic Adjustment which accounts for about 10% of the reported sea level rise, but is not actually based on rising water levels. http://sealevel.colorado.edu/content/what-glacial-isostatic-adjustment-gia-and-why-do-you-correct-it

Should a section be added to Wikipedia to explain this? Keelec (talk) 00:18, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

GIA should be added if not already in Wiki. However, GIA with respect to local sea level rise is a subset of the overall GIA topic. Atkinsonlp (talk) 01:21, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

There are good summaries of vulnerability of coastal cities by OECD and Core Logic. I'll get them in soon. Atkinsonlp (talk) 01:21, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Request IPCC 2013 Update

The lead section paragraph #5 needs an update in light of the release of the IPCC 2013 Fifth Assessment Report, Working Group 1 specifically Ch 13: Sea Level Change Grantbow (talk) 20:56, 17 March 2014 (UTC) Second that. Both the temperature and sea level graphs are now influencing State and Federal Flood Plane Insurance Maps, Category V coastal, which project 2 degrees C and two feet of sea level rise long before 2100 and are basing insurance rates of $2.10 per $100 on this report. 142.0.102.209 (talk) 20:52, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

http://www.dailykos.com/blog/rktect/142.0.102.47 (talk) 21:34, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Poorly Worded Text

"water molecules expand as ocean water warms" Water molecules probably do not expand as ocean water warms. The distance between water molecules probably increases as water warms. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2620:0:1000:3002:BE30:5BFF:FEDB:4C84 (talk) 00:05, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Seawater has a coeficient of expansion which varies with its temperature and pressure. Metaphysical Engineering (talk) 13:37, 25 May 2014 (UTC)