sea level – Page 6 – Desdemona Despair

Deep water underneath the Thwaites ice shelf front is lighter than water outside the ice shelf. (A) Map of trough T3 showing the AUV path color coded by latitude. Shaded region indicates the ice shelf front, and black contours are depth contours. (B) Conservative temperature θ (in degrees Celsius) versus absolute salinity SA (in grams per kilogram) for the AUV data points shown in (A), colors as in (A). Contours show potential density (9) relative to 900 m, and blue arrow indicates isopycnal mixing, i.e., water that has the same density but different temperatures and salinities. Green circles in (A) and (B) show the dense saline deep water found in trough T3 discussed in the main text. (C) Absolute salinity SA (in grams per kilogram) as a function of depth for the AUV data in trough T3 and the CTD data (colors indicate station as in Fig. 3). (D) Potential density (in kilograms per cubic meter) as a function of depth for the AUV data in trough T3 and the CTD data (colors indicate station as in Figs. 3 and 4). Red and blue arrows indicate the two deep water masses discussed in the main text from Pine Island Bay and Thwaites Trough. Dissolved oxygen versus θ and SA is shown in fig. S6. Graphic: Wåhlin, et al., 2021 / Science Advances

April 11, 2021

Exploration of ocean currents beneath the “Doomsday Glacier” by an autonomous underwater vehicle – Net melting of 75 cubic km of ice per year means “the glacier is not stable over time”

9 April 2021 (University of Gothenburg) – For the first time, researchers have been able to obtain data from underneath Thwaites Glacier, also known as the “Doomsday Glacier”. They find that the supply of warm water to the glacier is larger than previously thought, triggering concerns of faster melting and accelerating ice flow. With the […]

Deer photographed by a remote camera on 11 August 2020 in a forest destroyed by climate change in North Carolina. Sea level rise and saltwater intrusion are killing trees en masse, causing ghost forests. Photo: Emily Ury

April 11, 2021

Sea level rise is killing trees along the Atlantic coast, creating “ghost forests” that are visible from space

By Emily Ury 6 April 2021 (The Conversation) – Trekking out to my research sites near North Carolina’s Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, I slog through knee-deep water on a section of trail that is completely submerged. Permanent flooding has become commonplace on this low-lying peninsula, nestled behind North Carolina’s Outer Banks. The trees growing in […]

Millennium-scale evolution of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), 400 - 2020. SST-based AMOC reconstructions (light and dark blue) compared to various proxy reconstructions, including land and sea surface temperature reconstructions, sortable silt data, δ18O in benthic foraminifera, δ15N of deep-sea gorgonian corals, and relative abundance of Turborotalita quinqueloba. Since at least 400 AD relatively stable, the AMOC began to decline during the 19th Century which is evident in all proxy records. Around 1950 a phase of particularly rapid decline started that is found in several, largely independent proxies. A short-lived recovery is evident in the 1990s before a return to decline from the mid-2000s. Together these data consistently show that the modern AMOC slowdown is unprecedented in over a thousand years. Graphic: Levke Caesar

March 21, 2021

Gulf Stream System at its weakest in more than a millennium – “This could bring us dangerously close to the tipping point at which the flow becomes unstable”

25 February 2021 (PIK) – Never before in over 1000 years the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), also known as Gulf Stream System, has been as weak as in the last decades. This is the result of a new study by scientists from Ireland, Britain, and Germany. The researchers compiled so-called proxy data – taken […]

The Arkup luxury floating villa docked at Star Island in Miami Beach, Florida, on 5 February 2021. It costs $5.5 million and adjusts to the rising sea levels that are threatening Florida. The house, covered with a roof of solar panels, remains stable thanks to four hydraulic pillars that fix it to an underwater bed. Photo: Chandan Khanna / AFP

February 28, 2021

Miami mayor announces plan to spend billions tackling sea-level rise

27 February 2021 (AFP) – The U.S. city of Miami is to invest billions of dollars to tackle its vulnerability to rising sea levels, a reality that already affects the daily lives of residents used to constant flooding. Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine-Cava said Friday she will protect communities hardest hit by rising sea levels, […]

Observed sea-level rise in Rockport, Texas, 1969-2020 and projected to 2050. Rockport has the second-highest annual rise rate (7.1 mm/year in 2020), and the highest projected sea-level rise for 2050 at 0.82 meters (2.69 ft) above mean sea level in 1992. Graphic: VIMS

February 28, 2021

U.S. sea-level report cards: 2020 again trends toward acceleration – Water levels at 26 of 32 stations rose at higher rate than in 2019

By David Malmquist 24 January 2021 (VIMS) – Sea level “report cards” issued annually by researchers at William & Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science add further evidence of an accelerating rate of sea-level rise during 2020 at nearly all tidal stations along the U.S. coastline. The team’s web-based report cards project sea level to […]

Global map of temperature anomalies relative to the 1981-2010 long-term average from the ERA5 reanalysis for January to October 2020. Graphic: Copernicus Climate Change Service / ECMWF

December 2, 2020

WMO: 2020 on track to be one of three warmest years on record – More than 80 percent of the global ocean experienced a marine heatwave in 2020

GENEVA, 2 December 2020 (WMO) – Climate change continued its relentless march in 2020, which is on track to be one of the three warmest years on record. 2011-2020 will be the warmest decade on record, with the warmest six years all being since 2015, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Ocean heat is at […]

National Risk Index (NRI) map of the United States. Graphic: FEMA

November 30, 2020

New FEMA index shows riskiest spot for rising seas is 50 miles from the ocean

By Thomas Frank 25 November 2020 (E&E News) – The county most at risk for coastal flooding is not in Florida, North Carolina or New Jersey, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It’s not even on a coast. It’s Cowlitz County, Washington, population 102,000, about 50 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean on the […]

Annual T mean (°C) for the UK and countries, 1884–2019, expressed as anomalies relative to the 1981–2010 average. The hatched black line is the 1981–2010 long‐term average. The lower hatched green line is the 1961–1990 long‐term average. Light grey grid‐lines represent anomalies of ±1°C. The table provides average values (°C). Graphic: Kendon, et al., 2020 / International Journal of Climatology

August 1, 2020

UK temperature records smashed in 2019 – “Our report shows climate change is exerting an increasing impact on the UK’s climate”

By Harrison Jones 31 July 2020 (Metro) – Temperature records were smashed in 2019 as the climate crisis had ‘an increasing impact’ on the UK, the Met Office has warned. The latest annual State of the UK Climate review shows the country continuing to warm, with 2019’s average temperature 1.1°C above long-term 1961-1990 levels. The […]

Coastal erosion encroaches on a house in Happisburgh, Norfolk, UK. Photo: Philip Bird, LRPS CPAGB / Shutterstock

March 21, 2020

15 towns being slowly swallowed by the sea – Coastal communities fighting a losing battle with the ocean

4 March 2020 (Love Property) – Positioned on the frontline of climate change, the world’s most vulnerable shoreline communities face an uncertain future. Plagued by ever-worsening coastal erosion and rising sea levels, their existence hangs precariously in the balance. As the tide continues to draw in, take a look at 15 towns being gradually reclaimed […]

Observational and modeled climatology (contours) and trends (shading) of the zonal component of the near ocean surface wind. (a) Ensemble trends of the zonal near ocean surface wind based on the NCEP/NCAR, NCEP/DOE and NERA‐Interim reanalysis data sets covering 1979–2018. Stippling indicates regions where the trends pass the 95 percent confidence level (Student's t test). (b) Zonal near ocean surface wind change in the doubled CO2 simulations relative to the pre‐industrial control simulation carried out by AWI‐CM. Stippling indicates areas where the magnitude of the trend is larger than the standard deviation of the local variability. The subpanel at the right side of each graph shows the zonally averaged climatology (blue) and trend (red) of zonal near ocean surface wind. Graphic: Yang, et al., 2020 / Geophysical Research Letters

March 6, 2020

Major wind-driven ocean currents are shifting toward the poles – “Over the past 40 years, all eight wind-driven surface current systems had shifted poleward”

24 February 2020 (AWI) – In the course of the past 40 years, the major wind-driven current systems in the ocean have steadily shifted toward the poles. Experts at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), came to this conclusion after analysing long-term global satellite data on the ocean surface […]