A Surge In Sea Level Rise Threatens Southern States
I read a comment recently from a CleanTechnica reader who said that sea level rise happens uniformly all around the globe. That seems perfectly logical. If you have a bath tub full of water, the surface level is the same at both ends. Pour in a bucket of water and the surface quickly adjust to the increased volume. Once again, the level is the same at both ends of the tub.
However, when talking about oceans, we are talking about distances of tens of thousands of miles and trillions upon trillions of cubic feet of water. In fact, according to NOAA, there are over 321 million cubic miles of water in all the oceans of the world. That is a lot of water and it does not all slosh simultaneously from one side of the Earth to the other twice a day as the tides rise and fall. As a result, there are distinct differences in the height of the ocean, depending on where you happen to be standing when you take your measurements.
A recent article by the Washington Post highlights a disturbing trend. Sea levels in the Gulf of Mexico have risen by six inches or more in the past 10 years — a far faster rate of rise than anyone in the scientific community expected. Most oceanographers expected that amount of change would not happen until the end of this century and even then, only if the Earth was on a trajectory to surpass 2º C above pre-industrial levels. ‘The amount of observed sea level rise in the Gulf is unprecedented and has sent scientists scrambling to determine the cause. The big question on everyone’s mind is whether the observed changes are temporary or a harbinger of much faster rise in ocean levels in the Gulf of Mexico.
