Storm Surges, Rising Seas Could Doom Pacific Islands This Century

Michael Natsch
4/12/13
Earth Science Core
C-Even Davies

Pyper, Julia. "Storm Surges, Rising Seas Could Doom Pacific Islands This Century."
Scientific American. N.p., 12 Apr. 2013. Web. 12 Apr. 2013.
<http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=storm-surges-rising-seas-could-doom-pacific-islands-this-century>

      The mythical underwater city of Atlantis may become not so mythical in the very near future. There won’t be a sprawling city full of life at the bottom of the ocean, but instead, desolate remains of small islands in the Pacific. Some low-lying islands in the Pacific Ocean are in danger of becoming uninhabitable within the century due to the rising sea levels. To be more precise, scientists have predicted that in 50 to 150 years some low-lying islands will be underwater, but much earlier be uninhabitable. These islands include the Hawaiian atolls (a string of closely placed small coral islands, usually encircling a small lagoon of sorts) of Midway and Laysan and islands like them. The issue of overwash (when ocean water comes to shore, damages property and natural resources but doesn’t permanently submerge the island) is what will make the islands become unfit to support life well before they are submerged. When overwash occurs on islands that are less than a thousand feet long (like the Midway and Laysan), the fresh water for the island is salinated (salt added to) and therefore unfit to drink, and the agriculture is killed because of salt loading. Without a reliable source of food and fresh water, it will not be possible to live on these small islands, not to mention dealing with waves crashing into your house once or twice a year also from the overwash. This process of overwash and then complete submersion occurs because of global warming. As the atmosphere is heated, ice caps on the two poles slowly melt, raising the sea level of oceans around the world gradually over time. Since these particular islands are already low-lying, they have become in danger of submerging below sea level. It has been determined by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) that when the atmosphere is raised by two degrees Celsius, the sea level will rise somewhere between 3 and 6 feet by 2100. The USGS have created dynamic models that predict that 91% of Midway Island will be inundated and that waves on the island during normal high-end winter storms will be three or four times as high. A saving grace of these small islands could be the coral that grows in the water around them. Coral reefs, which can grow at rates as fast as one centimeter per year, can protect the islands and make sturdy physical foundations for them to stay above sea level. However, the USGS has noted that the vertical growth rate of coral is much smaller than the rate at which the sea-level is rising, so coral will not be saving these islands from submersion. Another more radical way of saving the islands could be to do what was done in the capital of the Maldives, which was to build a large sea wall and huge desalination facilities. However, this solution would cost a large amount of money and it may be more worth it to just evacuate the islands.
The information presented in the article is extremely important in showing how much global warming is affecting the world. Many people either do not believe in global warming or ignore it, but seeing as entire islands could disappear because of it within the next century displays just how much it is hurting our world. If it takes whole land masses disappearing to convince people of the urgency of global warming, then that is what must happen. So, a positive spin that one could put on this is that the submersion of these islands could help to bring more attention to the topic, and in turn get people more passionate about trying to stop and prevent it from happening. Apart from the physical disappearances of the islands, the effect it will have on its inhabitants is even more devastating. If these overwashes become too severe, entire populations of people will need to consider the possibility of relocation. Julia Pyper, the author of the article, says that relocation, “would mean not only giving up their land, but also a major part of their lifestyle and identity” (p. 2), because they are being forced to assimilate into new cultures.
Although the article was a very well-written work that displayed its purpose clearly and concisely, there were some things that could have been improved. First of all, the author could have explained how the USGS came to their conclusions and how they conducted their experiments in a more detailed way. In the article, it is only mentioned that they used, “dynamic modeling that takes into account storm winds and wave activity coupled with sea-level rise of between 0.5 and 2 meters,” but this does not give a clear picture of how the experiments are conducted and how they came to their conclusions. A second criticism of the article is that it was very short and did not go into detail overall. It was not very long, being under 1,000 words, and points like the occurrences of overwash, the option of relocation, and the helpfulness of coral could have been greatly elaborated on. Thirdly, it would have been interesting to hear about any precautions that are being made to protect people living on these islands from overwash and from the impending doom of submersion. However, overall, the article was an interesting and eye-opening read shedding light on the true effects of global warming the the rising sea levels.