2019 – A Year in Review
As we begin 2020, it’s a good time to look back over the past year. In roughly chronological order, here are my top twelve sea level rise and climate change stories of 2019:
#1 – In January Antarctica kicked off the year with a new analysis showing the melt rate increased 530% in just three decades, from the 1980’s to the present.
#2 – Then another study reinforced the Antarctic destabilization. Scientists discovered an enormous cavern inside Thwaites, one of the largest glaciers in Antarctica. This cavern was a thousand feet high, and about the size of Manhattan, highlighting the rapid melting and destabilization in that region of Antarctica. Just Thwaites, by itself, has the potential to raise global sea level a foot and a half (50 cm).
#3 – In April, it was announced that the recent $14 Billion fix to New Orleans Levees may be inadequate within five years. Rising seas and sinking land made the “big fix” in the Big Easy, a big embarassment.
#4 – In May, Indonesia made the bold announcement that it needs to relocate the capital from Jakarta to higher ground, largely due to flooding from subsidence and rising sea level.
#5 – In August the highly respected magazine, THE ECONOMIST, ran a feature article about the projected extreme flooding this century from sea level rise, extreme tides, and weather events, potentially affecting one billion people.
#7 – Also in August, extreme summer heat waves in the Arctic caused severe melting of the Greenland ice sheet, lasting for weeks. In one day it was measured to lose 12 billion tons of ice, a new record.
#8 – In September, the mega storm Hurricane Dorian with 180 mph winds and twenty foot storm surge truly devastated Abaco and Grand Bahama islands. It showed how storms, tides, and sea level rise combine for extra impact. If that storm had continued east, just 100 miles, the damage to Florida would have been unimaginable.
#9 – In November, a New York Times article showed that three times more cities were vulnerable to flooding by 2050 than previously thought. Just 8-12 inches (20-30 cm) of sea level rise could displace 150 million people.
#10 – In December in Australia, a series of fires became catastrophic breaking all records, consuming tens of millions of acres, more than a thousand homes, and killing an estimated five hundred million animals. It became an iconic example that we are in a new era.
#11 – Also in December, new analysis showed that Greenland was losing ice seven times faster than just three decades earlier, closely paralleling the news from Antarctica in January that the rate of increased ice melting is increasing with an ominous pattern of “doubling”, exponential increase. Those two ice sheets hold 98% of potential sea level rise.
#12 – Closing the year with a positive item, TIME Magazine named 16-year old Greta as person of the year. Her rise from obscurity in one year is incredible. She speaks the truth to power at the highest levels of government, scolding adults for not taking the necessary bold action to halt climate change. With over a million young people following her lead, she is a phenomenon and a cause for hope.
2019 is certainly one for the record books, from the devastation of Dorian to the record wildfires in California and Australia. There should be no question that we are in a new climate era. 2020 ushers in a new decade. It should also remind us to have 20/20 vision about the need to be resilient and to adapt.
Best wishes to all of you for the New Year.