John’s Blog/Newsletter: SEA LEVEL RISE NOW

Japan is still struggling to cope with the aftermath of the major tsunami that hit March 11 this year. The destruction ranges from people, homes and entire communities, to wider damage from the nuclear power plant catastrophe, damage to their electric power system, and their economy. It will be a long time before they fully recover from this disaster. And it should be remembered that as tsunamis are produced by undersea earthquakes, that the cause of this problem is geologic, with essentially no connection to the current concern about changing climate. [The possibility of a climate change connection was cited in a previous blog post, if you are interested.]

A half year later, we are starting to get a picture about what might happen to the debris from the tsunami. The possibility of radioactive contaminants from the associated nuclear disaster causes particular concern about the debris. As I cited in another blog post at the time, most of the radioactivity is greatly diluted and disapated with distance and time. The real radioactivity concern is for residents in the vicinity who are exposed to concentrated, prolonged exposure, both direct, and from radioactive material that gets into their environment, food chain, etc. And we tend to forget that a certain amount of background low-level radioactivity is a natural Earth phenomenon — in some places more than others, but something that all life on the planet is normally exposed to, at low levels.

What is very interesting to look at is the movement of the tsunami debris across the Pacific, even beyond the radiation question. Recently some good information and models have started to appear. Maritime Executive magazine has a good article, with a good short overview of the movement of the different debris fields, making the distinction that the light materials move very differently from the heavy submerged items.

There is also a fascinating action model on SailWorld.com of the debris field and its projected movement, along with photos of some of the debris at Midway Island. It shows what is predicted to happen in a time sequence over the months and years ahead, depicted on a map. It should be noted that these are only models. Anticipating precise ocean currents over a period of years, is still an imprecise science.

It is understandable that residents of islands in the Pacific and residents along the west coast of Canada, the US, and Mexico will want to keep an out on the debris progress, both for the POSSIBILITY of radioactivity issues, but certainly for the definite mass of physical material swept to sea. All eyes on the horizon…