scholarly journals Climate Delusion: Hurricane Sandy, Sea Level Rise, and 1840s Catastrophism

Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 131
Author(s):  
Wood

The existential global threat of inundation of the world’s low-lying port cities necessitates a radical shift in the dominant climate framework of sustainability and resilience to include catastrophism. Scientists and social scientists of the industrial crisis decade of the 1840s, arguably the Anthropocene’s historical origin, offer a model for theorizing twenty-first century catastrophe in both geophysical and social terms, as in the case study of Hurricane Sandy presented here.

2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (33) ◽  
pp. 332021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephane Hallegatte ◽  
N Patmore ◽  
O Mestre ◽  
P Dumas ◽  
J Corfee-Morlot ◽  
...  

2010 ◽  
Vol 104 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stéphane Hallegatte ◽  
Nicola Ranger ◽  
Olivier Mestre ◽  
Patrice Dumas ◽  
Jan Corfee-Morlot ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
David Whetham

Between 2007 and 2011, Wootton Bassett, a small Wiltshire town in the UK, became the focus of national attention as its residents responded to the regular repatriations of dead soldiers through its High Street. The town’s response came to symbolize the way that broader attitudes developed and changed over that period. As such, it is a fascinating case study in civil–military relations in the twenty-first century. Success may be the same as victory, but victory, at least as it has been traditionally understood, is not a realistic goal in many types of contemporary conflict. Discretionary wars—conflicts in which national survival is not an issue and even vital national interests may not be at stake—pose particular challenges for any government which does not explain why the cost being paid in blood and treasure is ‘worth it’.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin H. Strauss ◽  
Philip M. Orton ◽  
Klaus Bittermann ◽  
Maya K. Buchanan ◽  
Daniel M. Gilford ◽  
...  

AbstractIn 2012, Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast of the United States, creating widespread coastal flooding and over $60 billion in reported economic damage. The potential influence of climate change on the storm itself has been debated, but sea level rise driven by anthropogenic climate change more clearly contributed to damages. To quantify this effect, here we simulate water levels and damage both as they occurred and as they would have occurred across a range of lower sea levels corresponding to different estimates of attributable sea level rise. We find that approximately $8.1B ($4.7B–$14.0B, 5th–95th percentiles) of Sandy’s damages are attributable to climate-mediated anthropogenic sea level rise, as is extension of the flood area to affect 71 (40–131) thousand additional people. The same general approach demonstrated here may be applied to impact assessments for other past and future coastal storms.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 154-173
Author(s):  
I. Mintourakis ◽  
G. Panou ◽  
D. Paradissis

Abstract Precise knowledge of the oceanic Mean Dynamic Topography (MDT) is crucial for a number of geodetic applications, such as vertical datum unification and marine geoid modelling. The lack of gravity surveys over many regions of the Greek seas and the incapacity of the space borne gradiometry/gravity missions to resolve the small and medium wavelengths of the geoid led to the investigation of the oceanographic approach for computing the MDT. We compute two new regional MDT surfaces after averaging, for given epochs, the periodic gridded solutions of the Dynamic Ocean Topography (DOT) provided by two ocean circulation models. These newly developed regional MDT surfaces are compared to three state-of-theart models, which represent the oceanographic, the geodetic and the mixed oceanographic/geodetic approaches in the implementation of the MDT, respectively. Based on these comparisons, we discuss the differences between the three approaches for the case study area and we present some valuable findings regarding the computation of the regional MDT. Furthermore, in order to have an estimate of the precision of the oceanographic approach, we apply extensive evaluation tests on the ability of the two regional ocean circulation models to track the sea level variations by comparing their solutions to tide gauge records and satellite altimetry Sea Level Anomalies (SLA) data. The overall findings support the claim that, for the computation of the MDT surface due to the lack of geodetic data and to limitations of the Global Geopotential Models (GGMs) in the case study area, the oceanographic approach is preferable over the geodetic or the mixed oceano-graphic/geodetic approaches.


Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 1324
Author(s):  
David Revell ◽  
Phil King ◽  
Jeff Giliam ◽  
Juliano Calil ◽  
Sarah Jenkins ◽  
...  

Sea level rise increases community risks from erosion, wave flooding, and tides. Current management typically protects existing development and infrastructure with coastal armoring. These practices ignore long-term impacts to public trust coastal recreation and natural ecosystems. This adaptation framework models physical responses to the public beach and private upland for each adaptation strategy over time, linking physical changes in widths to damages, economic costs, and benefits from beach recreation and nature using low-lying Imperial Beach, California, as a case study. Available coastal hazard models identified community vulnerabilities, and local risk communication engagement prioritized five adaptation approaches—armoring, nourishment, living shorelines, groins, and managed retreat. This framework innovates using replacement cost as a proxy for ecosystem services normally not valued and examines a managed retreat policy approach using a public buyout and rent-back option. Specific methods and economic values used in the analysis need more research and innovation, but the framework provides a scalable methodology to guide coastal adaptation planning everywhere. Case study results suggest that coastal armoring provides the least public benefits over time. Living shoreline approaches show greater public benefits, while managed retreat, implemented sooner, provides the best long-term adaptation strategy to protect community identity and public trust resources.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 7503
Author(s):  
Alexander Boest-Petersen ◽  
Piotr Michalak ◽  
Jamal Jokar Arsanjani

Anthropogenically-induced climate change is expected to be the contributing cause of sea level rise and severe storm events in the immediate future. While Danish authorities have downscaled the future oscillation of sea level rise across Danish coast lines in order to empower the coastal municipalities, there is a need to project the local cascading effects on different sectors. Using geospatial analysis and climate change projection data, we developed a proposed workflow to analyze the impacts of sea level rise in the coastal municipalities of Guldborgsund, located in Southeastern Denmark as a case study. With current estimates of sea level rise and storm surge events, the island of Falster can expect to have up to 19% of its landmass inundated, with approximately 39% of the population experiencing sea level rise directly. Developing an analytical workflow can allow stakeholders to understand the extent of expected sea level rise and consider alternative methods of prevention at the national and local levels. The proposed approach along with the choice of data and open source tools can empower other communities at risk of sea level rise to plan their adaptation.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Emily A. Hill ◽  
G. Hilmar Gudmundsson ◽  
J. Rachel Carr ◽  
Chris R. Stokes ◽  
Helen M. King

Abstract Ice shelves restrain flow from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Climate-ocean warming could force thinning or collapse of floating ice shelves and subsequently accelerate flow, increase ice discharge and raise global mean sea levels. Petermann Glacier (PG), northwest Greenland, recently lost large sections of its ice shelf, but its response to total ice shelf loss in the future remains uncertain. Here, we use the ice flow model Úa to assess the sensitivity of PG to changes in ice shelf extent, and to estimate the resultant loss of grounded ice and contribution to sea level rise. Our results have shown that under several scenarios of ice shelf thinning and retreat, removal of the shelf will not contribute substantially to global mean sea level (<1 mm). We hypothesize that grounded ice loss was limited by the stabilization of the grounding line at a topographic high ~12 km inland of its current grounding line position. Further inland, the likelihood of a narrow fjord that slopes seawards suggests that PG is likely to remain insensitive to terminus changes in the near future.


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