The tide is high, but are we holding on?

Melting land ice
[More Images]

With sea levels predicted to rise by at least half a metre this century Bahrain Editor Benjamin Millington explores what it means for the longevity of the 21st century’s coastal developments.

If you type “rising sea levels” into the Google news search engine you’ll retrieve hundreds of articles from around the world each telling the same story – we are losing our coastline.

Waves are swallowing houses in Vietnam, villages are disappearing in Ghana, Australia is making plans to relocate coastal towns, sea water is lapping at windowsills in China and the Pacific Islands are losing their islands.

In light of this, the Arabian Gulf must be the only part of the world where the length of coastline and number of islands is actually increasing rather than decreasing.

Story continues below

Advertisement

FEATURED COMMENT Please click here to comment on this article

The UAE, Qatar and Bahrain are all zealously reclaiming land from the sea to create island communities where residents enjoy the beach in their backyard.

Are these people climate change skeptics? Or are the islands built on sound scientific knowledge?

The key resource for information on rising sea levels is the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which collates published scientific literature and produces global climate change assessments every five to six years.

Their fourth and latest assessment in 2007 predicted sea levels would rise between 18cm and 59cm this century, a worrying set of figures for any coastal development.

But John Hunter, an Australian scientist and contributor to the IPCC assessments, said more recent predictions are even worse.

“Many people have since suggested much bigger rises, Hansen, an American scientist says the upper limit could be around 5m,” he said.

“Not many people really believe that, but another recent paper suggests with good reason that we are set for a rise between 80cm and 2m this century. “That’s what I would allow for based on the very latest research.”

Hunter said the research behind all of these predictions comes from the various scientists monitoring and computer modeling the two main factors contributing to rising sea levels.

The first is the melting of land-based ice which is mainly occurring in Greenland, Antarctica and mountain glaciers. The second is the increase in sea temperature which is causing the ocean to expand and thus sea levels to rise.

But predicting the impact of these events, which themselves are caused by a long list of complex factors, is far from precise and constantly changing. This in turn makes determining just how high above sea level it is safe to build a bit of a scientific stab in the dark.

“People may be conversant with sea level rise at the time of design and construction, but if it was 10 years ago they’d be relying on some very old IPCC research – that’s what you’ve got to be careful of,” said Hunter.

And if Hunter’s predictions of a rise between 80cm and 2m are correct, it means the largest and most well known developer of land reclamation projects, Nakheel, has based its famous Dubai projects on data that is already outdated.