A few days ago I visited the summer house I share with my sister. I have been here every year for my entire life; I played along the shore as a child, my kids have spent their childhood summers here and I have enjoyed the beach and the sea as an adult.
This time my reason for visiting was the recent winter storm “Egon”, that for days pounded the coast with strong winds and high waves. I was anxious to see the effects of the storm on our house and the property. Luckily, the trees that had fallen did not hit any of the houses, even though big branches had been tossed like twigs by the wind.
But the beach was an unusual sight. Not the usual piles of seaweed, the beach had been scrubbed clean by the extreme high water and strong winds. Turfs of grass had resisted the water but the earth around them had been washed away. Trees were beginning to be uprooted and the woody side of the beach, bits and pieces of docks and moorings from other houses could be found.
Since my childhood the seawater level has risen about 15 cm. This does not sound much, every day the water level changes more than that due to wind and tide. But on a flat beach, these few centimeters means that the water will not retreat as often, thus not allowing the grass to grow back and hold the sand. Instead, erosion is eating the beach away, making the path along the water more and more narrow. Soon we will have to find a new path behind the trees, as long as they keep standing. This in turn will expose us more for the Borrelia carrying ticks, another problem that has grown bigger in recent years as temperature increases, with 2014 being a record warm year in Sweden.
New data also shows that the sea level is increasing at an accelerating speed; we have underestimated the rate at which the water rises. This means that the next 15 cm increase will come much quicker, augmenting our local problem with the beach. Still, while creating a nuisance it will not during my lifetime threaten our houses. But how far the water will reach during my childrens lifetime we don’t yet know and it is something that will be influenced by our actions, now and forthcoming.
Doggerland might not be something you have heard about. It was an area of human settlement among the marshes and hills in the area that is now the Dogger flats at the bottom of the North Sea. It was an area rich in wildlife, a hunting ground for early settlers in Europe when the ice retreated after the last glacial. But as the ice continued to melt, water continued to rise and the settlements flooded and abandoned. Now only trawlers find occasional traces of the people who lived there.
Back in Gothenburg, I walked along the canals in the city center during the storm. This area also took a beting from “Egon” and was on the verge of flooding. A submerged waste paper basket stood like a symbol of our wasteful society. Here, another 15 cm of water level would make things even worse and half a meter plus a winter storm would be a catastrophe. Already there are discussions to build dams and gates to protect the city from the sea. It is bizarre when you think about it, we have to be protected from the sea, the very reason that the city with its port and its canals was built just here.
If we continue to heat the planet, the water will rise. Last week it was announced that 2014 globally was the warmest year ever and since the 1960’s, every decade has been warmer than the previous. Some battles are already lost, recent research shows that in the long run we are committed to thawing parts of West Antarctica. Warming seawater is melting the glaciers from below, a slow but now irreversible process that will raise the ocean levels maybe 2 extra meters.
That is however not a reason to give up, instead we need to to fight fiercely to keep Greenland and the rest of Antarctica from thawing. It is a moral question. We can in our part of the world, given enough time probably adjust to 2 m of sea level increase. It will be tough but there will still be options for coming generations. And we must be willing to accept those coming to us; the people that need to flee to higher grounds when their coasts and islands become submerged. But we have to slow down and stop the warming, we can not allow Netherlands to turn into “Belowlands” or vast coastal areas of Europe to follow the fate of Doggerland.
I stubbornly claim that there is reason for hope. Hope that increasing awareness and willingness to accept change, aided by encouraging development in e.g. solar and wind energy shows us a viable path forward. But that path will not open magically by itself. We need to choose it, we need to convince politicians that we want them to choose it and we need to fight the interest that are willing to burn our planet for a few pennies more.
This year, a lot needs to be done before the December climate conference in Paris; COP21. The meeting I attended the past weekend where people with a drive and willingness to create a good future within the planetary boundaries of our Earth showed their commitment to this kind of work encourages me. Nothing is given, but at least nobody should be able to say that they did not know.
Fig from Bloomberg.com, click to animate
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