Many of Delaware’s tidal wetlands and some currently developed land could be underwater by 2099 if sea level rises as predicted last week by an international group of scientists.
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Areas in the red are those that could be underwater by 2099, according to predictions released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change regarding the effect of global warming on rising sea levels. Areas shaded in other c olors could be affected by long -term rises in sea level. Copyright University of Delaware, 2007. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its Feb. 2 report predicted that sea level will rise 7 to 23 inches in the next century as a result of global climate change. The group of more than 100 scientists from more than 100 countries worldwide also, with roughly 90 percent certainty, placed the majority of the blame on humans for polluting the Earth with greenhouse gasses — an unprecedented finding.
A University of Delaware study released the next day detailed longer-term effects of rising sea level, revealing dramatically direr consequences in the face of inaction. Dr. Willett Kempton, a senior policy scientist and associate professor at the university who co-authored the Delaware study, criticized the IPCC report for not studying long-term effects of global climate change. The Delaware group studied potential effects of sea level rise as caused by global warming over the next millennium.
“That 7 to 23 inches is just the beginning,” Kempton said. “That’s just an arbitrary year. That’s not the end point of sea level rise. It just keeps going. It’s actually very disturbing.”
Average temperatures globally will increase by 2 to 12 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century with a greater probability of extreme weather and more intense storms, the IPCC also predicted in Friday’s report.
“It is very likely that hot extremes, heat waves and heavy participation events will continue to become more frequent. It is likely that future tropical cyclones could be come more intense,” the report states.
Consequences of climate change could be worse for the mid-Atlantic region than for many others, particularly because land across the region is sinking; natural subsidence also causes rises in sea level.
Also, future melting of ice globally — which is inevitable in places like Greenland and Antarctica in the face of inaction, scientists have said — could create a much scarier situation.
Action to curb greenhouse gas emissions in the next century is needed to divert further potential consequences, the IPCC report stated.
IPCC’s most recent sea level rise predictions, however, were more optimistic than those in previous reports. But they are likely more accurate and, therefore, more dependable, according to some experts.
“The (IPCC scientists) are just becoming much more accurate in their modeling and in their assumptions,” said Michael McCabe, former mid-Atlantic head and deputy administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. “They’re much more confident.”
Long term local implications
Imagine sitting on the beach in Georgetown. Imagine swimming in oceanic waters west of Millsboro. Those are real possibilities, according to the University of Delaware study. Although those potential consequences would not be realized for at least another 300 years and only after the melting of large ice blocks globally, today’s inaction could contribute to the problem or positive action to curb emissions could help reverse it, Kempton said.
“My personal view is that it doesn’t make sense (to study only) what will happen in 2099,” Kempton. “I’ve had one person tell me that ‘in Delaware beyond a century nobody cares.’ I’m sure that’s true for some people. But when I talk about this material, that is not typically raised,” he said, adding that most people are concerned more with the longer-term effects.
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Areas shown in green would be all that was left of Delaware if large ice blocks in Greenland and the West Antarctic melt, according to the University of Delaware. This could take 300 to 1,000 years to become reality, but it is preventable, university scientists have said. Copyright University of Delaware, 2007.Action to potentially reverse the trend has already begun in Delaware, where officials have sought after long-term, cleaner energy solutions and participated in regional emission reduction efforts.
NRG — the owner of the Indian River power plant, Delaware’s largest polluter — has submitted a “clean coal” power plant proposal, which would eliminate some of the pollutants currently emitted at Indian River. A competing proposal to generate energy using hundreds of wind turbines offshore — and no fossil fuels — would generate no pollution.
Delaware is also one of seven states participating the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a regional cooperative to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the most heavily emitted of greenhouse gasses through energy production.
Greenhouse gasses — which are emitted into the atmosphere daily — trap heat inside the atmosphere and contribute to global warming and its consequences. The “greenhouse effect” is needed to keep the Earth warm enough for humans to inhabit the planet, but retaining too much heat can cause these dramatic changes in climate.
According to a U.S. Department of Energy report released in November, carbon dioxide accounted for more than 82 percent of this country’s energy-related greenhouse gas emission totals in 2005.
Kempton estimated that officials have roughly a “couple decades” to dramatically reduce emissions — especially from CO2 — before committing to the melting of large ice blocks in Greenland and the West Antarctic. If they wait until the turn of the next century to take considerable action, the world would have already committed to melting that ice, accepting horrendous weather conditions and losing land in Delaware and worldwide.
“The real concern is the Earth will survive what we’re doing but it will not provide conditions we find livable,” said Jonathan Sharp, another University of Delaware scientist. “There will be a lot of areas that will be uninhabitable. A lot of areas will be washed away.”
According to maps in the Delaware study that illustrate potential conditions statewide 300 to 1,000 years from now, much of Delaware would disappear as a result of melting the aforementioned ice blocks.
All of the eastern portion of Sussex County would disappear underwater, with much of the western county flooded out, as well. The well-known beach resorts in the area would not exist, but neither would Millsboro or most of Dover.
“That’s a long time (away) but it would basically destroy Delaware,” Kempton said. “People don’t say, ‘That’s hundreds of years, I don’t care.’ They say, ‘That’s disturbing.’”
Wetlands disappearance has consequences
When compared with the aforementioned long-term consequences of sea level rise, shorter-term ones, such as those predicted over the next century, likely do not seem as dramatic.
Locally, though, homes built close to the bays and ocean — and there are many — could be flooded and many of Delaware’s ecologically-important tidal wetlands could be underwater by the end of the century.
Natural subsidence, sea water expansion and global warming have historically caused a .122-inch annual sea level rise in the area, a 2000 Environmental Protection Agency report stated. According to UD numbers referenced in a report not yet released by the Center for the Inland Bays, natural elevation of tidal wetlands has outpaced that rise.
If recent dramatic sea level rise predictions are realized over the next century, though, wetlands within Delaware’s Inland Bays system could begin to lose ground and submerge despite their natural migration landward, said Chris Bason, science and technical coordinator at the Center for the Inland Bays. (Developed land could also block that natural migration, a very modern phenomenon that has already begun locally, he said.)
“There is definitely real concern that we might be losing large amounts of our acreage of tidal wetlands,” Bason said. “Previously, when the rates of sea level rise weren’t so high, the wetlands were able to maintain themselves.”
Tidal wetlands on Sussex County’s inland bays provide nursery habitats for various species of fish and exclusive resting spots for certain species of birds, which would likely leave the area if not for the wetlands, Bason said.
They also protect uplands — and the homes and businesses that sit there — from storm surges, which could cause flooding. And the wetlands serve as a natural pollution control vehicle, catching unwanted nutrients before they enter the waterways. Nitrogen and phosphorous, two nutrients used extensively as fertilizers on residential and agricultural lands, enter the bays daily, causing low oxygen levels, which lead to fish kills and an unhealthy underwater ecological habitat.
DNREC is currently attempting to approve its latest Pollution Control Strategy and put regulations on septic systems, buffer requirements and agricultural lands to curb the amount of nutrients that enter Sussex County’s waters daily. The department would be even further behind if it were not for the wetlands, Bason implied.
But perhaps the most ironic fact is that tidal wetlands essentially serve as carbon nets, he added. Similar to the way they catch nutrient runoff, they also capture and trap carbon dioxide emissions before those emissions release into the atmosphere, trap heat and contribute to global climate change.
“They are dynamic systems,” Bason said of the tidal wetlands. “If you lose your wetlands, what you’re losing are the functions and the services they provide us. They are real sensitive resource.”