Like many countries, Taiwan’s sea levels have risen steadily as a result of global warming and measures need to be taken to combat the increased threat of flooding, environmental scientists said on Sunday.
The sea level around Taiwan has risen by an average of 3cm over the past 10 years, said Fan Kuang-lung (范光龍), a professor at National Taiwan University’s (NTU) Institute of Oceanography.
Fan, who led an NTU research team in studying tidal changes along the coasts of Keelung, Yilan, Taitung and Kaohsiung between 1991 and 2001, said global warming and human behavior, particularly on the west coast, were leaving Taiwan increasingly vulnerable to climate change.
“Flooding will become the norm in some western tidal land areas,” Fan said.
He said that when typhoons strike, inundation water caused by flash floods will have difficulty flowing out to sea because the sea’s level will be higher than the river’s level.
Floods could be exacerbated if seawaters inundate the areas as well, Fan said.
Human behavior is only complicating the problem, the scientist said. Many households along the west coast regularly pump underground water for farming or everyday use, gradually causing the ground to subside below sea level.
When seawater floods in, Fan said, it will not be able to flow back out, and consequently will accumulate in low-lying areas, causing severe floods and property damage.
Liu Shaw-chen (劉紹臣), a researcher and director at Academia Sinica’s Research Center for Environmental Changes, said global warming, caused by increased carbon dioxide emissions, was causing the polar ice caps to melt at a pace faster than formerly estimated.
He cited the latest report by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), which forecast that if Greenland’s entire ice cap melts down, the Earth’s sea levels will rise by an average of between 4m and 5m, and if the entire Antarctic Pole melts down, the world’s sea levels will rise by an apocalyptic 70m, although the Colorado-Based National Snow and Ice Data Center does not expect either area to melt completely.
The SCAR report predicted that if global warming continues at its current pace, South Pole ice will melt at an accelerated clip and sea levels will rise 1.4m by 2100.
The estimate far exceeds the 18cm to 43cm rise predicted by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Liu said.
“It is already too late to save Tuvalu, even if the world’s nations step up reductions in energy consumption and carbon emissions now,” Liu said. “Tuvalu will be completely submerged in 20 to 30 years.”
His prediction is based on the argument that carbon dioxide, the main culprit in global warming, remains in the atmosphere for 80 years and that the carbon dioxide layers that are impacting the Earth’s temperatures today have been accumulated over the past eight decades.
Liu said Taiwan is not threatened by total submersion, but he predicted flooding would become an increasingly normal phenomenon.
Noting that precipitation in Taiwan will increase 1.4 times for every 1°C rise in global temperatures, he urged the government and the public not to relent in its flood prevention efforts.
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