[There have been several good articles lately about the challenge of rising sea levels due to climate change.
This is a very poorly understood area as mentioned by the IPCC, as ice sheet dynamics, especially in the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) are a very complex phenomena. The nonlinearity of the ice sheet problem makes it impossible to accurately predict the sea level change for a specific region or time frame. But recent analysis by Jim Hansen and others indicate that there is a high probability that the WAIS could break up much faster than expected within the next few decades – which could raise sea levels anywhere from 3- 4 meters. And given the fact that in a a recent paper by Freudenburg and Muselli which shows that nearly 90 per cent of new scientific findings reveal global climate disruption to be worse than forecast, the threat of rising sea levels is a very worrying concern. As Jim Hansen points out sea level rises will probably have the most serious consequences of all the possible outcomes for climate change given the fact that billions of people around the planet live on costal plains near the ocean. Undertaking the appropriate infrastructure investments and relocation of cities (as well as whole countries) will be critically dependent on an accurate forecast of sea level rises.
Over 90% of the warming energy from climate change goes into the ocean, and yet it is the oceans where we have fewest amount of instruments and sensors in order to carefully calibrate the impact of climate change on oceans. Through complex and yet still poorly understood processes we know that global warming causes polar ice melting, consequently reduces ocean’s capacity of greenhouse gas storage in the deep water and as a result further reinforces atmospheric greenhouse warming. The deepest water mass covering the world’s ocean floor has originated from polar regions. Since the polar bottom water is formed at the surface of polar seas through air-sea interaction, it carries signals of temperature and salinity as changed by ice melting and affected by the atmospheric greenhouse gases into ocean bottom. Obviously, if polar water temperature and salinity can effectively be measured on the ocean floor, its relevant climate change signal can be monitored. But at present, oceanographers cannot efficiently measure polar water mass due to its vast extent and volume. That is why facilities like Canada’s Neptune project (the world’s first and still largest undersea cable observatory) and similar initiatives underway around the rest of the world are essential to fully understand these ocean dynamics and their impact on rising sea levels.
An innovative new proposal by Yuzhu You hopes to build on the pioneering work of Neptune and other projects by building a new generation of telecom undersea cable repeaters. There is a significant opportunity to use the undersea and cyber-infrastructure technology developed by Neptune to be used by traditional telecommunication companies to redesign the new generation of cable repeaters and to provide additional climate data to researchers and governments. The proposed new telecom repeaters will be integrated with built-in sensors inside the housing enable to measure the major climate properties of temperature, salinity and pressure. and provide t cost-effective long-term
Climate data in order to a get much more accurate predictions of sea level rises -- BSA].
Multipurpose Submarine Cable Repeaters Required To Monitor Climate Change - Yuzhu You
November 2010 Submarine Telecoms Forum Newsletter:
http://www.subtelforum.com/issues/STF_54.pdf
Hansen on reticence and the threat of sea level rise http://j.mp/cyfUxJ
New York Times front page article on sea level rises and impact on cities
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/science/earth/14ice.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Nearly 90 per cent of new scientific findings reveal global climate disruption to be worse than forecast http://bit.ly/cnyjDf
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email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com
twitter: BillStArnaud
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/
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This blog is about using ICTs to develop climate change preparedness solutions built around Energy Internet and autonomous eVehicles
Energy Internet and eVehicles Overview
Governments around the world are wrestling with the challenge of how to prepare society for inevitable climate change. To date most people have been focused on how to reduce Green House Gas emissions, but now there is growing recognition that regardless of what we do to mitigate against climate change the planet is going to be significantly warmer in the coming years with all the attendant problems of more frequent droughts, flooding, sever storms, etc. As such we need to invest in solutions that provide a more robust and resilient infrastructure to withstand this environmental onslaught especially for our electrical and telecommunications systems and at the same time reduce our carbon footprint.
Using autonomous eVehicles for Renewable Energy Transportation and Distribution: http://goo.gl/bXO6x and http://goo.gl/UDz37
Free High Speed Internet to the Home or School Integrated with solar roof top: http://goo.gl/wGjVG
High level architecture of Internet Networks to survive Climate Change: https://goo.gl/24SiUP
Architecture and routing protocols for Energy Internet: http://goo.gl/niWy1g
How to use Green Bond Funds to underwrite costs of new network and energy infrastructure: https://goo.gl/74Bptd