Island nations may be beautiful, but their isolation makes them vulnerable to outside forces that increasingly threaten their survival. Rising sea levels linked to global warming could submerge some altogether. Tuvalu, a West Pacific nation whose peak height rises just 5 meters over sea level, could be uninhabitable within 50 years, some experts say. A similar fate could also doom the Maldives, the Marshall Islands, Kiribati, and Tokelau. Of all the threats facing island nations, the rise in sea level could be the most catastrophic....in the early 1990s, satellites began generating more comprehensive profiles of global sea level. Thanks to these orbiting systems, scientists now know that the average global rate of sea level rise has increased 50% during the last 12 years -- up to 3 millimeters per year from a 50-year annual average of 2 millimeters,...NASA..
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When we discuss this issue we often slide back to the points which most effect the humans who will be effected by this long-term trend that is rapidly being exposed as a serious short-term trend with devastating long-term effects.
It's estimated that more than a hundred million lives are potentially impacted by a one-meter increase in sea level," Abdalati says. In the meantime, even the comparatively small increases in sea level seen today can produce large effects, particularly when superimposed on high tides and storm surges, says Laury Miller, who heads NASA's Satellite Altimetry Laboratory. Miller adds that as a first impact, rising seas contaminate freshwater resources.
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Two of the ways in which this occurs is through desalination and the development of massive growth in often toxic algae growth, which is traditionally kept in check by salt content and low temperature but will be spurned on when these natural growth barriers are removed by global climate change and glacial fresh water. "Eutrophication of water bodies has always been part of the natural cycle in waters ranging from highly oligotrophic alpine lakes on land newly exposed by glacial melting to...
All of this information together builds a picture that is devastating for the earth. Small incremental and rapid changes completely throw off the balance that ahs existed for millions of years. Regardless of the human contribution to this matter the resolute scientific understanding is that these changes are in many ways unknowns. We do know, however that the earth will not look as it does today in just a few years as ocean water temperatures rise, in part do to higher ambient temperature and as a result of glacial melting storms will continue to rise in intensity, and frequency and
marine life as well as shore life will be altered in unknowable ways. The cascading effect will be the most fundamental part of the unknown and the least of the earth's worries are how these issues will effect people, as it struggles through an accelerated, imbalanced pattern of life or
death to survive.
Works Cited
Mastny, Lisa. "More Evidence of Antarctic Melting Reported." World Watch July-Aug. 2005: 9.
Pitois, Sophie, Michael H. Jackson, and Brian J.B. Wood. "Sources of the Eutrophication Problems Associated with Toxic Algae: An Overview." Journal of Environmental Health 64.5 (2001): 25.
Schmidt, Charles W. "Keeping Afloat: A Strategy for Small Island Nations." Environmental Health Perspectives 113.9 (2005): 606.
Schwartz, Brian S., Cindy Parker, Thomas a. Glass, and Howard Hu. "Global Environmental Change: What Can Health Care Providers and the…
