Sea-level rise ignored amid other factors

Australians could be being lulled into a false sense of security about climate change.

Dr Peter Cowell from Sydney University's Institute of Marine Science says Australians are unable to distinguish the impact of sea level rises from other factors affecting our coastlines such as storm erosion and natural loss of sand from one area to another.

These factors are masking the impact of sea level rises and will likely do so for the next fifty years until the impact of sea level rises becomes more significant and more apparent.

"The emerging impact of sea level rises now is being hidden in the 'noise' of other factors affecting change to our coastlines," says Dr Cowell who presented the research on sea level rises to the recent Climate Change Monitoring Symposium at Sydney University.

"Storm erosion and naturally occurring sand movement are disguising the true impact of sea level rises. There is also the disruption to sand by building of engineering works.'

"If you look at records you can readily detect sea level rises emerging in measurements but at the coalface the impacts, like coastal erosion, are not yet obvious because of these other factors."

"It will take to the end of the century for the impact of sea level rises to match all other causes but when it does it will be catastrophic. The problem is that by the time Australia wakes up to it as a problem we will be dealing with sea level rise in the context of disaster management rather than prevention."

"The trouble is that until the impacts of sea level rise are more obvious, more Australians keep moving closer to the coast and constructing new property, increasing the national vulnerability further down the track."

Dr Cowell says one of the major failures of Australia's climate change response until now has been the failure to conduct an audit of Australia's "future economic liability stemming from worsening coastal erosion due to climate change."

He says Australia is not thinking ahead in the same way as Holland which is working on raising its coast by five metres by 2100, rather than waiting fifty years by which time the expense will be prohibitive.'

"We can't allow sea level rise to drop off the agenda of our climate change response," Dr Cowell says.

"There will always seemingly be a greater order of priorities whether it be the global financial crisis or even competing water priorities such as the Murray Darling Basin. But if we ignore the now accelerating sea level rise we, as a nation, will do so at our own peril.'

Contact: Sarah Stock

Phone: 02 9114 0748 or 0419 278 715