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Sea Level

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Greenhouse Effect, Sea Level and Drought

Part of the book series: NATO ASI Series ((ASIC,volume 325))

Abstract

Global variations of sea level are reviewed in the light of their behaviour in the recent past and possible consequences of a future rise that may be accelerated by the greenhouse effect. The world’s coastlines are partly in uplift regions, (glacio-isostatic or tectonic), and here sea level is falling. Most regions, however, are subsiding, so that sea level is always rising; these subsiding regions are also the most heavily populated, so that the threat of a CO2-induced acceleration of sea-level rise is real. At the present time extreme human hazards due to specific storm and tide surge events are believed to be more serious than secular rise.

Possible steps to mitigate coastal hazards are considered. Geohydrological control of world sea level is now seen to offer an inadequate potential, especially inasmuch as it can do very little to help the heavily-populated subsiding areas. Mitigation of the hazards fall into three categories: (a) long-term planning of refuge and evacuation systems, (b) short-term warning systems, and (c) scientific prediction systems.

Scientific knowledge of sea level/climate relationships, and of geological factors concerned with crustal uplift or subsidence, is still considered to provide a quite inadequate basis for reaching many national and international policy decisions during either the decade of the 1990’s or indeed for the 21st century. Recommendations are made here for (a) global expansion of tide-gauge monitoring; increased effort to analyze sea level behaviour in its oceanographic sense; (c) energetic attention to the long-term geological behaviour of the world’s coastlines (over millennial periods or more). A series of scientific experiments are needer to check out untested assumptions and a few suggestions are proffered.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Geological Sciences, Columbia University and NASA-GISS, 2880 Broadway, New York, 10025, USA

    Rhodes W. Fairbridge

  2. Geological Survey of the Netherlands, P.O. box 157, 2000 AD, Haarlem, The Netherlands

    Saskia Jelgersma (President INQUA Shorelines Commission)

Authors
  1. Rhodes W. Fairbridge
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  2. Saskia Jelgersma
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Earth Technology Institute, Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Belgian Geological Survey, Brussels, Belgium

    Roland Paepe

  2. GSFC Institute for Space Studies, NASA, New York, NY, USA

    Rhodes W. Fairbridge

  3. Geological Survey of the Netherlands, Haarlem, The Netherlands

    Saskia Jelgersma

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© 1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers

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Fairbridge, R.W., Jelgersma, S. (1990). Sea Level. In: Paepe, R., Fairbridge, R.W., Jelgersma, S. (eds) Greenhouse Effect, Sea Level and Drought. NATO ASI Series, vol 325. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-0701-0_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-0701-0_7

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