The impact of climate change on coastal communities and rising seas

Climate change threatens coral reefs that protect coasts and support food and tourism, and ocean warming is one of several threats behind their decline. What do warming oceans and rising seas mean for coastal risk, and how can readers understand the pressures coastal communities face? The lessons connect ocean warming, sea level rise and coastal hazards.

2 articles, 1 video, 1 book · about 1 hr 10 min of reading and viewing

The reading path

1. Read
   

   the impact of climate change on coastal communities · Wikipedia · 59 min read

   Coastal flooding will threaten hundreds of millions of people by 2050, particularly in Southeast Asia. For coastal communities, human-induced climate change "continues to warm the oceans which provide the memory of past accumulated effects," raising ocean heat content and sea surface temperatures. This invigorates tropical cyclones to make them more intense, bigger, longer lasting and greatly increases their flooding rains.

2. Read
   

   What the new IPCC report says about sea level rise - Carbon Brief · Carbon Brief · 5 min read

   Under all scenarios, the expansion of water as it warms is the biggest cause of sea level rise, accounting for between 30 and 55 per cent of the increase. The oceans have absorbed more than 90 per cent of the heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions since the 1970s, and as temperatures rise, more heat will enter the sea.

3. Watch
   

   Sea level rise is getting worse. Here's what you need to know. · YouTube · 6 min watch

   Sea level rise, sunshine flooding and climate change are connected, and America's coastal cities are seeing more nuisance flooding.

4. Book
   

   The Water Knife · Bookshop.org

   The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi describes Angel Velasquez investigating a rumored game-changing water source in Phoenix, where Lucy is also hunting for water and a river's life-giving flow is at stake.

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