KALAMAZOO (WKZO-AM) — Rising water levels on the Great Lakes is mixed news, because while it makes shipping and boating easier for big ships and small boats alike, it can erode the shoreline and damage property.
A professor of geosciences at Western Michigan University says two new reports suggest it’s happening at triple the rate of the current estimates.
Dr. Michelle Kominz said the journal “Nature” suggests water levels on the world’s oceans could rise a meter by the end of the century. She said if water levels rise just a meter, Miami could be submerged, the Florida Keys will be lost, portions of Louisiana may not be seen may not be seen anymore, and the Chesapeake Bay expands significantly.
“It’s just a real danger, particularly to the East Coast,” Kominz said.
She also its less of an issue for the west coast because the shores are steeper, but still it would affect San Francisco bay and put parts of Los Angeles underwater.
She says the real threat isn’t the melting North Pole but the destabilization of the South Pole.
“Antarctica is the gorilla in the room when it comes to sea-level change,” Kominz said.
“Many of our coastlines, they’re pretty flat. So, a small rise in sea level goes a long way. What’s really scary is if you do melt the Antarctic ice sheet. The prediction right now of carbon dioxide by 2100 is a thousand or more parts per million. And that’s above the threshold for the Antarctic ice sheet to melt. Sixty meters of sea-level rise puts the ocean in the middle of Washington D.C.,” Kominz said. “It completely floods New York.”
