Antinuclear

Thousands of kilometres of Australia’s beaches at risk from rising seas, SMH, By Peter Hannam, March 3, 2020 More than 12,000 kilometres of Australia’s sandy beaches are threatened by coastal erosion by the end of the century, with greater losses predicted if greenhouse gas emissions remain high.The projections, made by European researchers and published in Nature Climate Change on Tuesday, used satellite data that tracked shoreline change from 1984 to 2015. They found a “substantial proportion” of the world’s sandy coastline is already eroded, a trend that could worsen as climate change pushes up sea levels.

Under a “moderate” effort to curb emissions – with carbon pollution peaking at 2040 and then declining – at least 12,324 kilometres of Australia’s sandy coast will be threatened with erosion by 2100. That tally is the most of any nation, and would amount to about 40 per cent of the country’s sandy beaches.

Should greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise through the century – the so-called 8.5 Representative Concentration Pathway – Australia’s sandy coastline at risk increases to 15,439 kilometres, the paper said.

“You have a long coastline and part of the coast is very mildly sloping” and is therefore susceptible to erosion, said Michalis Vousdoukas, a coastal oceanographer at the European Commission and the paper’s lead author.

“Melbourne is worse than Sydney,” Dr Vousdoukas told the Herald and The Age, adding Brisbane and Adelaide’s beaches fell between the two in terms of vulnerability to erosion.