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Friday, February 12, 2021

“Over the past decades, atoll islands exhibited no widespread sign of physical destabilization in the face of sea‐level rise."

Source:
https://climatediscussionnexus.com/2021/02/10/scientists-say-7/


"No doubt you’ve heard or read a sentence like “other island nations like Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Marshall Islands could face even worse in the coming century, scientists say.” 


Those words “scientists say” often mean the reporter vaguely recalls reading it on some environmentalist blog or in a New York Times article. 


... we just quote the scientists themselves. 


“Over the past decades, atoll islands exhibited no widespread sign of physical destabilization in the face of sea‐level rise.

 
A reanalysis of available data, which cover 30 Pacific and Indian Ocean atolls including 709 islands, reveals that no atoll lost land area and that 88.6% of islands were either stable or increased in area, while only 11.4% contracted. 


Atoll islands affected by rapid sea‐level rise did not show a distinct behavior compared to islands on other atolls. 


Island behavior correlated with island size, and no island larger than 10 ha decreased in size.” 


Scientists say.


... The article summary goes on to note: “Increasing human disturbances, especially land reclamation and human structure construction, operated on atoll‐to‐shoreline spatial scales, explaining marked within‐atoll variations in island and shoreline behavior. 


 ... if you go looking for areas where water encroaches on the atolls you can find it."