Download Sydney Opera House and Statue of Liberty `will be lost to sea

Sydney Opera House and Statue of Liberty 'will
be lost to sea level rise'
Nearly one-fifth of world cultural heritage sites would be affected by global
warming of a further 3C, scientists warn
Adam Vaughan
The Guardian, Wednesday 5 March 2014
A still from the film The Day After Tomorrow shows the Statue of Liberty being submerged by rising
seas. Famous global landmarks will be lost to rising seas caused by climate change, scientists have
warned. Photograph: 20th Century Fox/Rex Features
Famous global landmarks including the Statue of Liberty, Tower of
London and Sydney Opera House will be lost to rising seas caused
byclimate change, scientists have warned.
Even with just a further 3C of warming – well within the range to which
the UN climate science panel expects temperatures to rise by the end of
the century – nearly one-fifth of the planet's 720 world heritage sites will
be affected as ice sheets melt and warming oceans expand.
Sydney Opera House could also be affected by rising sea levels. Photograph: Chris
Phillips/AFP/Getty Images
The study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters,
looked at how many Unesco sites would be threatened after 2000 years
of rising sea levels, but the authors said the first impacts would
"definitely" be felt much sooner without action on flood defences.
"It's relatively safe to say that we will see the first impacts at these sites
in the 21st century," lead author Prof Ben Marzeion, of the University of
Innsbruck in Austria, told the Guardian. "Typically when people talk
about climate change it's about the economic or environmental
consequences, how much it's going to cost. We wanted to take a look at
the cultural implications."
Marzeion said that in Europe, particularly vulnerable sites included the
leaning tower of Pisa, which is not directly on the coast but would be
affected by sea level rises as a result of even a low temperature
increase because it is very low-lying. He also cited Venice, which "in a
sense you can say is being impacted right now" and Hanseatic
League cities including Hamburg, Lübeck and Bremen in Germany.
The foyer of the Hotel Principe flooded by waters of the Grand Canal, Venice in 2013. The city is 'in a
sense being impacted right now,' scientists said. Photograph: Paul Brown/Rex Features
Other sites that would be affected by rising waters include Westminster
Abbey and Westminster Palace, as well as the city centres of Bruges in
Belgium, Naples in Italy and St Petersburg in Russia, the study says.
South-east Asia will have the highest number of people affected by sea
level rises, partly because of low-lying, densely populated cities, but also
because sea level rises will be the most extreme there.
The UN's climate science panel, the IPCC, said in a landmark report last
September that it expects sea level rises of 26-82cm by 2100 although
there is no scientific consensus on high rises. There are concerns
among some scientists that the IPCC is underestimating sea level rises,
with one recent study suggesting global sea levels could rise by as much
as 0.7-1.2m by 2100, and 2-3m by 2300.
Marzeion said that by looking at sea level rises over such a long
timespan – 2000 years – such short-term uncertainties would be
smoothed out. His co-author, Anders Levermann, of the Potsdam
Institute for Climate Impact Research, said: "After 2000 years, the
oceans would have reached a new equilibrium state and we can
compute the ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica from physical
models. At the same time, we consider 2000 years a short enough time
to be of relevance for the cultural heritage we cherish."
The threat to cultural sites from the sea is likely to be underestimated,
the study admits, as it does not take into account temporary rises in sea
levels caused by storm surges such as those that battered the east
coast of the UK last December. "Essentially those are uncertainties that
we cannot quantify, so we made sure we are on the conservative side of
the estimates," Marzeion said.
He said the impact on cultural sites brings "an additional dimension" to
discussion on climate change, but he does not expect the paper to win
over climate change sceptics. "I'm not overly optimistic that culture
means more interest in the subject. It's hard to convince people it's a
problem if they're not convinced. There appears to be a strong divide
between people who feel it is a problem and people who don't."