Climate change could wipe out half of the world’s sandy shorelines
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Half of the world’s beaches could disappear by the end of this century as a result of climate change-induced coastal erosion and rising seas, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change.
As global temperatures continue to rise, driven by emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, melting ice will raise sea levels and extreme weather events are expected to become more frequent and intensify, battering vulnerable coastlines around the world, according to the researchers at the European Union’s Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy. If these processes are left unchecked, it could result in the “near extinction” of 50 percent of the globe’s sandy beaches by the year 2100, they said.
The scientists used satellite images to measure how coastlines have evolved over the past 30 years. They then used various projections of sea level rise to model how beaches and shores could be affected in the future.
According to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, average global sea levels could rise by 0.95 feet to 3.61 feet by the end of this century.
But the researchers found that the severity of damage to the world’s sandy beaches, which occupy more than one-third of global coastlines, was dependent on how much the global temperatures could rise, making the rate of greenhouse gas emissions a major factor.
