Sea Level Rise Could Trigger ‘Mass Exodus on a Biblical Scale’, UN Chief Warns
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Loading... - Grayson Bergeron
- 24 Feb 2023
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Speaking to the United Nations Council on Tuesday, Guterres urged governments to act as climate change-fuelled sea level rise threatens the lives of more than 900 million people living in low-lying coastal areas around the world.
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Accelerating sea level rise could displace one in every 10 people on the planet, triggering massive economic, social, and cultural disruptions worldwide, UN Secretary-General António Guterres told the UN Security Council on Tuesday.
He described the predicted dislocation of nearly 900 million people living in low-lying coastal areas as a “mass exodus of entire populations on a biblical scale” that would drive “ever-fiercer competition for fresh water, land and other resources.”
Humans started measuring the level of seas more than 200 years ago and found this to be an important climate indicator of how rapidly global warming is accelerating. Today, sea levels are rising more than twice as quickly as they did for most of the 20th century due to increasing Earth temperatures.
Throughout most of the last century, seas rose at a rate of 1.4mm per year. However, between 2006 and 2015, the rate nearly doubled, reaching about 3.6mm annually. According to last year’s State of the Climate Report by the World Meteorological Organization, in 2020, the sea was at its highest recorded level, with the global mean reaching 91.3mm above the average in 1993, the year that marks the beginning of the satellite altimeter record. Not surprisingly, 2020 was also among the three warmest years the world has ever had with tropical cyclones occurring well above average at the same time. Read More…
