While they only represent a relatively small fraction of total emissions now, greenhouse gasses from air travel are growing rapidly. That said, one largely unanticipated check against their long-term rise may exist, if the potential sea rise effects of the disintegration of the Greenland or West Antarctic ice sheets become manifest.
This clever Google Maps mashup will show you what I mean:
- Vancouver International Airport
- Logan Airport, Boston
- Newark, New Jersey
- La Guardia, New York
- John F. Kennedy, New York
- Hong Kong International Airport
- Changi Aiport, Singapore
- Sydney International Airport
- Amsterdam Airport (no surprise)
- Dubai International Airport
- San Francisco International Airport
- Etc, etc
Adding 7m to global sea levels (consistent with the melting of all of Greenland, all of West Antarctica, or half of each) would definitely drown a lot of runways. The Tokyo and London airports seem likely to be high and dry, though the cities themselves would be far from it.
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Presumably, they will just build dikes around the terminals and runways.
Of all the things the world might lose, I think airports might be the least missed.
Climate change: What’s in the rising tide?
The nitrogen cycle rarely features in the grim litany of things at risk from global warming. Nick Lane reports on research that might change this — with grave consequences for ocean chemistry.
Extending its briny fingers through much of Rhode Island, Narragansett Bay has long juxtaposed man and nature, pollution and purity. Industrialization in the nineteenth century led to the rapid growth of cities such as Providence, a port at the bay’s north end. The area now supports about a million people, all flushing their waste into the pastoral watershed. Reactive nitrogen compounds from treated sewage, industrial waste and fertilizers have poured in for decades, but remained at a relatively constant level for the past 25 years. Nevertheless, set against this steady background, a silent microbial and biochemical transformation has occurred in the bay that could have devastating ecological effects. The cause is pollution, but of an indirect sort — the changes seem to be down to global warming.
For the past three decades, the bottom sediments of the bay have mopped up much of the reactive nitrogen that humans have dumped into it. Although the fraction sequestered had been falling, this valuable natural sink has been protecting the bay and the coastal oceans from the effects of nitrate runoff. But last year the sediments abruptly stopped performing this service. Worse than that, they went into reverse. In a single summer, the bay switched from being a net sink to a net source of nitrates1.
Robinson “Wally” Fulweiler, an oceanographer at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, and her colleagues at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston, were among the first to notice the turning environmental tide. If Narragansett is typical of other bays, they argue, it could be the harbinger of a new threat. Shifting the effect of anthropogenic nitrogen loading beyond the immediate coastal zone could destabilize ocean ecosystems by acidifying the waters, exacerbating harmful algal blooms, killing fish and shellfish, or perhaps even powering a vicious new cycle of global warming. The studies are currently hard to interpret and some say the system is poised to rebalance itself. But if they are wrong, global warming may do more to the oceans than make them rise.
21 “mega-cities” in danger from rising seas
By Cory Doctorow
The nonprofit Worldwatch Institute has released a list of 21 “mega-cities” of 8 million people or more that are in direct danger as a result of global warming and rising seas:
They include Dhaka, Bangladesh; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Shanghai and Tianjin in China; Alexandria and Cairo in Egypt; Mumbai and Kolkata in India; Jakarta, Indonesia; Tokyo and Osaka-Kobe in Japan; Lagos, Nigeria; Karachi, Pakistan; Bangkok, Thailand, and New York and Los Angeles in the United States, according to studies by the United Nations and others.
More than one-tenth of the world’s population, or 643 million people, live in low-lying areas at risk from climate change, say U.S. and European experts. Most imperiled, in descending order, are China, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan, Egypt, the U.S., Thailand and the Philippines.
PDF on coal and 1m of sea level rise in the US
Another mashup:
Highest CO2 Emitting Power Plants in the World
See also:
U.S. miscalculates threat of global warming
Sea-level rise at our doorstep; puts nation at risk
Maps revolutionize study of carbon dioxide emissions
April 8, 2008 12:03 AM
Forecast for big sea level rise
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website, Vienna
Sea levels could rise by up to one-and-a-half metres by the end of this century, according to a new scientific analysis.
Sea Level Rise Maps and GIS Data
Digital animation of what various sea-level rise scenarios might look like for up to six metres is at http://www.cresis.ku.edu/research/data/sea_level_rise.