Ice Melt and Sea Level Rise

We are in a boat in a fjord surrounded, absolutely surrounded, by icebergs and you can probably hear them, these little icebergs. Some not so little and I can see straight ahead of me where they've all come off. This ice sheet, the Greenland ice sheet, one edge of which has spilled out into this fjord. A cliff wall of ice and chunks of that are clearly coming off, carving off they say, into this water. I'm Marnie Chesterton and you're listening to the second part of our CrowdScience special from Greenland, which has the dubious honour of being ground zero for the world's melting ice and sea level rise. In the last show we answered the question 'How long before all the ice melts?' and we found some pretty shocking stuff. We think the feature of the Greenland ice sheet is that it's going to darken over bigger areas so there are going to be more melting ice surfaces in the future. We found that no matter what future trajectory there is, high or low emission scenario, Greenland will deliver at least 27 centimetres of sea level rise. That sea level commitment's only going to grow. And as the water gets warmer it expands and that was actually our primary contributor to sea level rise so far. That process will also continue over many centuries because it takes a long time for the heat in the atmosphere to work its way down into the deep parts of the ocean which are cooler. The icebergs that I can touch with my hand right now, they're not going to be here in the coming decades, they are melting and that's been worrying our CrowdScience listener Johan. I remember growing up, I went to the kindergarten there and we always had the food prepared at the kindergarten and there was always fish or seal or whale. So you were born in Greenland. A long time ago, yeah. And where do you live now? I live in Slagelse in Denmark. And what's your question for CrowdScience? My question was 'Where do we go to live when the poles have melted away?' Is that something that you're particularly concerned about? Not on my behalf actually but on my children's behalf and on their children's behalf. So the next generations. I mean I don't see us reaching our goals anytime soon and all science points to that if we don't reach our goal I think by 2030 we've reached point of no return right. I have to say Johan it's not looking great. So just want to check Johan you're in Denmark. There's a lot of coast in Denmark. How high above sea level are you? Not much because I live like three kilometres from the beach, so... Oh you're potentially in danger zone. Do you have any idea about where we should move to when the seas get too high? Have you thought this? Maybe some of the completely dried out places would be actually habitable like deserts or mountain ranges. Maybe what we actually need to prepare for is living in the water. CrowdScience has already covered the feasibility of living underwater and in space. You can find those in our extensive back catalogue. But in short, humans fare best on the planet we evolved on. However parts of places like Jakarta, Sierra Leone, Bangladesh and the Netherlands are already going underwater. As we learned last week, the Greenland ice sheet, along with Antarctica and all the little glaciers around the world, are melting quickly. If they all melted completely this would lead to about 70 metres of sea level rise. That won't happen in our lifetimes. In fact it would take a minimum of 1,000 years scientists estimate to melt completely. However, we're currently on course for a metre of sea level rise this century, which is still a problem. Before we start hunting down new homes, it's worth spending a few minutes talking about how scientists work out who will be affected as the ice melts, because it's not as simple as saying sea level is going to rise by a metre and I live two meters above the sea so I'll be fine. Sea levels do not rise equally. Ruth Mottram, who we met in the last episode, is a climate scientist for the Danish Meteorological Institute and she explained why. I think this is one of the most important insights that we've had in the last couple of decades. The sea level doesn't rise evenly all around the world. It really is important to understand where the water is coming from. So I live in Denmark, we're in the Northern Hemisphere and you might think that our sea level rise is coming from Greenland because that's our closest ice sheet but actually it's not it's coming from Antarctica and it's coming from Alaska and it's coming from Patagonia. There are a number of reasons why it isn't distributed equally, but you can think of an ice sheet as a kind of big block of ice sitting on land or just above land and it's kind of got a gravitational attraction, it's like a magnet. So the water moves closer to that block of ice but as that block gets smaller and smaller there's not such a strong attraction and not such a strong pull, so the water kind of sloshes back to the other side of the world and redistributes itself evenly. So it's really important, if you live within a few metres of sea level like I do, to understand where is your sea level rise coming from, how quickly are the glaciers melting in Greenland and Antarctica. That's bonkers to think that if a lot of the sea level rise is coming from the Greenland ice sheet melting that's actually going to have more of an effect on places that are further away. Yes so the Greenland ice sheet melt is really going to affect Asia, especially Chinese seaports, India, those areas are really going to be affected by Greenland ice sheet melt. Iceland and Greenland will also be very affected by the melt from Antarctica. So given that we can see that Antarctic is starting to change quite fast, I think we have to really understand how these two ice sheets interact. So I mean when you think of water levels going up and down I think of water in a swimming pool and it all stays at the same level. So around the earth that's really not how sea level works? Well on average it does but of course we also have many other processes, so it's not just gravity which is a really big one, we expect to see changes in ocean currents and in winds and that will also affect the way that sea levels rise. One of the things that we also need to remember is that it's not the average sea level rise that's important, we can also get storm surges. So we really need to have good weather forecasts and good ocean forecasts to be able to predict these things and to adapt to them. Well considering Johan is already so close to the coast, perhaps we should start with an idea that might make him feel at home. Maybe a solution would be to try and live on the water. Some nations threatened by rising seas have already started constructing new islands as others go underwater. But what would life be like on an artificial island, essentially building up your home to stay above the waves? Luckily for us this is the BBC World Service so I have a network of colleagues around the world who I can call up for favours. Rafael Rojas from BBC Mundo is based in Miami, Florida in the US and I set him the challenge of investigating manmade island living. So let's call him up and check in. Hi Rafael it's Marnie. We're working on this episode of CrowdScience about where we should move to when all the world's ice melts. Rafael where did you go for us. Well I'm from Colombia and there is one place that might be of interest in a world with way too much water. It's an artificial island, a place where people have really learned how to live with water. OK sell it to me. I want a proper sense of what life is like. Welcome to Santa Cruz del Islote, off Colombia's northern coast. Just one hour away from the quaint and sleepy town of Tolu by boat, it is easy to forget your sorrows in the turquoise waters of the Caribbean. The small island is covered in brightly painted homes of pink, yellow, lime green and ocean blue. Legend goes that in the 1870s, native fishermen happened upon the coral outcropping and spent the night there. They decided to build an island there to live permanently because as there were no marshes or beaches, they didn't have any problems with mosquitoes. Some 50 years ago, before cement and steel, locals used wood to build retention walls and we use the same seashells they managed to pick every day as a filler. In fact the locals used to use dry sticks, even garbage that the ocean broke up and used them as a fillers too. That was the way they managed to chisel away metres of land in the ocean. That's Alexander Atencio, or Prophet Alex as he's known. He teaches environmental sustainability at the local school where kids can actually attend primary and secondary school without leaving the island. When you build your own island there are limits to how big you can make it. This one's roughly the size of a football pitch, so it's pretty small but that has its benefits. There are no cars, no motorcycles, so you don't have all that traffic noise that you get in a city like Miami or London. There are a few small snags to living here though, like the lack of running water but if you're resourceful enough to build your own island you can find a solution to anything. When we use the water we install gutters, which run down from the roofs of the houses and fill the tanks with rain water. Every time it rains here it's a moment of joy, it's a party because everyone is filling their tanks. People have here a nice custom of jumping into the ocean before washing so they can save resources. It's a beautiful acknowledgment that the ocean is their livelihoods. Electricity is also a bit scarce here. Locals only have service between 2 and 4 pm and then from 6.30 pm to 7 am and the reason it is divided like this during the day is that electricity is powered by the sun in the day and at night with diesel fuel. We have 240 solar panels and a 150 kilowatt diesel plant. The panels are turned on four to five hours a day because the battery storage system is damaged. Sebastian Martinez, another local leader, explains that relying on each other is pivotal to maximise the use of resources. No one needs anything here because if someone needs anything they have the community, no matter our differences. So come embrace the warm waters of the Caribbean in Santa Cruz del Islote. Close-knit communities are the key to successful island living no matter where that island is, but this particular corner of paradise still comes with challenges right? Well it's not that climate change is not going to be an issue here. Waters around the island are warming and they're becoming more acidic as the CO2 dissolves into the oceans. This means that fish are moving out and underwater creatures with hard shells are having a difficult time making those shells and thus surviving. Remember that those shells they use as filling to create the island and while this is a culture and community that is very comfortable with the seas, like any place in the world that's on the ocean, even this manmade island that's been there for 150 years is going to have to adapt. The good news for residents is that they're well equipped to live with the water. Who knows, maybe someday this is what Miami will have to become. To get away from all this unwelcome water, I reckon we need some serious height and on Earth you can't get higher than the Himalayas. Time to get some help from a reporter considerably closer to Everest than most of us, Furkan Khan in India. Is there anywhere local that she reckons might be good for listener Johan to retreat to. Come with me to Ladakh, a region in Northern India that's one of the highest regions in the world at 3,000 metres above sea level. Ladakh literally means the land of high passes. I am standing on a rocky hill outside a 17th century palace. Beneath me, the city of Leh is bustling with tourists. Far in the distance high glacial peaks shine under the sun. Historically a cold desert region, Ladakh is warming as the planet heats up but that's not such a bad thing considering temperatures here can get down to minus 50 degrees celsius and in some parts people and their cattle have to stay inside for almost half of the year. In the last couple of years, the temperatures in the region have been rising. Last year the mercury breached 30 degree celsius, something that is very unusual here. Here people farm in the deep valleys and high plains. The change in temperature means that the growing season here has become longer and access to improved farming technology like widespread use of greenhouses is opening up the opportunity to grow more food here too. So it's becoming more self-reliant. The change in temperature also means that a greater variety of crops and fruits are able to grow in the Ladakh now, as compared to earlier explains Professor Mohammad Din. He has been running an organisation in Ladakh for the last 17 years working on climate change, sustainable development and health hygiene and nutrition in rural Ladakh. We never used to grow these apples which you grow in Kashmir which is growing so well. Not only apples, there are other fruits, cherries, strawberries, these all have come. Din also told me that the people are much happier as the winters have become less extreme in the region and the working season has extended. Ladakh is also opening up to a lot of development projects, like solar power plants and might soon become a clean energy source for the rest of the country. Local researchers and engineers are also experimenting with resource efficient building techniques in their daily lives, like making efficiently designed houses that do not require air conditioning or heating through the seasons. All this awaits you in Ladakh. Right Furkan you've made it sound like a really good option. There is one problem I can think of - that glistening glacier that you mentioned. I feel like climate change might cause some problems there right? Absolutely, this region has relied on glaciers for water in the past to feed its lakes and its lush green fields but much of that ice is melting now at an alarming rate and water is evaporating in the region, which already doesn't receive much rain or snow, just eight centimetres per year and at the current rate more than one third of the Himalayan glaciers will be lost by this century. P eople will struggle to irrigate their new found crops and even to find drinking water. Here's Professor Din again. Wherever a village has been established, normally these are established in the lap of a mountain, just above in the mountain there's a glacier. This glacier will feed water to the village and the size of the village is determined by the size of the glacier in the mountain. You know because of the climate change these glaciers are melting. A lot of small glaciers have already melted and finished. The problem is when short bursts of severe rainfall hit this dry terrain it has a tendency to turn into flash floods and landslides which threatens human lives and also washes away the fertile farmland. Here's Professor Din again. In 2010, we had a very severe cloudburst and then we really lost hundreds of people here in Leh. At that time about 10-15 villages, this flood it covered their whole agricultural land. So it really took a lot of time to recover. As if this wasn't enough Marnie the only city in the region Leh has started facing further water shortages because of the region being a popular tourist destination for Indian and international travellers. So does that mean that there's anything they can do to solve this problem with the water? Small farming communities and the local villages have been trying in the recent few years to conserve water by freezing the winter water in the form of artificial glaciers. What they do is they are making newer banks further down the glacial line so that water does not just run off and it stays in the same place long enough for it to freeze. I have to ask you Furkan, would you move to Leh in Ladakh? I don't think it's a good idea for the future. It is looking really good now but 10-15 years down the line it might be too hot and just not enough water there. Where are you moving to out of interest? Canada. Lots of space, lots of water. So it seems. You're listening to CrowdScience from the BBC World Service. I'm Marnie Chesterton and I'm on a boat just outside Narsarsuaq, a little village on the edge of Greenland's ice sheet. In front of me is the most stunning sight. I've got icebergs all around me and they've all come off the Greenland ice sheet, one edge of which is tipping out into this fjord in front of me. So some of these small chunks will be melted by the end of today. Some of the the larger chunks will make their way out into the fjord beyond and they are stunning. I mean the colours are just absolutely extraordinary. So there's white icebergs here but the blue ice, the ice at the bottom, has been squashed so much that it squashed a lot of the air bubbles out that make ice white and so you just get these fantastic jewel-like icebergs. Oh that's us hitting another iceberg, sure it's fine. While my producer Sam and I record the sound of icebergs, our boat captain Lars has gone fishing for some. He gives us some to put in a glass. That is the sound of bubbles from atmosphere 5,000 years ago. Towering 75 metres high and reaching 400 metres underwater in front of us, this glacier is just one edge of 1.7 million square kilometres of ice, all of which is at risk of melting. This frozen wall of water could impact coastal communities and hundreds of millions of people in the coming decades. All right back to the drawing board or in our case map of the world. What about North America? Loads of room up around Canada and the US border, but it's hard work trying to find somewhere that's not too hot, that's got enough fresh water and isn't at risk of becoming a desert. If only someone had done all the hard work and put it on an easily usable interface. I am Matt Fitzpatrick. I am professor and associate director for research at the Appalachian Laboratory, which is part of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. I'm what you would call a conservation biogeographer. So biogeography is basically the study of the distribution of life on Earth. So I'm curious about where organisms live and why they live there and in particular how climate change might rearrange the distribution of life on Earth. And as part of that you made a map didn't you. That's right so the map I made was basically a tool that answers the question 'What will my hometown or the city that I live in feel like after six decades of climate change in the year about 2080 or so?' So we're calling you from Greenland right now and we're trying to figure out where one of our listeners and maybe the rest of us too should move to after the world's ice melts. So according to your map, where is the best bit? So you know based on our analyses I would say the best bets are moving towards the poles. You know Canada is known for its cooler climates, it's known for its abundant fresh water and largely free of other natural disasters that we might worry about increasing with climate change, like very extreme storms, hurricanes, cyclones but all that said no place is going to escape the impacts of climate change. All right so I've got this map open and we'll link to it on the CrowdScience page so listeners can check it out too/ Now I'm quite fond of Chicago, so I'm just going to find that on the map and it says for high emissions Chicago's climate in 2080 will feel most like today's climate in Lansing, Kansas and the typical summer in Lansing, Kansas is three degrees warmer and 13 per cent wetter than summer in Chicago. So I don't know, is that good? So I guess you know we should clarify here what the the map is doing is answering the question 'If I stay in Chicago and I live there till 2080, what is Chicago going to feel like?' Well the place today in current times that has a climate most similar to what we expect in 2080 in Chicago is Lansing, Kansas. And then on your map you've got a high emission scenario or the path we're on now and there's a reduced emission scenario. So for the high emissions the difference between kind of current climates and future climates is a shift of about 850 kilometres for the reduced emission scenarios it's about half that. It turns out to be around 500 kilometres or so. OK I'm going south and I'm going to go New Orleans because I know that that's pretty low-lying. For high emissions New Orleans climate in 2080 will feel most like today's climate near Westchase, Florida but I couldn't help but notice they're both kind of coastal. It's quite possible that by 2080 both of those places are going to be underwater. Yeah and so the analyses that I did did not factor in sea level rise and yeah so if you're in New Orleans you should be worried about sea level rise and the same certainly goes for most of Florida. And could you lay a sea level rise on top in a later iteration? We certainly could, that's something we've considered doing. You know the goal here was to communicate to people the magnitude of climate change we're expecting. We hear often the Earth is expected to warm three degrees celsius or five degrees fahrenheit and when it's presented in those sorts of numbers it doesn't really sound so bad, it's like OK what's the big deal if it's a few degrees warmer, but that's an average change globally and what this app does is it translates that into a more local meaningful context so people can say wow changing from Chicago to the southern midwest or New York City becoming like the deep southeastern United States that's really a big change in climate, even if the numbers don't seem that big. And do you want kind of municipal planners, if they're from Chicago, go to Kansas and just have a look at how people in those different cities have their setup different to Chicago, so maybe there are things that they can take that can help them prepare, future proof. I would hope that city planners and the like would look at this and say wow you know Chicago's climate is expected to change by a lot, it's expected to change rapidly yet all of the infrastructure and all of the sort of building standards and regulations and the sizing of air conditioning and cooling units were all written up and put in place for a climate that's not going to exist in Chicago anymore and so the question is how do we adapt that infrastructure to deal with these new climates that are going to be warmer, there's going to be more extreme events and it's highly likely that the existing infrastructure is going to be challenged to deal with those kinds of events. Now you research how species move and migrate. What, other than humans, might be moving into Canada and the upper midwest? Broadly speaking, what we see is organisms moving more towards the poles and also up in elevation in mountainous regions. Often these are organisms that concern us because they're pests or they're things like mosquitoes that can carry tropical diseases. Certainly very mobile organisms that can fly are showing very pronounced responses to recent warming. So if we suggest that our listener moves to Canada, he should probably pack some bug spray. Yeah I guess Canada is already known for its insects. The difference here is that as things warm up those biting insects could be more likely to carry and transmit tropical diseases that were previously not a problem. If people from other parts of the world want to see what their region will feel like, is there anything that they can do? We are working on getting a new set of analyses out that are global. The first set were just in North America but we have expanded that analysis to over 2,000 cites. So some of these locations on the global map they don't have a city they'll be like but instead they say 'novel climate'. Well some places, especially those near the equator and places that are already known to be very hot, they basically become so warm that there is no place currently on Earth that has the climate that we expect in the future in that location. That sounds way worse than the novel climate makes it sound. You know we try not to be alarmist, we're trying to use terminology that is descriptive and accurate, but I agree with you. We've seen this recently in places like India where there's these severe heat waves and you know these are places where millions or even billions of people are living and the fact that they're going to become near uninhabitable because of their warmth is a substantial problem that we have to deal with as a society. Where does it all make you want to go before 2080? You know I'm a guy that likes long cold winters and so climate change where I live will probably make those things a thing of the past. So if it were me I would say like northern New England would probably be my choice. I would definitely move to Canada but from a citizenship perspective New England's probably easier. Well exactly, I mean we haven't even touched on the politics of how people in Canada might feel about the world wanting to move to their country. Though I joke about an influx of Canadian citizenship applications, which is in fact already being discussed in that country, there's a load of global upheaval coming that's outside the realm of our science programme. Luckily for Johan there's one more place to consider. A place he wouldn't even need to get a new passport to move to. It even uses Danish currency. Greenland. The ice here is retreating after all and when ice this big and this thick melts away something called post-glacial rebound happens. That's when the land actually rises up because it's no longer under the weight of an ice sheet or glacier. It's happened to many northern regions of Europe and North America that were once covered in glaciers and it will happen someday here in Greenland. So that's one thing the world's largest island has got going for it. As the ice sheet here melts it also exposes more land and the resources of that land for farming, mining or just living space. So could Johan just move back to the place where he was born. He did tell us one thing that's changed a lot since he was a kid. I remember you know we're very dependent on ships coming into the harbour and delivering goods. So all winter we didn't have fresh greens and vegetables, fruits. Sometimes we ran out of toilet paper but that was because the harbour was actually frozen over. Last time I heard from acquaintances we had up there that didn't happen anymore. The harbour just didn't freeze over so ships could come in all year round. So we're crossing over to an even more remote community, most of whom are sheep farmers. Let's find out what the locals think. I met sheep farmer Ellen Fiederickson to see how all these things were changing her and her husband's farm. So I'm hoping this is our farm. You can see the barns and the tractors. So this is the end of the road and I can see sheep, so I think we might be on the right track. Hey are you Ellen? Hey I'm Marnie. Lovely to meet you. Now this is a place that gets so cold in the winter that sheep have to stay in the barn. So I'd think that some warmer weather might make things easier for Ellen and her husband Carl. You'll occasionally hear her translating for him. He said when the climate started to change the drought started to come, so all the grass almost died because of no rain and it was in the beginning of 2006 the drought started to to be here in summer. It didn't rain in three months for example. A place like this has water everywhere - melting off the ice sheet in the distance, looming in the clouds, bobbing past as icebergs in the fjord but there's actually been a drought here in recent years, which means farmers like Ellen and Carl have to import hay for their sheep all the way from Denmark. Sometimes they also have to bring water up from the town for their house and stable. In this place that Norseman settled 1,000 years ago things are now uncertain. And there's another challenge here too. The fjord used to freeze but now after 2006 the weather has changed completely. These years there has been so many hot winds, storms with more and more extreme high speed so it totally broke the new ice in the autumn. I came here in 1984 and the fjord used to freeze so we can use it for example we can go to Narsarsuaq by snowmobiles or ATVs or cars if the ice is safe enough. Then we could go to Igaliku the next settlement and so it's easier to move around but now it's more difficult because in winter it's hard to use our speed boats to go around and the ice is not safe enough to walk on or drive on, so sometimes we just can't get anywhere in winter. The ice is no longer useful as a winter road for locals here. So what today's trip around the globe shows is that nowhere is perfect. Climate will change every place in some way and climate change will affect everyone but as the climate scientists we spoke to told us every bit we can reduce the greenhouse gases we're emitting today means less ice melt and sea level rise in the long term. International and national policies, like those being discussed at the annual UN climate conference in Egypt right now, will help determine what our world will look like in the future. As Ruth Mottram told us last week: I think the biggest uncertainty is really burning of fossil fuels and carbon dioxide emissions, so the faster you can reduce your use of fossil fuels and all the other things that contribute to climate change, then the lower the sea is going to rise and that's around about a metre in some high-end scenarios. It might be as little as half a metre in some of the lower end scenarios. And half a metre's difference could mean a lot of homes and lives saved. If you missed the show last week on how fast the ice is melting you can find past CrowdScience episodes on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts and while you're there why not check out The Climate Question, a podcast all about finding the best ways to respond to climate change. Now there's just one thing left to do for this show. Johan over to you for the credits. That's it from this edition of CrowdScience. Today's question was from me, Johan from Denmark. If you have a question about climate change, the future of humanity or anything else to do with science get in touch with the CrowdScience team at [email protected]. This episode was produced by Sam Baker and presented by Marnie Chesterton. Thanks for listening.

We are in a boat in a fjord surrounded, absolutely surrounded, by icebergs and you can probably hear them, these little icebergs. Some not so little and I can see straight ahead of me where they've all come off. This ice sheet, the Greenland ice sheet, one edge of which has spilled out into this fjord. A cliff wall of ice and chunks of that are clearly coming off, carving off they say, into this water. I'm Marnie Chesterton and you're listening to the second part of our CrowdScience special from Greenland, which has the dubious honour of being ground zero for the world's melting ice and sea level rise. In the last show we answered the question 'How long before all the ice melts?' and we found some pretty shocking stuff. We think the feature of the Greenland ice sheet is that it's going to darken over bigger areas so there are going to be more melting ice surfaces in the future. We found that no matter what future trajectory there is, high or low emission scenario, Greenland will deliver at least 27 centimetres of sea level rise. That sea level commitment's only going to grow. And as the water gets warmer it expands and that was actually our primary contributor to sea level rise so far. That process will also continue over many centuries because it takes a long time for the heat in the atmosphere to work its way down into the deep parts of the ocean which are cooler. The icebergs that I can touch with my hand right now, they're not going to be here in the coming decades, they are melting and that's been worrying our CrowdScience listener Johan. I remember growing up, I went to the kindergarten there and we always had the food prepared at the kindergarten and there was always fish or seal or whale. So you were born in Greenland. A long time ago, yeah. And where do you live now? I live in Slagelse in Denmark. And what's your question for CrowdScience? My question was 'Where do we go to live when the poles have melted away?' Is that something that you're particularly concerned about? Not on my behalf actually but on my children's behalf and on their children's behalf. So the next generations. I mean I don't see us reaching our goals anytime soon and all science points to that if we don't reach our goal I think by 2030 we've reached point of no return right. I have to say Johan it's not looking great. So just want to check Johan you're in Denmark. There's a lot of coast in Denmark. How high above sea level are you? Not much because I live like three kilometres from the beach, so... Oh you're potentially in danger zone. Do you have any idea about where we should move to when the seas get too high? Have you thought this? Maybe some of the completely dried out places would be actually habitable like deserts or mountain ranges. Maybe what we actually need to prepare for is living in the water. CrowdScience has already covered the feasibility of living underwater and in space. You can find those in our extensive back catalogue. But in short, humans fare best on the planet we evolved on. However parts of places like Jakarta, Sierra Leone, Bangladesh and the Netherlands are already going underwater. As we learned last week, the Greenland ice sheet, along with Antarctica and all the little glaciers around the world, are melting quickly. If they all melted completely this would lead to about 70 metres of sea level rise. That won't happen in our lifetimes. In fact it would take a minimum of 1,000 years scientists estimate to melt completely. However, we're currently on course for a metre of sea level rise this century, which is still a problem. Before we start hunting down new homes, it's worth spending a few minutes talking about how scientists work out who will be affected as the ice melts, because it's not as simple as saying sea level is going to rise by a metre and I live two meters above the sea so I'll be fine. Sea levels do not rise equally. Ruth Mottram, who we met in the last episode, is a climate scientist for the Danish Meteorological Institute and she explained why. I think this is one of the most important insights that we've had in the last couple of decades. The sea level doesn't rise evenly all around the world. It really is important to understand where the water is coming from. So I live in Denmark, we're in the Northern Hemisphere and you might think that our sea level rise is coming from Greenland because that's our closest ice sheet but actually it's not it's coming from Antarctica and it's coming from Alaska and it's coming from Patagonia. There are a number of reasons why it isn't distributed equally, but you can think of an ice sheet as a kind of big block of ice sitting on land or just above land and it's kind of got a gravitational attraction, it's like a magnet. So the water moves closer to that block of ice but as that block gets smaller and smaller there's not such a strong attraction and not such a strong pull, so the water kind of sloshes back to the other side of the world and redistributes itself evenly. So it's really important, if you live within a few metres of sea level like I do, to understand where is your sea level rise coming from, how quickly are the glaciers melting in Greenland and Antarctica. That's bonkers to think that if a lot of the sea level rise is coming from the Greenland ice sheet melting that's actually going to have more of an effect on places that are further away. Yes so the Greenland ice sheet melt is really going to affect Asia, especially Chinese seaports, India, those areas are really going to be affected by Greenland ice sheet melt. Iceland and Greenland will also be very affected by the melt from Antarctica. So given that we can see that Antarctic is starting to change quite fast, I think we have to really understand how these two ice sheets interact. So I mean when you think of water levels going up and down I think of water in a swimming pool and it all stays at the same level. So around the earth that's really not how sea level works? Well on average it does but of course we also have many other processes, so it's not just gravity which is a really big one, we expect to see changes in ocean currents and in winds and that will also affect the way that sea levels rise. One of the things that we also need to remember is that it's not the average sea level rise that's important, we can also get storm surges. So we really need to have good weather forecasts and good ocean forecasts to be able to predict these things and to adapt to them. Well considering Johan is already so close to the coast, perhaps we should start with an idea that might make him feel at home. Maybe a solution would be to try and live on the water. Some nations threatened by rising seas have already started constructing new islands as others go underwater. But what would life be like on an artificial island, essentially building up your home to stay above the waves? Luckily for us this is the BBC World Service so I have a network of colleagues around the world who I can call up for favours. Rafael Rojas from BBC Mundo is based in Miami, Florida in the US and I set him the challenge of investigating manmade island living. So let's call him up and check in. Hi Rafael it's Marnie. We're working on this episode of CrowdScience about where we should move to when all the world's ice melts. Rafael where did you go for us. Well I'm from Colombia and there is one place that might be of interest in a world with way too much water. It's an artificial island, a place where people have really learned how to live with water. OK sell it to me. I want a proper sense of what life is like. Welcome to Santa Cruz del Islote, off Colombia's northern coast. Just one hour away from the quaint and sleepy town of Tolu by boat, it is easy to forget your sorrows in the turquoise waters of the Caribbean. The small island is covered in brightly painted homes of pink, yellow, lime green and ocean blue. Legend goes that in the 1870s, native fishermen happened upon the coral outcropping and spent the night there. They decided to build an island there to live permanently because as there were no marshes or beaches, they didn't have any problems with mosquitoes. Some 50 years ago, before cement and steel, locals used wood to build retention walls and we use the same seashells they managed to pick every day as a filler. In fact the locals used to use dry sticks, even garbage that the ocean broke up and used them as a fillers too. That was the way they managed to chisel away metres of land in the ocean. That's Alexander Atencio, or Prophet Alex as he's known. He teaches environmental sustainability at the local school where kids can actually attend primary and secondary school without leaving the island. When you build your own island there are limits to how big you can make it. This one's roughly the size of a football pitch, so it's pretty small but that has its benefits. There are no cars, no motorcycles, so you don't have all that traffic noise that you get in a city like Miami or London. There are a few small snags to living here though, like the lack of running water but if you're resourceful enough to build your own island you can find a solution to anything. When we use the water we install gutters, which run down from the roofs of the houses and fill the tanks with rain water. Every time it rains here it's a moment of joy, it's a party because everyone is filling their tanks. People have here a nice custom of jumping into the ocean before washing so they can save resources. It's a beautiful acknowledgment that the ocean is their livelihoods. Electricity is also a bit scarce here. Locals only have service between 2 and 4 pm and then from 6.30 pm to 7 am and the reason it is divided like this during the day is that electricity is powered by the sun in the day and at night with diesel fuel. We have 240 solar panels and a 150 kilowatt diesel plant. The panels are turned on four to five hours a day because the battery storage system is damaged. Sebastian Martinez, another local leader, explains that relying on each other is pivotal to maximise the use of resources. No one needs anything here because if someone needs anything they have the community, no matter our differences. So come embrace the warm waters of the Caribbean in Santa Cruz del Islote. Close-knit communities are the key to successful island living no matter where that island is, but this particular corner of paradise still comes with challenges right? Well it's not that climate change is not going to be an issue here. Waters around the island are warming and they're becoming more acidic as the CO2 dissolves into the oceans. This means that fish are moving out and underwater creatures with hard shells are having a difficult time making those shells and thus surviving. Remember that those shells they use as filling to create the island and while this is a culture and community that is very comfortable with the seas, like any place in the world that's on the ocean, even this manmade island that's been there for 150 years is going to have to adapt. The good news for residents is that they're well equipped to live with the water. Who knows, maybe someday this is what Miami will have to become. To get away from all this unwelcome water, I reckon we need some serious height and on Earth you can't get higher than the Himalayas. Time to get some help from a reporter considerably closer to Everest than most of us, Furkan Khan in India. Is there anywhere local that she reckons might be good for listener Johan to retreat to. Come with me to Ladakh, a region in Northern India that's one of the highest regions in the world at 3,000 metres above sea level. Ladakh literally means the land of high passes. I am standing on a rocky hill outside a 17th century palace. Beneath me, the city of Leh is bustling with tourists. Far in the distance high glacial peaks shine under the sun. Historically a cold desert region, Ladakh is warming as the planet heats up but that's not such a bad thing considering temperatures here can get down to minus 50 degrees celsius and in some parts people and their cattle have to stay inside for almost half of the year. In the last couple of years, the temperatures in the region have been rising. Last year the mercury breached 30 degree celsius, something that is very unusual here. Here people farm in the deep valleys and high plains. The change in temperature means that the growing season here has become longer and access to improved farming technology like widespread use of greenhouses is opening up the opportunity to grow more food here too. So it's becoming more self-reliant. The change in temperature also means that a greater variety of crops and fruits are able to grow in the Ladakh now, as compared to earlier explains Professor Mohammad Din. He has been running an organisation in Ladakh for the last 17 years working on climate change, sustainable development and health hygiene and nutrition in rural Ladakh. We never used to grow these apples which you grow in Kashmir which is growing so well. Not only apples, there are other fruits, cherries, strawberries, these all have come. Din also told me that the people are much happier as the winters have become less extreme in the region and the working season has extended. Ladakh is also opening up to a lot of development projects, like solar power plants and might soon become a clean energy source for the rest of the country. Local researchers and engineers are also experimenting with resource efficient building techniques in their daily lives, like making efficiently designed houses that do not require air conditioning or heating through the seasons. All this awaits you in Ladakh. Right Furkan you've made it sound like a really good option. There is one problem I can think of - that glistening glacier that you mentioned. I feel like climate change might cause some problems there right? Absolutely, this region has relied on glaciers for water in the past to feed its lakes and its lush green fields but much of that ice is melting now at an alarming rate and water is evaporating in the region, which already doesn't receive much rain or snow, just eight centimetres per year and at the current rate more than one third of the Himalayan glaciers will be lost by this century. P eople will struggle to irrigate their new found crops and even to find drinking water. Here's Professor Din again. Wherever a village has been established, normally these are established in the lap of a mountain, just above in the mountain there's a glacier. This glacier will feed water to the village and the size of the village is determined by the size of the glacier in the mountain. You know because of the climate change these glaciers are melting. A lot of small glaciers have already melted and finished. The problem is when short bursts of severe rainfall hit this dry terrain it has a tendency to turn into flash floods and landslides which threatens human lives and also washes away the fertile farmland. Here's Professor Din again. In 2010, we had a very severe cloudburst and then we really lost hundreds of people here in Leh. At that time about 10-15 villages, this flood it covered their whole agricultural land. So it really took a lot of time to recover. As if this wasn't enough Marnie the only city in the region Leh has started facing further water shortages because of the region being a popular tourist destination for Indian and international travellers. So does that mean that there's anything they can do to solve this problem with the water? Small farming communities and the local villages have been trying in the recent few years to conserve water by freezing the winter water in the form of artificial glaciers. What they do is they are making newer banks further down the glacial line so that water does not just run off and it stays in the same place long enough for it to freeze. I have to ask you Furkan, would you move to Leh in Ladakh? I don't think it's a good idea for the future. It is looking really good now but 10-15 years down the line it might be too hot and just not enough water there. Where are you moving to out of interest? Canada. Lots of space, lots of water. So it seems. You're listening to CrowdScience from the BBC World Service. I'm Marnie Chesterton and I'm on a boat just outside Narsarsuaq, a little village on the edge of Greenland's ice sheet. In front of me is the most stunning sight. I've got icebergs all around me and they've all come off the Greenland ice sheet, one edge of which is tipping out into this fjord in front of me. So some of these small chunks will be melted by the end of today. Some of the the larger chunks will make their way out into the fjord beyond and they are stunning. I mean the colours are just absolutely extraordinary. So there's white icebergs here but the blue ice, the ice at the bottom, has been squashed so much that it squashed a lot of the air bubbles out that make ice white and so you just get these fantastic jewel-like icebergs. Oh that's us hitting another iceberg, sure it's fine. While my producer Sam and I record the sound of icebergs, our boat captain Lars has gone fishing for some. He gives us some to put in a glass. That is the sound of bubbles from atmosphere 5,000 years ago. Towering 75 metres high and reaching 400 metres underwater in front of us, this glacier is just one edge of 1.7 million square kilometres of ice, all of which is at risk of melting. This frozen wall of water could impact coastal communities and hundreds of millions of people in the coming decades. All right back to the drawing board or in our case map of the world. What about North America? Loads of room up around Canada and the US border, but it's hard work trying to find somewhere that's not too hot, that's got enough fresh water and isn't at risk of becoming a desert. If only someone had done all the hard work and put it on an easily usable interface. I am Matt Fitzpatrick. I am professor and associate director for research at the Appalachian Laboratory, which is part of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. I'm what you would call a conservation biogeographer. So biogeography is basically the study of the distribution of life on Earth. So I'm curious about where organisms live and why they live there and in particular how climate change might rearrange the distribution of life on Earth. And as part of that you made a map didn't you. That's right so the map I made was basically a tool that answers the question 'What will my hometown or the city that I live in feel like after six decades of climate change in the year about 2080 or so?' So we're calling you from Greenland right now and we're trying to figure out where one of our listeners and maybe the rest of us too should move to after the world's ice melts. So according to your map, where is the best bit? So you know based on our analyses I would say the best bets are moving towards the poles. You know Canada is known for its cooler climates, it's known for its abundant fresh water and largely free of other natural disasters that we might worry about increasing with climate change, like very extreme storms, hurricanes, cyclones but all that said no place is going to escape the impacts of climate change. All right so I've got this map open and we'll link to it on the CrowdScience page so listeners can check it out too/ Now I'm quite fond of Chicago, so I'm just going to find that on the map and it says for high emissions Chicago's climate in 2080 will feel most like today's climate in Lansing, Kansas and the typical summer in Lansing, Kansas is three degrees warmer and 13 per cent wetter than summer in Chicago. So I don't know, is that good? So I guess you know we should clarify here what the the map is doing is answering the question 'If I stay in Chicago and I live there till 2080, what is Chicago going to feel like?' Well the place today in current times that has a climate most similar to what we expect in 2080 in Chicago is Lansing, Kansas. And then on your map you've got a high emission scenario or the path we're on now and there's a reduced emission scenario. So for the high emissions the difference between kind of current climates and future climates is a shift of about 850 kilometres for the reduced emission scenarios it's about half that. It turns out to be around 500 kilometres or so. OK I'm going south and I'm going to go New Orleans because I know that that's pretty low-lying. For high emissions New Orleans climate in 2080 will feel most like today's climate near Westchase, Florida but I couldn't help but notice they're both kind of coastal. It's quite possible that by 2080 both of those places are going to be underwater. Yeah and so the analyses that I did did not factor in sea level rise and yeah so if you're in New Orleans you should be worried about sea level rise and the same certainly goes for most of Florida. And could you lay a sea level rise on top in a later iteration? We certainly could, that's something we've considered doing. You know the goal here was to communicate to people the magnitude of climate change we're expecting. We hear often the Earth is expected to warm three degrees celsius or five degrees fahrenheit and when it's presented in those sorts of numbers it doesn't really sound so bad, it's like OK what's the big deal if it's a few degrees warmer, but that's an average change globally and what this app does is it translates that into a more local meaningful context so people can say wow changing from Chicago to the southern midwest or New York City becoming like the deep southeastern United States that's really a big change in climate, even if the numbers don't seem that big. And do you want kind of municipal planners, if they're from Chicago, go to Kansas and just have a look at how people in those different cities have their setup different to Chicago, so maybe there are things that they can take that can help them prepare, future proof. I would hope that city planners and the like would look at this and say wow you know Chicago's climate is expected to change by a lot, it's expected to change rapidly yet all of the infrastructure and all of the sort of building standards and regulations and the sizing of air conditioning and cooling units were all written up and put in place for a climate that's not going to exist in Chicago anymore and so the question is how do we adapt that infrastructure to deal with these new climates that are going to be warmer, there's going to be more extreme events and it's highly likely that the existing infrastructure is going to be challenged to deal with those kinds of events. Now you research how species move and migrate. What, other than humans, might be moving into Canada and the upper midwest? Broadly speaking, what we see is organisms moving more towards the poles and also up in elevation in mountainous regions. Often these are organisms that concern us because they're pests or they're things like mosquitoes that can carry tropical diseases. Certainly very mobile organisms that can fly are showing very pronounced responses to recent warming. So if we suggest that our listener moves to Canada, he should probably pack some bug spray. Yeah I guess Canada is already known for its insects. The difference here is that as things warm up those biting insects could be more likely to carry and transmit tropical diseases that were previously not a problem. If people from other parts of the world want to see what their region will feel like, is there anything that they can do? We are working on getting a new set of analyses out that are global. The first set were just in North America but we have expanded that analysis to over 2,000 cites. So some of these locations on the global map they don't have a city they'll be like but instead they say 'novel climate'. Well some places, especially those near the equator and places that are already known to be very hot, they basically become so warm that there is no place currently on Earth that has the climate that we expect in the future in that location. That sounds way worse than the novel climate makes it sound. You know we try not to be alarmist, we're trying to use terminology that is descriptive and accurate, but I agree with you. We've seen this recently in places like India where there's these severe heat waves and you know these are places where millions or even billions of people are living and the fact that they're going to become near uninhabitable because of their warmth is a substantial problem that we have to deal with as a society. Where does it all make you want to go before 2080? You know I'm a guy that likes long cold winters and so climate change where I live will probably make those things a thing of the past. So if it were me I would say like northern New England would probably be my choice. I would definitely move to Canada but from a citizenship perspective New England's probably easier. Well exactly, I mean we haven't even touched on the politics of how people in Canada might feel about the world wanting to move to their country. Though I joke about an influx of Canadian citizenship applications, which is in fact already being discussed in that country, there's a load of global upheaval coming that's outside the realm of our science programme. Luckily for Johan there's one more place to consider. A place he wouldn't even need to get a new passport to move to. It even uses Danish currency. Greenland. The ice here is retreating after all and when ice this big and this thick melts away something called post-glacial rebound happens. That's when the land actually rises up because it's no longer under the weight of an ice sheet or glacier. It's happened to many northern regions of Europe and North America that were once covered in glaciers and it will happen someday here in Greenland. So that's one thing the world's largest island has got going for it. As the ice sheet here melts it also exposes more land and the resources of that land for farming, mining or just living space. So could Johan just move back to the place where he was born. He did tell us one thing that's changed a lot since he was a kid. I remember you know we're very dependent on ships coming into the harbour and delivering goods. So all winter we didn't have fresh greens and vegetables, fruits. Sometimes we ran out of toilet paper but that was because the harbour was actually frozen over. Last time I heard from acquaintances we had up there that didn't happen anymore. The harbour just didn't freeze over so ships could come in all year round. So we're crossing over to an even more remote community, most of whom are sheep farmers. Let's find out what the locals think. I met sheep farmer Ellen Fiederickson to see how all these things were changing her and her husband's farm. So I'm hoping this is our farm. You can see the barns and the tractors. So this is the end of the road and I can see sheep, so I think we might be on the right track. Hey are you Ellen? Hey I'm Marnie. Lovely to meet you. Now this is a place that gets so cold in the winter that sheep have to stay in the barn. So I'd think that some warmer weather might make things easier for Ellen and her husband Carl. You'll occasionally hear her translating for him. He said when the climate started to change the drought started to come, so all the grass almost died because of no rain and it was in the beginning of 2006 the drought started to to be here in summer. It didn't rain in three months for example. A place like this has water everywhere - melting off the ice sheet in the distance, looming in the clouds, bobbing past as icebergs in the fjord but there's actually been a drought here in recent years, which means farmers like Ellen and Carl have to import hay for their sheep all the way from Denmark. Sometimes they also have to bring water up from the town for their house and stable. In this place that Norseman settled 1,000 years ago things are now uncertain. And there's another challenge here too. The fjord used to freeze but now after 2006 the weather has changed completely. These years there has been so many hot winds, storms with more and more extreme high speed so it totally broke the new ice in the autumn. I came here in 1984 and the fjord used to freeze so we can use it for example we can go to Narsarsuaq by snowmobiles or ATVs or cars if the ice is safe enough. Then we could go to Igaliku the next settlement and so it's easier to move around but now it's more difficult because in winter it's hard to use our speed boats to go around and the ice is not safe enough to walk on or drive on, so sometimes we just can't get anywhere in winter. The ice is no longer useful as a winter road for locals here. So what today's trip around the globe shows is that nowhere is perfect. Climate will change every place in some way and climate change will affect everyone but as the climate scientists we spoke to told us every bit we can reduce the greenhouse gases we're emitting today means less ice melt and sea level rise in the long term. International and national policies, like those being discussed at the annual UN climate conference in Egypt right now, will help determine what our world will look like in the future. As Ruth Mottram told us last week: I think the biggest uncertainty is really burning of fossil fuels and carbon dioxide emissions, so the faster you can reduce your use of fossil fuels and all the other things that contribute to climate change, then the lower the sea is going to rise and that's around about a metre in some high-end scenarios. It might be as little as half a metre in some of the lower end scenarios. And half a metre's difference could mean a lot of homes and lives saved. If you missed the show last week on how fast the ice is melting you can find past CrowdScience episodes on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts and while you're there why not check out The Climate Question, a podcast all about finding the best ways to respond to climate change. Now there's just one thing left to do for this show. Johan over to you for the credits. That's it from this edition of CrowdScience. Today's question was from me, Johan from Denmark. If you have a question about climate change, the future of humanity or anything else to do with science get in touch with the CrowdScience team at crowdscience@bbc.co.uk. This episode was produced by Sam Baker and presented by Marnie Chesterton. Thanks for listening.

Transcript for:Ice Melt and Sea Level Rise

Transcript for:
Ice Melt and Sea Level Rise