Damage to the coastal ecosystem
The most prominent impact is the damage to coastal ecosystems around the globe. Coastal ecosystems are significant to humans, animals, and plants. It provides us services within four categories: provisioning, regulating, cultural, supporting services (Lakshmi, 2021). As the coastal ecosystem takes up a lot of space in our lives, the impacts are enormous. “The impacts of anthropogenic climate change so far include decreased ocean productivity, altered food web dynamics, reduced abundance of habitat-forming species, shifting species distributions, and a greater incidence of disease. Although there is considerable uncertainty about the spatial and temporal details, climate change is clearly and fundamentally altering ocean ecosystems. Further change will continue to create enormous challenges and costs for societies worldwide, particularly those in developing countries” (Hoegh-Guldberg, 2010), as it is clarified, the marine ecosystems have already been damaged severely. The single change will be very challenging. Since marine and coastal ecosystems are deeply related to each other, the impacts on oceans are almost the same as the impacts on nearby the parts where the land meets the sea. To illustrate, it is widely known that the rise of sea level causes the increase of flood and submergence, erosion, salinization of surface and ground waters, and lost habitat for a lot of plants and animals, especially species who reside on or thrive only in a cold area (n.d.).
Wet land lose
Illustration of coastal wetland loss with sea level rise. Reprinted from Dean (2008)
Wetlands are an indispensable part of our natural environment. They provide habitats for fish and wildlife, improve water quality, control floods, recharge groundwater, and mitigate climate change (EPA, 2020). At 1%/year, however, coastal wetlands are already decreasing rapidly. Many factors account for the loss of wetlands, though, the damage followed by the SLR is colossal. According to the report of Brian, Susmita, and Benoit, the researchers have found that from 38cm to 1m of rising in global sea level would lead to 32% ~ 44% losses of global coastal wetlands (Blankespoor, 2014).
Effect on coastal areas
The influence of the sea-level rise on coastal zone causes extreme damage. The coastal zone is a major focus of human habitation and economic activity. Followed by the investigation of OECD, for 1990, it is estimated that 1.2 billion (or 23%) of the world’s population lived within 100km horizontally and 100m vertically near-coastal area (Nicholls, 2003). Unfortunately, as time goes by, people have settled nearby the coastline along with urbanization. The problem is that rising sea levels could encroach in the residential areas thus causing a lot of problems to the surroundings of the spot. Low-lying coastal areas are most sensitive to sea-level rise, particularly deltaic and small island settings (Mambra, 2021). Before we realized the seriousness of SLR, already, flooding is forcing people who are included in low-lying coastal areas to move to higher ground and let millions of them in a vulnerable position from flood risk. Not only does SLR pose the greatest threat to major cities around the world, but also swallowed low-lying islands leading to the disappearance of a considerable amount of land areas and even some countries. For example, according to the research of the treehugger, including a few central cities of states in America: Houston, New Orleans, and Miami, a lot of countries such as Thailand, the Netherland, Vietnam are highly affected by the sea level rise (Marabito, 2021). These places have already had a record of flood or had a risk of getting sink. Unfortunately, issues that caused major cities around the world to start to sink combined with the rising sea levels and are boosting their disappearance. Furthermore, many small sizes of countries like, republic of Kiribati, Maldives, Fiji, and lots of islands that were renowned for tourism are subsiding (Butler, 2021). As the sea level keeps rising, followed by the study of Trine (Jonassen, 2020), “For every centimeter the sea level rises, one million more people will have to evacuate”, mass migration to higher areas and the sink of islands with a rapid pace are expected for its consequence.
Indirect damage
Besides the direct damage of it, atmospheric phenomena stand out intimidating the population accompanied with the alteration of a higher sea level. The increase of sea levels provides the heavy rains and strong winds contribute to more powerful, severe, and greater hurricanes and typhoons to devour everything in their path (Nunez, 2021). The damage caused by the SLR is beyond words. To make matters worse, the damages ensued by the devastation of it, remain and nip the hope in the bud. As they break the backbone of the tourism industry (Mambra, 2021), at the same time, the cost for recovery and preventing further injuries, result in immense financial losses. According to the founding of Dr. Jevrejeva from the NOC, “If warming is not mitigated and follows the RCP8.5 sea level rise projections, the global annual flood costs without adaptation will increase to US$ 14 trillion per year for a median sea-level rise of 0.86m, and up to US$ 27 trillion per year for 1.8m. This would account for 2.8% of global GDP in 2100”, (NOC, 2018), the enormous amount of money will cost. However, because the whole population has already crossed the limit, it is impossible to suddenly stop the sea from rising. The researchers predict that from 1990 to 2100, it seems to keep rising, which was 8cm, up to 88cm with a mid-estimate of 48cm, which will end up with a huge economic loss (Nicholls, 2003).