Originally Posted by petromax
Thank you, that great information.
AOD is mean sea level at the sea observatory in Cornwall. If we assume mean sea level is the same in Liverpool and subtract half the highest common tidal range (ie 4.5 metre) that means The Strand is frequently only 2m above the water in the River.
All agree that the present rate of sea level increase will itself increase but there is wide disagreement about how much. Only the most optimistic estimates have it rising by 0.5m in the next 100 years.
Until recent years it was thought that the West Antarctic ice sheet (WAIS) will stay intact and fail by melting - this would take hundred if not thousands of years because there is so much energy in the latent heat of melting. However, a recent Scientific American article raised the spectre that research suggests it could fail not by melting but by avalanching. Right now the probability looks maybe 50/50 over 50 years. This would move most of the ice off the land so it becomes floating. Indeed there is a positive feedback effect in that a lot of it sits on land today but if sea levels rise it would be floating.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=...iet-ice&page=3
If the WAIS does fail (lose structural integrity) then sea levels would rise somewhere between 4.5 and 7 metres causing major worldwide catastrophe since avalanches move with a huge average speed so the sea level rise would occur over a period of just a mere few days. Thankfully, the EAST Antarctic ice sheet is not even slightly threatened - if that went into the sea (won't happen) the effects would be cataclysmic rather than catastrophic (60 metres or so?).
The good news in this is that scientific research will prevent us from being blindsided, we will see this event coming before it happens. Hopefully designers of the new tower blocks being built on the Riverside have learned their lesson from New Orleans and will not be so stupid as to put standby generators with fuel at or below ground level.
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