Military Sees 1,000+ Islands “Uninhabitable” By Mid-Century

The military paid for a study on sea level rise. The results were scary.

Chris Mooney and Brady Dennis, April 25, 2018 (Washington Post)

“More than a thousand low-lying tropical islands risk becoming “uninhabitable” by the middle of the century — or possibly sooner — because of rising sea levels, upending the populations of some island nations and endangering key U.S. military assets…The threats to the islands are twofold. In the long term, the rising seas threaten to inundate the islands entirely. More immediately, as seas rise, the islands will more frequently deal with large waves that crash farther onto the shore, contaminating their drinkable water supplies with ocean saltwater, according to the [U.S. military-supported] research…The U.S. military’s] massive Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site sits, in part, on the atoll island of Roi-Namur — a part of the Marshall Islands and the focus of the research…[It] is part of the vast Kwajalein coral atoll...While seas are rising by 3.2 millimeters per year at the moment and expected to rise even faster in years ahead, Roi-Namur has a good chance of avoiding total inundation this century…[But the new research] suggests that saltwater contamination of the island’s aquifers would probably occur at 40 centimeters (about 15 inches) of sea-level rise. A rise of five to six centimeters globally has already occurred since 2000, and the sea-level rise is even faster at the Kwajalein atoll…” click here for more

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