Stephan: This is, I believe, the definitive paper on what we know about sea rise and its impact on what are called "World Heritage" sites around the world, i.e., The Statue of Liberty, Venice, Bangkok. It is a very long term look -- 2,000 years -- rather like looking back on Rome.
The actual paper says, "We consider SLR over the next 2000 years. On this time scale, ocean heat content and glacier ice mass can be considered to be in equilibrium with global temperatures, and relatively independent of the warming path of the initial 100 years. Thus the largest uncertainty from the temporal evolution is mainly restricted to the contributions from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. To facilitate the advantage of equilibrated ocean heat content and glaciers ice mass, we do not try to quantify the timing of a potential impact from SLR on the cultural heritage within the next 2000 years, but instead quantify the global mean temperature anomaly which will eventually lead to an impact anytime within the next 2000 years. At the same time, a time scale of 2000 years is short enough to be relevant for the societal discussion on climate change with regard to the cultural heritage, since a number of UNESCO sites are as old as or older than 2000 years." So this is not a it will happen on this date but, rather it will happen.
For those who are seriously interested I urge you to go to the paper: Loss of cultural world heritage and currently inhabited places to sea-level rise, to be found at: http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/9/3/034001/article
From the Statue of Liberty in New York to the Tower of London or the Sydney Opera House — sea-level rise not only affects settlement areas for large parts of the world population but also numerous sites of the UNESCO World Heritage. This is shown in a new study by Ben Marzeion from the University of Innsbruck and Anders Levermann from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
“The physical processes behind the global rise of the oceans are gradual, but they will continue for a very long time,” says climate scientist Ben Marzeion. “This will also impact the cultural world heritage.” The scientists computed the likely sea-level rise for each degree of global warming and identified regions where UNESCO World Heritage will be put at risk throughout the coming centuries. While public interest so far was focused mainly on ecological and agricultural impacts of climate change, Marzeion and Levermann in the journal Environmental Research Letters now put the focus on the cultural heritage of mankind.
136 out of 700 listed cultural monuments will be affected in the long-term
The UNESCO World Heritage List comprises a total of more than 700 cultural monuments. If global average temperature increases by just one degree Celsius, […]
