Venice – losing battle against climate change?
Credit to Author: Tempo Desk| Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 23:00:38 +0000
VENICE, Italy’s famous lagoon city, home to 50,000 residents and visited by 36 million people from around the world every year, was inundated by one and a half meters (five feet) of sea water last week. It was the worst week for high tides in Venice since 1872. Its famous square, St. Mark’s, was closed as city officials declared a state of emergency.
Rains lashed the rest of Italy and to the south, the swollen Arno river threatened the cities of Florence and Pisa. But it was in Venice where the damage was greatest, as the high tide damaged over 50 churches, including the historic St. Mark’s Basilica, along with the tourist city’s thousands of shops and homes. Tuesday’s high waters submerged about 80 percent of the city, officials said.
Climate scientists said Venice is a harbinger of the problems facing all coastal cities as rising temperatures melt polar ice sheets, causing ocean levels to rise. An Inter-government Panel on Climate Change said that because of rising seas, the extreme flooding that used to hit Venice once every hundred years is expected to recur every six years by 2050, and then every five months by 2100.
Earlier this month, Climate Central, a science organization based in New Jersey, United States, published a study which showed that 150 million people today live on land that will be below the high-tide line by 2050, 30 years from now.
The greatest threat appears to be in Asia, particularly China, Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand, where many cities are on land threatened by rising seas. Said to be facing the greatest danger in these countries are the cities of Ho Chi Minh – the former Saigon – in Vietnam, Shanghai in China, and Mumbai in India. The report did not include a
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