Global Warming and Coastal Erosion
Background Ongoing global warming has been a popular subject between scientists, politicians and society in general. A lot of research has been done regarding climate change and global warming and most suggest that global warming is happening. Evidence suggests that in the past decade there has been global mean temperature increase by almost 1 C°, with excessive increase happening in the past 50 years. It is also believed that human activities, like fossil fuel burning, deforestation, paving over wetlands, have contributed a lot to this increase (Marshak, 2006). This temperature increase makes global warming to have major influence on Earth`s ecosystem. Apart from that, it is also a major change driver of the Earth`s geomorphological systems affecting glaciers, mountains, coasts, rivers, deserts etc. (Knight & Harrison, 2012). For this essay I chose to look at global warming`s effect on coastal geomorphology, more specifically, global warming`s effect on coastal erosion and on the nature of the coastline. Coastal erosion is a serious issue in nowadays. About 70% of sandy beaches around the world are recessional (Zhang et al., 2004). Global warming can contribute to coastal change in different ways. One would be a sea level rise due to glacier melting and thermal expansion of the oceans. Also, because of the global warming, increase in average ocean temperature causes greater and more frequent storms surges and hurricanes as well as changes wave action (Marshak, 2006). It is important to study the coast and global warming`s effect on it. Two-thirds of the world`s major cities, containing 60% of the world`s population, are located in coastal zones. These zones also have high economic, social and environmental importance, so it is crucial to preserve the coast. Coastal erosion processes propose a great threat to these areas and global warming will intensify complications caused by them (Cai et al., 2009). Aim for this essay is to...