Managing the unavoidable : planning for a resilient Surrey in the face of sea level rise

• Main Author: Chaster, Rebecca Grace
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: The University of British Columbia 2015
• Subjects: Antarctic; The Antarctic; Greenland; Pacific; Fraser River; Arlington; Antarc*; Antarctica; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0300045; https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0300045

“If climate change is the shark, then water is its teeth.” – Paul Dickenson, CEO of Carbon Disclosure Project (2012) Sea level rise (SLR) is one of the many direct results of anthropogenic climate change and one of the impacts that may be most acutely felt in British Columbia’s coastal communities. The City of Surrey is no exception, with its 54km of shorelines along the Fraser River and Pacific Ocean, and over one quarter of its land base in the current 200-year floodplain. SLR is due to the thermal expansion of warming oceans and the melting of continental glaciers and ice sheets, both products of increasing global temperatures. While ocean levels began to rise in the late 19th century at 1.7mm/year, this rate has increased to almost 3mm/year in recent decades and is expected to accelerate over the coming century (IPCC 2007). Thermal expansion has been the main driver of SLR in the past centuries, but its relative contribution is decreasing as the rate of land-based ice melt increases. The coastal hazards associated with SLR are many, and include: coastal inundation and reduced drainage capacity; coastal erosion; changes to coastal habitats and loss of coastal wetlands; saltwater intrusion into freshwater aquifers; reduction in coastal sea ice; and more frequent and intense storms, storm surge, and wave action (Arlington Group Planning + Architecture Inc., 2008). There also exists great uncertainty in attempting to predict future SLR – no one really knows when seas will rise to what levels, due in particular to the large unknowns of how the massive land-based icesheets of Greenland and Antarctica will react to warming temperatures. If fully melted, it is estimated that the ice contained in the Antarctic could increase sea levels by over 60 metres, and that of Greenland by an additional 7 metres. One thing is certain: even if all greenhouse gas emissions stopped today, sea levels would continue to rise for decades, due to the ‘lag effect’ of ocean volume expansion in response to warming global temperatures.