Study says sea levels are rising in parts of Indian Ocean
15 Jul 2010
According to a study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder, newly detected rising sea levels in the Indian Ocean around the coastlines of the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea, Sri Lanka, Sumatra and Java, seem to be due in part to human-induced increases of atmospheric greenhouse gases.
The study, which took into account sea surface measurements from 1960s and satellite observations, found that anthropogenic climate warming is likely contributing to regional sea rise changes in parts of the Indian Ocean, threatening inhabitants of some coastal areas and islands, said CU-Boulder associate professor Weiqing Han, lead study author.
The rising seal levels may worsen monsoon flooding in Bangladesh and India and profoundly impact both future regional and global climate, according to a University of Colorado-Boulder press release.
The study has identified the Indo-Pacific warm pool as a key player in the process. The pool is area in the tropical oceans shaped in the form of a bathtub. It stretches from the east coast of Africa west to the International Date Line in the Pacific.
According to Han, the warm pool temperature has risen by about or 0.5o C, in the past 50 years, due mainly to human-generated increases of greenhouse gases, said Han.
''Our results from this study imply that if future anthropogenic warming effects in the Indo-Pacific warm pool dominate natural variability, mid-ocean islands such as the Mascarenhas Archipelago, coasts of Indonesia, Sumatra and the north Indian Ocean may experience significantly more sea level rise than the global average,'' said Han.
Nature Geoscience, carried a paper on the subject in a recent issue.
Though several areas in the Indian Ocean region are experiencing sea level rise, the study says the Seychelles Islands and Zanzibar off Tanzania's coastline have seen the largest sea level drop. Rise in global sea levels do not show a uniform pattern and rise in sea level in some areas correlate with a sea level fall in other areas.
