Half of the world's beaches could disappear by 2100, study finds
Canada ranks as the country that would have the second-highest loss of sandy coastlines by 2100, which could have catastrophic impacts on tourism and local economies.
Sandy beaches cover over one-third of Earth’s coastlines and are located along some of the most developed areas in the world. Sea levels have been slowly rising for decades and a study has found that beaches will soon face the consequences, with as many as half of all beaches disappearing by the end of this century.
Beaches are the heart of many coastal economies because they protect the community from marine storms and cyclones and also create opportunities for tourism. The majority of projections indicate that population growth and urbanization will continue along coastlines in the future, which raises concerns since the rate of sea level rise has accelerated in the past 25 years.
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In this study, the researchers modelled future sea level rise and simulated over 100 million storms to learn how storm surge, waves, and floods will impact beaches around the world. The simulations showed that coastal erosion will be accelerated by increasingly frequent and severe storms and beaches will begin to vanish as sea levels rise. In addition to beaches being consumed by rising oceans, they will also become increasingly eroded as waves and storm surge are affected by the changing climate.
Several regions could see median coastline retreats could exceed 100 metres in central and eastern North American, Mexico, Central Europe, East and West Africa, North Australia, and parts of the Pacific and Caribbean by 2100 even if there are extensive efforts to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.
If we continue on a business-as-usual scenario with greenhouse gas emissions, many of these areas could see median shoreline retreats larger than 200 metres in central North America, South Asia, North Australia and several Caribbean islands.
While beaches are able to recover after periodic storms, the researchers say that they could take decades to recover, from certain extreme weather events — if they recover at all. The increasing amount of stress on shorelines has already caused some to lose their natural ability to recover from erosion and up to 49.5 per cent of the world’s beaches could see severe erosion by 2100.
Australia was projected to have the potential to be the most affected country and faces a loss of 14,849 km of sandy beach coastline by 2100, which is equivalent to roughly half of the country’s total sandy coastline if global greenhouse gas emissions are not curbed. Canada ranks as the country that would have the second-highest loss of sandy coastlines and could lose 14,425 km, which would have catastrophic impacts not just in British Columbia and Atlantic Canada, but across the entire nation.
The good news is that the researchers say that effective climate action could prevent 40 per cent of the projected erosion, which includes actions such as site-specific coastal planning and moderate greenhouse gas emission mitigation.
