Island in Bay of Bengal Disappears Under Rising Sea
A tiny island in the Bay of Bengal has disappeared underneath rising sea levels. The uninhabited island had been the source of dispute between India and Bangladesh for nearly three decades. Sugata Hazra, an oceanographer at the School of Oceanographic Studies in Calcutta, said, “What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming.”
Reported March 24, 2010 on seattletimes.nwsource.com:
India-Bangladesh dispute is moot after island sinks
Climate change appears to have resolved a dispute that gunboats never could: An island midway between India and Bangladesh that became a flash point for military threats in the 1980s is submerged under the rising seas.
By Mark Magnier
Los Angeles Times
The island began shrinking in the 1990s, part of an 81-square-mile reduction in landmass witnessed in the Bay of Bengal's Sunderbans mud flats during the past 40 years, Hazra said. An additional 27 square miles have been lost to erosion, he added.
During the 1990s, the island was about 6.6 feet above sea level, part of a low-lying delta extremely vulnerable to rising seas.
...
Bangladesh, a low-lying delta nation of 150 million people, is one of the countries worst-affected by climate change. A U.N. panel predicted that 17 percent of Bangladesh will disappear by 2050, displacing 20 million people, if water levels rise by 3.3 feet, as some predict.
This not only points out some fun evidence of how Climate Change is real and changing our planet, but also points out that combining the effects of Climate Change with other processes, like erosion, could mean even more destruction to landmasses around the world.
Regardless, let's hope this story gets lots of play as it's just the proverbial tip of the iceberg.
Oh and proverbial icebergs don't melt.
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