2012-11-12

Floods In Venice

I visited Venice in 1994. One of the world's most unique cities, it faces the inevitable sinking into God's waters taking with it all of its memories and treasures.

Once a mighty Republican maritime empire and persistently one of the wealthiest places in Europe for most of its existence, you could feel the ghosts walking alongside you among its glorious and hallowed streets and, of course, canals.

Floods in Venice are a routine occurrence, and pointing to global warming is par for the course. The MOSE Project was designed to eliminate floods but I guess it's been delayed?

ABC Science reported last year floods in Venice in the era of climate change (I still laugh at man's utter arrogance and thinking he can prevent collapse through pitiful policy), haven't changed:

"...They project that the number of storm surges northwards through the Adriatic that cause floods in Venice would decrease by about 30 per cent by 2100 because storms would tend to shift further north in Europe.

Under certain wind conditions, the Adriatic acts as a funnel along which waters build up towards Venice at the northern end. Italy is building flood barriers known as MOSE, Italian for Moses, to protect the city.

The most severe combination of storms and high tides of recent decades happened during the Great Flood of 1966 that pushed up water levels in Venice by 1.94 metres above normal.

If world sea levels rise by just 0.17 metres by 2100, matching the rise in the 20th century, the study suggests that "the frequency of extreme tides in Venice might largely remain unaltered" since the
number of storm surges would decline.

The UN panel of climate scientists, known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has projected that human emissions of greenhouse gases could cause sea levels to rise by as much as 0.59 metres by 2100.

But, Venice faces other problems such as subsidence caused by the drawing of water from aquifers beneath the city, especially from the 1950s to the 1970s."

Pics from The Atlantic.

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