Patiti Point and South Beach

Kiran Chug, writing in the Dominion Post today, draws our attention to new predictions from the Antarctic Research Centre: “Scientists are predicting seas will rise higher than the levels the Environment Ministry advises local councils to plan for. The director of the Antarctic Research Centre, Tim Naish, said the international community now believed sea levels could rise by 1.9 metres. Dr Naish said he believed that the new figures would impress the urgency of the problem upon policy makers. They were particularly relevant for New Zealand, where such a large portion of the population lived on the coastline, he said.” —Dominion Post

Meanwhile Environment Minister Nick Smith is reported as saying his office plans to stick with previous predictions of a rise of 59 cms.

Earth system scientists continue to warn that while Earth has powerful self-correcting mechanisms the ways in which these mechanisms will achieve their end may be detrimental to man. It is a half century since James Lovelock invented the electron capture detector (the device that detected CFCs in the upper atmosphere and the hole in the ozone layer, sparking this whole debate); but world leaders are still trying to arrive at any kind of a workable accord with which to go ahead and make meaningful globally-scoped changes.

What does this mean for Timaru’s South Beach? Well, hopefully it means would-be developers will find it hard to convince investors their money is safe. At least until the next IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report is published in 2013 it may be hard to finance major projects as close to existing sea level as South Beach. After the publication of the next IPCC report it may be impossible for would-be developers to finance such projects.

Nothing special about today: 2.1 m tide; barometer 1010; moderate swell from the south. But look where the sea got to at high tide!

The NZ Govt document Coastal Hazards and Climate Change: A guidance manual for local government in New Zealand warns of the following impacts on New Zealand’s coastal areas due to accelerating sea-level rise:

• increased coastal erosion in some areas. Parts of the coastline that have historically been eroding may experience
• increased erosion trends; other areas that may have been relatively stable may begin to erode;
• permanent high-tide inundation of very low-lying margins that may at present experience only episodic inundation;
• episodic sea flooding of higher coastal and estuarine margins;
• drainage problems in adjacent low-lying areas, especially where gravity is relied on;
• increased rates and frequency of episodic wave run-up and overtopping of both natural and man-made coastal defences.

The manual continues by warning about the increased hazard created by the removal of coastal vegetation, and risks associated with storm surge, “where adverse winds and low barometric pressure produced by storms temporarily elevate the ocean level well above the predicted tide level” and wave run-up which is, “treated separately from storm-tide level because it varies widely along the coast, even in the same locality, due to differences in shoreline steepness and type of natural or artificial coastal barrier.”

People who frequent South Beach near Patiti Point will tell you that the wave patterns and the shoreline steepness change from day to day in this locality, and that it is an increasingly common occurrence for the waves to roll right up the beach and fill pools behind the main wall of shingle.