The sea level rise Australia had experienced to date was chiefly affecting tidal flats and mangrove areas, he said, but the areas most vulnerable* to higher waters in future would be cities built on river deltas such as Cairns and Mackay, areas of reclaimed* land in Melbourne and Sydney and canal estates. “(The records) do go up and down, but the trend is always up,” he said.
Some climate change critics claim tidal gauge records from Fort Denison in Sydney Harbour disprove sea levels have risen, but Professor Short said this idea was “fiction”. Professor Short co-authored a paper last year refuting* suggestions that half the world’s beaches would disappear as an effect of climate change, but he said sea levels were definitely rising, with evidence Australian tides were 25cm higher today than they were 100 years ago. “If we chose to do nothing, then in a few centuries it could become an island, but that’s a highly unlikely event”. “The Opera House will never become an island because we’ll respond to it before it gets to that stage, and to become an island it would be a few metres (of sea level rise) which would take centuries at the present rise,” he said. Honorary Professor Andrew Short from the School of Geosciences* at Sydney University said such images were “misleading*”.
Media_camera The Sydney Opera House forecourt, seen here in July 2021, appears underwater in the Climate Central digitally altered, predictive images of the world-famous landmark in future centuries if rising sea levels go unchecked.
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