Coral Biologist here. You did a great job acknowledging the importance of conservation/restoration efforts, but i think the confidence that the coral machine will just keep going is unfounded. There is serious debate whether coral reefs will continue to exist through the middle of this century in a form the provides benefits to humans. Im not an expert on islands and erosion, so my next ideas is pure speculation, but I wonder if the shifting balance towards reef erosion on reefs (climate change induced bleaching and other factors) generates more sediment and therefore provides a limited time frame when atolls can grow even if no reef means more coastal erosion in the long term. I appreciate your excellent informative videos!
Got it. If I ever purchase a private island that turns out to be a Coral Reef Atoll, I'll make sure to put concrete blocks around the island and have them cemented together.
Yeah, it all clicked when he reminded me that ultimately the sediment is sourced primarily from dead coral and other reef life, suddenly it makes sense that these islands are growing considering the amount of coral dying and being smashed up by storms each year is skyrocketing.
This is exactly the concern I have. Unfortunately, climate change deniers will see this video and cry that it's all a hoax and that's why they aren't shrinking.
you forgot their foundations- volcanic seamounts. about 3/4 of the world's atolls form over long dead volcanic islands, hence why they are found in close proximity to active oceanic subduction zones or hotspots. We can even see this process at work in places like french polynesia and samoa, where the volcanic islands are fringed by reefs, and these reefs will continue to grow even as the volcano dies off. Reefs love shallow water with lots of sun- as the seamount erodes, it deposits more sediment, raising the average height of the seabed around the island, which promotes reef growth, which in turn stabilises and traps sediment, so coral is able to grow at even shallower depths.
Look at the Hawaiian island chain. They are volcanic in origin. New islands are created and the oldest islands are destined to eventually disappear beneath the waves.
Im a maldivian 😮😮 I feel like there are some points you really shouldve talked about. While sand deposits help build up islands, the our reefs are relatively young and not as extensive as, say, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, which has been forming for over 20 million years, our reefs are only a few thousand years old and cover a much smaller area. With global warming killing corals through bleaching and heat stress, sand production will also start slowing down. While in the short term our islands may grow in size massively, eventually the rate kf sea level rise will overwhelm sand production. Even with sand deposits, it won’t be enough to keep up with the rising sea levels forever. Even with sea level rise of just 2 to 3 meters we're honestly just f*cked.
Yeah as another Maldivian, the only real way to stop our country from disappearing in a hundred years is to actually stop global warming as it is now. We have to solve the problem head-on, not go around it.
I wonder if you could set up a station off shore and slowly drip some sodium bicarbonate into the water flowing towards the reef to neutralize the acidity in the water that is killing the coral.
@malavoy1 there have been discussions about stuff like that, as well as artificially cooling the water on top of coral reefs. The thing is it's too expensive to do at scale and will only be done at a few vital reefs and resort house reefs.
They are supposed to move, but as humans we might prefer them not to move, especially if we build houses on them. And maybe we shouldn't build houses on them, but anyhow.
@@culwin agreed. Humans have just done a really good job at rebuilding the beaches and barrier islands after every storm for over 100 years to make it look like they're not moving. Eventually it will catch up to us and we'll realize we've ruined the the barrier island system and should've let them move where they needed to be.
@@gatorbait9385idiotic As long as we maintain the coast line it will remain an intercoastal waterway. It is only when we stop maintaining that the holes pop through. Go play in the swamp
I do, and the people who spend millions of $$'s building new hotels on the islands must be the dumbest people on earth, either that or they think that the 2000/2020 deadline has probably been pushed out to 2080?
The optimistic view depends on the “coral factories” continuing to thrive, which they are not due to temperature related bleaching; and, reef restoration will not be successful if the sea temperatures continue to rise beyond a survivable range for corals.
The country of Tuvalu is entirely on low lying atolls and they're going to be the first country to become unlivable because of climate change via sea level rise. They're working on digitizing as much of their culture as they can to preserve it once the country is no more. 🇹🇻
Unfortunately, they've already relocated thousands of Tuvaluan from some of the smaller islands that go completely under water during storms and the salt water is only a centimeter or two below the surface, destroying their very limited fresh water sources and even an maximum tide (don't recall what that's called, it's when the solar and lunar tides sync up) will put them a few centimeters under water.
It's heartbreaking to think that an entire nation of people have to digitize their country to preserve it for future generations because one day the whole place will probably be gone.
@@firelunamoon At least most of human history wasnt on the coastlines where 90%+ of all humans had ever lived and that 12,000 years ago got submerged in major melt water events. Oh wait, most human history IS underwater, and had nothing to do with CO2. nvm. Maybe it's just a thing that can happen to people because the earth isn't here to give us blow jobs and pizza. idk, maybe break your heart over all of that, and not some random group of people that found a cool island group to live on for a while that is now going out of time.
@@RobertCampsall There is sort of a plan to have (almost) the entire population relocated to Australia and New Zealand over the next couple of decades.
Extra point - Atolls sit on top of coral reef platforms. These coral reefs are the product of polyps that grow best at a particular depth. The polyps will grow upwards towards that depth in rising sea-level environments. Reef-forming polyps can grow at up to 20mm a year and thereby the reefs from which they are made will keep pace with current and predicted sea-level rise of maybe 4mm a year. The danger is of course that bigger storms, sea warming, ocean acidification & silting may stunt coral growth.
I expected to hear more about coral bleaching in an episode about climate change and its effects on small islands/atolls -- will that not have an impact on the ability for these land masses to maintain steady growth patterns based on corals?
The ads are way, way more annoying. Sometimes this video pulls 6, with at least half a minute being impossible to plainly skip, in a six minute video. That's approximately 7.7% of the about 390 seconds of info.
@@VeteranVandalYeah I couldn't care less about UA-cam citing information that can teach people. I'm more upset about the amount of ads they are throwing at us now
1:55 the hilarious part is that this actually would also happen for your potted plant (if you use certain filler compounds) fully saturated soil takes up significantly more space then dry soil.
With climate science, I think it’s really important to be humble and honest when we make mistakes. We can’t predict what the impacts of climate change will be on the biosphere in 10 years, let alone 100. It’s best to talk about these findings, and reform our predictions. Great work, Hank!
Today I learned something insane about where I've lived for nearly 3 decades now. Crazy stuff that our "local experts" are barely scratching the surface on...
How much research using remote sensing happen there? If you guys don't have direct access for that data, then it's understandable that local experts might not have noticed this first
This is a great video and I am always grateful to see attention focused on the island nations of the Pacific. That said, in a future video you might consider the impact of ocean acidification and temperature rise on the coral factories, as this is likely to have an important impact on the ecology of the atolls and islands of the Pacific region.
Nice video, am going to the Maldives in December. Looking forward to staying on an atoll. I’m not convinced they will be there forever and want to go in case they start disappearing
Because people use up the ground water so the land sinks as ground water was part of it. Yes seas has been rising a couple of cm. Simply use less ground water and it stops. Ground water is like game animals you can hunt so many and fine 3x it and they get rarer and rarer.
So you're saying drought is causing subsidence? Otherwise average rainfall over time should correct for this. (Sand ain't great at holding groundwater in the absence of soil, and generally the only soil on atolls and barrier islands is in the interior. So why would there be subsidence where there is no soil?)
I remember when a huge elm less than a mile from my farm began to die in about 1993. We didn't have all that many in that part of Ayrshire so it took that long for the disease to reach it. It would not have survived anyway as it was growing directly on the route of a new bypass that was built just after that time. All I have left is a photograph.
The animation at 2:43 was confusing, because the verbal description didn't match what was happening in the image. Until at least half way through the animation it was unclear whether the leading or trailing shore was where the sand was picked up.
I am not a great plant parent and the soil does in fact rise up when I water them sometimes. It dries out so much it becomes hydrophobic and will float.
It doesnt become hydrophilic just the water alone can not take the air out of the dried soil that why it rises then the dryed soil has air inside hydrophilic 🤣🤣🤣
I honestly believe that a good portion of all that white sand is from Parrot fish poop. They nibble off the buts of coral and poop out much white sand, I've seen videos of that behavior. Plus, they are at work in that way all the time.
Yeah I heard one guy said something on that like lately at DJT rally in MSG, about Puerto Rico. And still he'd be voted because his name has the right letters on it... #WeeklyWorldNews becoming real 🤦♂#OyVey
Many years ago I read several articles concerning the raising height of the Pacific ring due to the shift of the earth's plates. In the several past years I only saw one reference to this. To me, this would create the rise of some land and also a rise of the Pacific itself or should.
Most melting ice , increased water mass is mostly at the equator. The Earth's rotation causes water mass to bulges in the equatorial regions, they are the ones to suffer ocean rise.
Well, since "most" only means 50.1%, it might appear that this could be the case, HOWEVER, since, technically, the width of the Equator is ZERO, it cannot contain any water, whatsoever, so, it cannot contain MORE water! If you want to claim that some 'equatorial zone' is getting "most" of the additional water, you must first define "equatorial zone", and then, show some math* to prove that your equatorial zone is not "most" of the surface area of the planet, to begin with! ...And showing how much of the extra would go there. * or, at least, someone's math! My rough calculations indicate that about 73% of Earth's surface lies between the Tropic of Cancer (~23° N), (i.e. just south of Key West Florida) and the Tropic of Capricorn (~23° S). So, just for the purpose of general conception, you could be approxatimg that half of the world's surface would be between about 17° N and 17° S...so, not a big surprise that half of the 'extra' water would go there, because half of the 'normal' water is there! NOTE: this ignores the fact that much more of Earth's land mass is located in the Northern Hemisphere, and there is much more water area in the Southern Hemisphere... What's probably more important is the effect of adding significant extra water to the oceans will have on salinity, temperature, evaporation, and the prevailing ocean currents. 😮
We'll see how long this persists, considering corals are dying off due to carbonation of seawater causing acidification, "eating" their calcium structures. That will provide excess sediments for some time as growth of new corals dwindles.
So, are only the coastlines of these islands going to stay above sea level, while the interiors remain at their previous height? Or are the raising the interior, buildings and infrastructure as the sea rises?
I like the people in the comments who are suggesting climate change isn’t real, by way of the evidence we have of how often the climate on the planet has changed. Y’know, in its lifetime. Like … the antihero gaslighting the hero by telling them their idea is awful and then pretending to come up with it in the next moment. That and I like how people think that billions of people doing things on a planet aren’t going to have an effect on it. We weren’t here. And now we are. Yes. That’s going to change things. Like … yes, the climate is going to shift SOMEHOW. Are we going to accurately predict it? That’s only maybe
Sedimentary Carbonate rocks are very good aquifers. So they'd have sufficient ground water reserves and unlike inland regions, there would be commercial extraction of these to supply to another overcrowded region
Why are islands not sinking? Because sea levels are NOT rising, most of the issues on coasts are due to developments which allow the sand to be eroded without replacement and no drainage allows flooding.
At the end of the last glaciation, sea level rose some 120 meters in 11'500 years... that's a good meter per century on average... but up to 5-6 meters in a single century during what is called "melt-water pulses". And, despite such incredibly fast sea level rise, coral reefs and coral islands kept existing. Could it be that coral reefs can grow even faster than the sea-level rise of the worst melt-water pulse? After all, the Maldives existed as coral islands at the time of the last glaciation maximum (LGM), as demonstrated by Anderson et al, in 1998, at a time sea level was 130 meters lower than today! Furthermore, there are evidences that sea level was 50-60 cm HIGHER than today in the Madives, only a few centuries back. This seemingly weird behavior is made possible by the so-called "Indian Ocean geoid low". BTW, that geoid depression is worth looking up on Wikipedia and other sites... it's most surprising!
All corals dont seem to bleach only some the rest seem to survive just like the barrier reef, reputed to be dying for many years but not complying with the narrative
So many of these islands aren't shrinking atoll.
Source or nothing you say matters
@@noahpollard9713 it's a pun
@@noahpollard9713 Calm down
@noahpollard9713 LoL
@@noahpollard9713 swoosh
Coral Biologist here. You did a great job acknowledging the importance of conservation/restoration efforts, but i think the confidence that the coral machine will just keep going is unfounded. There is serious debate whether coral reefs will continue to exist through the middle of this century in a form the provides benefits to humans.
Im not an expert on islands and erosion, so my next ideas is pure speculation, but I wonder if the shifting balance towards reef erosion on reefs (climate change induced bleaching and other factors) generates more sediment and therefore provides a limited time frame when atolls can grow even if no reef means more coastal erosion in the long term.
I appreciate your excellent informative videos!
Got it. If I ever purchase a private island that turns out to be a Coral Reef Atoll, I'll make sure to put concrete blocks around the island and have them cemented together.
Yeah, it all clicked when he reminded me that ultimately the sediment is sourced primarily from dead coral and other reef life, suddenly it makes sense that these islands are growing considering the amount of coral dying and being smashed up by storms each year is skyrocketing.
This is exactly the concern I have. Unfortunately, climate change deniers will see this video and cry that it's all a hoax and that's why they aren't shrinking.
That's exactly what I was thinking!
Guess that sea level rising from global warming is overexagerated BS. Oh no, let's ignore this obvious sign of sea rising not happening.
great to see Hank again.
Commented 9 minutes ago and only TWO likes⁉️⁉️ WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE ⁉️⁉️⁉️⁉️⁉️ 👻
9 hours ago and only 105 likes
3 weeks ago and only 241 likes
Jesus, Marie! They're minerals!
No it isnt he’s a lying dork
"let's say a wave hits the western edge of an atoll" the wave hits the eastern edge of the atoll on screen, lol
Yeah, not sure the person making the graphic read the script or vice versa.
this mishap gave me a small headache lol
My right hand points to the west, while my left hand points to the west too.
😳
@@dasstigma Any map that's oriented with north at the top, will show east on the right and west on the left.
@@ksyodeb Yes I am aware how reality works, I just did not see the compass at first.
you forgot their foundations- volcanic seamounts. about 3/4 of the world's atolls form over long dead volcanic islands, hence why they are found in close proximity to active oceanic subduction zones or hotspots.
We can even see this process at work in places like french polynesia and samoa, where the volcanic islands are fringed by reefs, and these reefs will continue to grow even as the volcano dies off.
Reefs love shallow water with lots of sun- as the seamount erodes, it deposits more sediment, raising the average height of the seabed around the island, which promotes reef growth, which in turn stabilises and traps sediment, so coral is able to grow at even shallower depths.
Look at the Hawaiian island chain. They are volcanic in origin. New islands are created and the oldest islands are destined to eventually disappear beneath the waves.
Im a maldivian 😮😮
I feel like there are some points you really shouldve talked about. While sand deposits help build up islands, the our reefs are relatively young and not as extensive as, say, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, which has been forming for over 20 million years, our reefs are only a few thousand years old and cover a much smaller area.
With global warming killing corals through bleaching and heat stress, sand production will also start slowing down. While in the short term our islands may grow in size massively, eventually the rate kf sea level rise will overwhelm sand production.
Even with sand deposits, it won’t be enough to keep up with the rising sea levels forever. Even with sea level rise of just 2 to 3 meters we're honestly just f*cked.
Yeah as another Maldivian, the only real way to stop our country from disappearing in a hundred years is to actually stop global warming as it is now. We have to solve the problem head-on, not go around it.
I wonder if you could set up a station off shore and slowly drip some sodium bicarbonate into the water flowing towards the reef to neutralize the acidity in the water that is killing the coral.
@malavoy1 there have been discussions about stuff like that, as well as artificially cooling the water on top of coral reefs. The thing is it's too expensive to do at scale and will only be done at a few vital reefs and resort house reefs.
I am really surprised and frankly disappointed that they didn't talk about these aspects in the video.
@@malavoy1 LOL! Good one, I love gallows humor!
I'm in Florida, and I've been telling people for years the beaches and barrier islands are supposed to move
And you wonder why they ignore you and move away quickly.....
@ceeemm1901 I wish I had to power to cause people to move away
They are supposed to move, but as humans we might prefer them not to move, especially if we build houses on them. And maybe we shouldn't build houses on them, but anyhow.
@@culwin agreed. Humans have just done a really good job at rebuilding the beaches and barrier islands after every storm for over 100 years to make it look like they're not moving. Eventually it will catch up to us and we'll realize we've ruined the the barrier island system and should've let them move where they needed to be.
@@gatorbait9385idiotic
As long as we maintain the coast line it will remain an intercoastal waterway.
It is only when we stop maintaining that the holes pop through.
Go play in the swamp
member when they said the maldives would stop existing by 2000? by 2020? I member.
I do, and the people who spend millions of $$'s building new hotels on the islands must be the dumbest people on earth, either that or they think that the 2000/2020 deadline has probably been pushed out to 2080?
I'm sick of the BS. Greta said we would be done by 2023 lol
The optimistic view depends on the “coral factories” continuing to thrive, which they are not due to temperature related bleaching; and, reef restoration will not be successful if the sea temperatures continue to rise beyond a survivable range for corals.
The country of Tuvalu is entirely on low lying atolls and they're going to be the first country to become unlivable because of climate change via sea level rise. They're working on digitizing as much of their culture as they can to preserve it once the country is no more. 🇹🇻
Unfortunately, they've already relocated thousands of Tuvaluan from some of the smaller islands that go completely under water during storms and the salt water is only a centimeter or two below the surface, destroying their very limited fresh water sources and even an maximum tide (don't recall what that's called, it's when the solar and lunar tides sync up) will put them a few centimeters under water.
It's heartbreaking to think that an entire nation of people have to digitize their country to preserve it for future generations because one day the whole place will probably be gone.
@@firelunamoon At least most of human history wasnt on the coastlines where 90%+ of all humans had ever lived and that 12,000 years ago got submerged in major melt water events.
Oh wait, most human history IS underwater, and had nothing to do with CO2. nvm. Maybe it's just a thing that can happen to people because the earth isn't here to give us blow jobs and pizza.
idk, maybe break your heart over all of that, and not some random group of people that found a cool island group to live on for a while that is now going out of time.
@@RobertCampsall There is sort of a plan to have (almost) the entire population relocated to Australia and New Zealand over the next couple of decades.
Extra point - Atolls sit on top of coral reef platforms. These coral reefs are the product of polyps that grow best at a particular depth. The polyps will grow upwards towards that depth in rising sea-level environments. Reef-forming polyps can grow at up to 20mm a year and thereby the reefs from which they are made will keep pace with current and predicted sea-level rise of maybe 4mm a year. The danger is of course that bigger storms, sea warming, ocean acidification & silting may stunt coral growth.
I went to the Pink Beach near Komodo island. It’s crazy how red coral can blanket the beach a tad pink.
2:42 that wave's heading west
The West is never gonna stop flooding
Wrong hemisphere
duuuurrrr
I expected to hear more about coral bleaching in an episode about climate change and its effects on small islands/atolls -- will that not have an impact on the ability for these land masses to maintain steady growth patterns based on corals?
Was asking myself the same question!
Love you for what you do here, Hank. 👍🏻💪
*UA-cam slaps climate change tab the second the video releases* (i know it's to combat misinformation, but dear god it's annoying)
Not rlly
It’s like a nanny nobody asked for.
Dear God how annoying 😂
The ads are way, way more annoying. Sometimes this video pulls 6, with at least half a minute being impossible to plainly skip, in a six minute video. That's approximately 7.7% of the about 390 seconds of info.
@@VeteranVandalYeah I couldn't care less about UA-cam citing information that can teach people. I'm more upset about the amount of ads they are throwing at us now
1:55 the hilarious part is that this actually would also happen for your potted plant (if you use certain filler compounds)
fully saturated soil takes up significantly more space then dry soil.
Watching substrate do exactly that when bottom watering is a fascinating thing to watch. Even if it is slow 😂
the palms def help to prevent erosion as well, have you seen the way their roots grow? they are like anchors
With climate science, I think it’s really important to be humble and honest when we make mistakes. We can’t predict what the impacts of climate change will be on the biosphere in 10 years, let alone 100. It’s best to talk about these findings, and reform our predictions. Great work, Hank!
Today I learned something insane about where I've lived for nearly 3 decades now. Crazy stuff that our "local experts" are barely scratching the surface on...
How much research using remote sensing happen there? If you guys don't have direct access for that data, then it's understandable that local experts might not have noticed this first
Thank you so much for making the tone more casual. Very much appreciated!
This is a great video and I am always grateful to see attention focused on the island nations of the Pacific.
That said, in a future video you might consider the impact of ocean acidification and temperature rise on the coral factories, as this is likely to have an important impact on the ecology of the atolls and islands of the Pacific region.
Who you callin an atoll?
THANK YOU FOR SEAMLESSLY INCLUDING
AN ACCURATE DESCRIPTION/DEFINITION
OF THE WORD "ATOLL".
Knowledge is power. Use your head.
"Surprise dead bodies." Caitlin Doughty enters the chat.
Nice video, am going to the Maldives in December. Looking forward to staying on an atoll. I’m not convinced they will be there forever and want to go in case they start disappearing
Do you guys (like PBS) get sliding scale grants based on the number of times you use the phrase “climate change “?
Didnt that diagram depict deposits on the Eastern shores, even though you said Western?
Great topic for sedimentology final exams: carbonate factories, carbonate sequence stratigraphy, Walther's Law... you name it!
FL has spent more than $2B on beach replenishment since the early 1900s to keep the barrier islands exactly where they are - a literal Sisyphian task.
Because people use up the ground water so the land sinks as ground water was part of it. Yes seas has been rising a couple of cm.
Simply use less ground water and it stops. Ground water is like game animals you can hunt so many and fine 3x it and they get rarer and rarer.
So you're saying drought is causing subsidence? Otherwise average rainfall over time should correct for this. (Sand ain't great at holding groundwater in the absence of soil, and generally the only soil on atolls and barrier islands is in the interior. So why would there be subsidence where there is no soil?)
Omgggg he’s talking about my country Maldives!! I saw the thumbnail and legit freaked out 😂
Fun fact, I'm from the Maldives and I haven't left the Maldives and have never set foot on any of the continents.
So nothing to worry about
I remember when a huge elm less than a mile from my farm began to die in about 1993. We didn't have all that many in that part of Ayrshire so it took that long for the disease to reach it. It would not have survived anyway as it was growing directly on the route of a new bypass that was built just after that time. All I have left is a photograph.
Fun fact: Atoll (Atolhu) is the only Dhivehi (Maldivian) word that made in into English.
4:51 Can the changing pH of the ocean water due to climate change hamper the process of producing new sand from the coral factory?
This may be regional, but i have heard it said this way for all 50 plus years
The animation at 2:43 was confusing, because the verbal description didn't match what was happening in the image. Until at least half way through the animation it was unclear whether the leading or trailing shore was where the sand was picked up.
This will work out fine as long as rising sea level does not kill the coral.
Did I hear correctly? Atoll sand is plain Tums powder?
I am not a great plant parent and the soil does in fact rise up when I water them sometimes. It dries out so much it becomes hydrophobic and will float.
It doesnt become hydrophilic just the water alone can not take the air out of the dried soil that why it rises then the dryed soil has air inside hydrophilic 🤣🤣🤣
The organic material in the soil also expands as it soaks up and retains water, leading to an increase in volume.
@@FirstnameLastname-db5pp I said hydrophobic, not hydrophilic, that’s literally the exact opposite. And soil can absolutely become hydrophobic.
@@deek791 that’s not what I’m talking about though.
@@TeeganLeetrue. I've had some pots I forgot to plant anything and it hasn't been watered for quite a while that now it won't absorb water.
I honestly believe that a good portion of all that white sand is from Parrot fish poop.
They nibble off the buts of coral and poop out much white sand, I've seen videos of that behavior.
Plus, they are at work in that way all the time.
Obviously its because Islands float on the water
It’s true, and birds aren’t real.
Only in the Greek myth where the titaness Leto gave birth on a floating island and others.
That also explains why Manhatten isn't under water like was supposed to be 2 decades ago. Because continents float too!
@@jasongrundy1717 that they unironically do
Yeah I heard one guy said something on that like lately at DJT rally in MSG, about Puerto Rico. And still he'd be voted because his name has the right letters on it... #WeeklyWorldNews becoming real 🤦♂#OyVey
2:16 Extraordinary. The story that something like this was happening to San Serriffe was told as a *joke* --- and here it is for real.
Around 3:00 you talk about ẃaves from the West. The animation shows them coming from the East though (with my assumption that North is up).
Mont Ste. Michel has been a tidal island for all of recorded history…..
The surprise inspirational science video I needed today.
Many years ago I read several articles concerning the raising height of the Pacific ring due to the shift of the earth's plates. In the several past years I only saw one reference to this. To me, this would create the rise of some land and also a rise of the Pacific itself or should.
Huh, that's really neat! It makes sense, but is also super cool. :)
My geography degree says your description of the "west" is actually the "east" -- but details are a tricky thing, I hear.
Can you make a video about the Waddeneilanden? It’s not just tropical islands which are interesting.
Damn. These buggers just won’t sink do they.
Oh dude that sounds like a way to make small islands regenerate lost land mass. That or they're made out of Oatmeal.
Them let's grow more reefs...... then there's me. Let's plant mangroves
Lets have a party and do both. 🎉
Thanks!
Acidification of the oceans plus water temperature are the tipping points.
Reminds me sand dunes in great deserts - wind creates dunes and then dunes interact with wind, and …
Most melting ice , increased water mass is mostly at the equator. The Earth's rotation causes water mass to bulges in the equatorial regions, they are the ones to suffer ocean rise.
Well, since "most" only means 50.1%, it might appear that this could be the case, HOWEVER, since, technically, the width of the Equator is ZERO, it cannot contain any water, whatsoever, so, it cannot contain MORE water!
If you want to claim that some 'equatorial zone' is getting "most" of the additional water, you must first define "equatorial zone", and then, show some math* to prove that your equatorial zone is not "most" of the surface area of the planet, to begin with!
...And showing how much of the extra would go there.
* or, at least, someone's math!
My rough calculations indicate that about 73% of Earth's surface lies between the Tropic of Cancer (~23° N), (i.e. just south of Key West Florida) and the Tropic of Capricorn (~23° S).
So, just for the purpose of general conception, you could be approxatimg that half of the world's surface would be between about 17° N and 17° S...so, not a big surprise that half of the 'extra' water would go there, because half of the 'normal' water is there!
NOTE: this ignores the fact that much more of Earth's land mass is located in the Northern Hemisphere, and there is much more water area in the Southern Hemisphere...
What's probably more important is the effect of adding significant extra water to the oceans will have on salinity, temperature, evaporation, and the prevailing ocean currents. 😮
I thought this was gonna be a video specifically about the Maldives :(
We'll see how long this persists, considering corals are dying off due to carbonation of seawater causing acidification, "eating" their calcium structures. That will provide excess sediments for some time as growth of new corals dwindles.
Great vid
INTERESTING VIDEO! We will do a video about the smallest island ever
"I'm still standing" -Them
What about Vanuatu?
So, are only the coastlines of these islands going to stay above sea level, while the interiors remain at their previous height? Or are the raising the interior, buildings and infrastructure as the sea rises?
Now I wanna know about the forgotten burial....
Who knew reefs would keep growing?!?
I like the people in the comments who are suggesting climate change isn’t real, by way of the evidence we have of how often the climate on the planet has changed. Y’know, in its lifetime.
Like … the antihero gaslighting the hero by telling them their idea is awful and then pretending to come up with it in the next moment.
That and I like how people think that billions of people doing things on a planet aren’t going to have an effect on it.
We weren’t here. And now we are. Yes. That’s going to change things.
Like … yes, the climate is going to shift SOMEHOW.
Are we going to accurately predict it?
That’s only maybe
Since you mentioned fresh ground water; where does ground water on small islands even come from? Rain alone doesn't seem to be enough.
Sedimentary Carbonate rocks are very good aquifers. So they'd have sufficient ground water reserves and unlike inland regions, there would be commercial extraction of these to supply to another overcrowded region
Why are islands not sinking? Because sea levels are NOT rising, most of the issues on coasts are due to developments which allow the sand to be eroded without replacement and no drainage allows flooding.
I thought there was a skidmark in the thumbnail...
LMAO that is the funniest reaction to my country being in the thumbnail I've seen so far.
@Hexamath I'M SORRY
Hi Hank!
I don't think "Hey look at the Maldives, they're growing!" is gunna help to rebound confidence and positivity in the Florida real estate market.......
Science is about why things happen, politics is about how to keep it a way.
You should have mentioned that the white sand is parrot fish poop sand.
Yeah, been wondering why Åland Islands seems to have lower water than higher.
This is a very interesting video
Is this Nothing Atoll?
What's the deal with the Star-Shaped sand on a few certain beaches?
Atoll is a word that was totally fine until i heard it so many times and now it sounds super weird.
Dr Doolittle has something to do with it.
Pretty reckless and dangerous assumptions tbh
I thought it was that water sloshes around the gyre at the edge not in the middle, where I thought the islands are
Kiribati was supposed to have been underwater by 2014!!
At the end of the last glaciation, sea level rose some 120 meters in 11'500 years... that's a good meter per century on average... but up to 5-6 meters in a single century during what is called "melt-water pulses". And, despite such incredibly fast sea level rise, coral reefs and coral islands kept existing. Could it be that coral reefs can grow even faster than the sea-level rise of the worst melt-water pulse?
After all, the Maldives existed as coral islands at the time of the last glaciation maximum (LGM), as demonstrated by Anderson et al, in 1998, at a time sea level was 130 meters lower than today! Furthermore, there are evidences that sea level was 50-60 cm HIGHER than today in the Madives, only a few centuries back. This seemingly weird behavior is made possible by the so-called "Indian Ocean geoid low". BTW, that geoid depression is worth looking up on Wikipedia and other sites... it's most surprising!
How will the coral conveyor belt continue after all the corals bleach?
All corals dont seem to bleach only some the rest seem to survive just like the barrier reef, reputed to be dying for many years but not complying with the narrative
Love the show … great to see Hank back…climate change we are all doomed. ✔️✔️ and ✔️
Glaciers are the biggest ever the Great Barrier Reef is super healthy polar bears are tripled since the 1070s but they never seem to mention it.
The planet always finds a way
OK, the wave graphic shows waves coming in from the east and striking the eastern shore....not the west. Unless it's upside down.
No, it was from the north to the south, but he didn't notice that it was turned sideways.
Of course, if the waves are bad enough, they don't just push the sediment around, but wash it away from the island entirely…
Maldives shouldve been gone by now tho
Perhaps they move eastward around Sri Lanka and slowly move up the bay of Bengal and then towards China before being annexed by the two faced dragon
ok, so there is accumulation of sediment; doesn't explain how these islands lift up thru the rise of sea level...
So, basically atolls are dunes IN the sea?
Sand being sneaky asf.... 😂
I think you buried the lead there. Poseidon uncovered mass graves?
Storms happen and raise the water.. been happening forever
So how does all the coral dying from warmer oceans affect this process?
Yea, they have been promising that California would break off… I’m still waiting.