According to a new study, published in Science Advances, sea-level rise and wave-driven flooding will negatively impact freshwater resources on many low-lying atoll islands in such a way that many could be uninhabitable in just a few decades.
Scientists found that such flooding not only will impact terrestrial infrastructure and habitats, but it will also make the limited freshwater resources non-potable and, therefore threaten the sustainability of human populations.
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Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey, Deltares, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa used climate-change scenarios to project the impact of sea-level rise and wave-driven flooding on atoll infrastructure and freshwater availability. The approach and findings in this study can serve as a proxy for atolls around the world, most of which have a similar morphology and structure, including even lower land elevations.
The scientists focused on Roi-Namur Island on Kwajalein Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, but the findings have relevance to Caroline Islands, Cook Islands, Gilbert Islands, Line Islands, Society Islands, Spratly Islands, Maldives, Seychelles, and Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
The study project that the interactions between sea-level rise and wave dynamics over coral reefs will cause an annual wave-driven overwash of most atoll islands by the mid-21st century. Such annual flooding would result in the islands becoming uninhabitable because of frequent damage to infrastructure and the inability of their freshwater resources to recover between overwash events.
As atoll islands come to be overwashed annually, on average, in the next few decades, flooding affects infrastructure and freshwater resources would make human habitation difficult in most locations between the 2030s to 2060s.
See the full study below