Rising sea levels are threatening Indian islands

Like hundreds of other residents on West Bengal Moushuni Island, Sheihk Alauddin, 60, has never heard the word ' earth warmer '. But he is suffering from the effects of this process. 'At night, we just prayed to heaven and hoped the seawater would not wash away our families' , the man living on the sparsely populated island which was part of the Sunderbans National Park - the world's largest mangrove forest - gave know. When the tide rises, the sea level rises close to the top of the dike 6 meters above the nearby Alauddin house.

After 10 years of studying the Bay of Bengal, oceanographers say the sea level in Sunderban is rising at a rate of 3.14 mm per year compared with the world average of 2 mm, threatening to erase the land. sunken of India and Bangladesh. According to researcher Sugato Hazra of Jadavpur University (West Bengal state), at least 15 islands are under the influence of high tide while the state of the invaded coast is spreading to many other islands.

Last month, the UN climate change monitoring subcommittee concluded that human activities caused global warming, and predicted many droughts, heat waves and rising sea levels. But with Sunderban National Park - formed from hundreds of islands and the tiger tiger residence as well as many rare animals of India, the threat of climate change is present.'Crop season

Sagar Island houses are damaged due to sea level rise and coastal erosion.(Photo: Gulf-times)

it is because of little rainfall but we know where to go? ', Alauddin said as he turned his eyes to the family's dry and dry parcel. Drought and then heavy rain and increased soil salinity make this area no longer grow food crops and people living by farming now have to go out to earn a living. At least 4 million inhabitants live on 9,630 km ² islands, which are full of mangroves.

Leading UN climate experts predict that in this century, the temperature will increase by 1.8-4 ^o C, and sea level will rise by 17.78 - 58.42 cm, threatening to submerge the Island. This effect is even greater if the ice in Antarctica and the world's largest Greenland island melts.

400 households living on tiny Moushuni Island still do not know what is happening. Not far away, the two islands sunk to the bottom of the sea and over the past three decades, the vast ocean has swallowed about 100 km ² of mangrove forest in Sunderbans. Situation of soil erosion due to sea water in the past 5 years has also encroached into the island up to 15 m and destroyed mangrove forests on many islands.

For centuries, mangroves live on a combination of seawater and freshwater from rivers, but now many mangroves are dying due to rising sea levels, causing water to nourish mangroves to become 'salty'. Trees on the islands also collapsed, making soil erosion worse. Kanti Ganguly, a West Bengal state official, said the government decided to reinforce, raise the dyke and increase the area of ​​mangrove forests in Sunderbans to protect the islands. But according to Hazra oceanographer, these measures are probably too late .

Bacteria on the seabed can limit the Earth to warm up

The bacteria that live around the Haakon Mosby volcanic volcano in the Arctic Sea Barents are contributing to curb the Earth's warming by " chewing " hot methane leaking from the crater. Scientists in Germany and France found that the new methane-consuming bacterium has a single-celled oxygen form of ANME-3 called ANME-3 living next to two other bacteria in the volcano 1,250 meters deep in the sea. It only exists where nutrients can be obtained from the sea and methane from volcanoes. The bacteria can eat 40% of the methane - the main component of natural gas and greenhouse gas - are released because they grow quickly only in thin mud.

This finding could not only help clarify how bacteria consume methane, but can also clue as to how to turn methane into easier-to-use fuels like methanol or butane. In California (USA), methane bubbles from the seabed near Santa Barbara to be retained for energy to power nearly 200 homes. As the emissions of fossil fuel combustion, methane causes a 21-times stronger greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide (CO ₂ ).

TA (According to Reuters)

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