Can’t Explain by Oze

Repository file

Capture — sea levels are rising

evidence/2025/sea-levels-are-rising/source.md

From Can’t Explain Raw capture

Capture — sea levels are rising

  • Claim filed: “Low-lying inhabited islands will be lost to sea level rise.”
  • Who: Torres Strait Regional Authority
  • URL: https://www.tsra.gov.au/the-torres-strait/climate-change/
  • Date on page: published 2025-02-05 (page metadata)
  • Publisher: Torres Strait Regional Authority
  • Title: Climate change
  • Captured: 2026-08-15
  • Method: saved HTML (tsra.html, bom-sotc.html, csiro-oceans.html, climate-council.html, kench-2018.html)

Verbatim (TSRA)

Climate change poses an existential threat to the unique cultures, livelihoods, island communities and ecosystems and environments of the Torres Strait.

Current understanding of long-term sea level rise indicates that most parts of the low-lying inhabited islands in the region will be lost to sea level rise.

Climate Council (climate-council.html, 2 April 2026) repeats the lost-islands line and cites TSRA for 6–8 mm/year in the Strait.

BOM State of the Climate 2024 (bom-sotc.html):

Sea levels are rising around Australia, including more frequent extreme high levels that increase the risk of inundation and damage to coastal infrastructure and communities.

The other meter — rate and island area

csiro-oceans.html — CSIRO / BOM, State of the Climate 2024, Oceans

Global mean sea level has risen by over 22 cm since 1900. Half of this rise has occurred since 1970.

climate-council.html

Over the past century, the global mean sea level has risen by around 22 cm… Recent measurements show a rise of around 3.5 cm per decade.

kench-2018.html — Kench, Ford et al., Nature Communications 9, 605 (2018) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-02954-1

Results highlight a net increase in land area in Tuvalu of 73.5 ha (2.9%), despite sea-level rise, and land area increase in eight of nine atolls. Island change has lacked uniformity with 74% increasing and 27% decreasing in size. Results challenge perceptions of island loss, showing islands are dynamic features that will persist as sites for habitation over the next century.

Local sea level in that study: ~3.90 ± 0.4 mm/yr (about twice the then-global average).

What this file does not do

It does not file “sea level is not rising” or “nobody floods.” It files “will be lost / existential / sinking islands” against the observed centimetre-per-decade rate and the atoll-area series that grew.