…we can do now. In 1985, we only had enough for our needs. Now, we have a fair amount of headroom,” he says.

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University of Colorado, CIRES

The utility also took a step further in 1990 by siting its $3.8-billion Deer Island regional wastewater treatment plant a foot higher than the sea level at the time required, to ensure a comfortable head against sea-level rise. It is protected against a 12-ft storm surge by a surrounding levee. Deer Island also is a “green” facility. Sludge is recycled for fertilizer and methane is used to warm the on-island powerplant, which has two backup, diesel-fired turbine generators. In hot weather, the generator takes the plant off the grid. The plant can even become a power contributor. It also has hydroelectric generators on the outfall to take advantage of the excess head developed by the elevation.

Many communities now are reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but few seem to recognize that “they are still going to have to deal with a very changed climate,” Kirshen notes. That may be bad news, but it also can be seen as an update for planning parameters. “The science is good, the problem is the uncertainties,” says Kirshen. “But engineers are used to dealing with uncertainties. It shouldn’t be an excuse for inaction.”

Research Push

In the Arctic, researchers are getting ready to jump on those uncertainties. In March, they will kick off the International Polar Year, a period of intense study of both polar regions, cosponsored by the International Council of Science and the World Meteorological Organization. The goal is to gather a trove of data between now and March 2009 to help analysts assess what is going on.

USACE/Alaska District Retreating Arctic ice packs expose Alaskan coast to early winter storms.

“It’s very problematic in the Arctic, because of how few observation sites you have and the sparsity of data,” says Jacqueline A. Richter-Menge, a civil engineering researcher at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Cold Regions Research Engineering Laboratory, Hanover, N.H. She says scientists can see the Arctic ice cap is smaller, thinner and made of much younger ice than 20 years ago, but they are not sure why. Weather patterns that, in the past appeared to control and modulate the floating ice caps seem to be on schedule, but the ice cap may still be shrinking, says Richter-Menge. Scientists know about shifts in the deep currents beneath the ice, that could be melting it from below, but they do not have enough data, she says.

Even if the Arctic ice cap melts away, the effect on global sea level would be nil. Floating ice has the same displacement as water—melt it, and the level does not change. But the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, perched upon land, are another matter: This is where the potential for radical sea-level rise is locked up.

The Greenland sheet shows signs of increasing high-elevation summer melt, according to satellite-data analysis by researcher Konrad Steffen at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science, University of Colorado, Boulder. Infrared images differentiate between hard ice and pools of water and slush. Between 1979 and 2002, the slush zone increased 16% in size and climbed in elevation. In 2005, the melt reached record heights.

special theme issue:   SUSTAINABILITY

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