Society

Rising sea level brings more marine disasters

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2011-04-20 18:40

BEIJING - China's coastal sea level has been rising 2.6 mm every year for the past three decades, bringing more marine disasters to coastal regions, according to documents released by the State Oceanic Administration (SOA) on Wednesday.

The two documents, which cover China's sea level and marine disasters respectively, said that marine disasters in 2010 resulted in 137 deaths and disappearances, with direct economic losses totaling nearly 13.3 billion yuan (about $2 billion).

Economic losses caused by marine disasters between 2006 and 2010 increased 18 percent over the number of those that occurred between 2001 and 2005, the documents said.

SOA expert Liu Kexiu attributed the rising sea level to global warming. "Other key factors are land subsidence caused by human activities, including overexploitation of groundwater and massive construction of high buildings in coastal areas," Liu said.

The documents said that average air and sea temperatures in coastal regions rose about 0.4 and 0.2 degrees Celsius, respectively, over the past decade, and that the average sea level rose about 25 mm.

As a "gradual" marine disaster, the cumulative effect of rising sea level could "aggravate storm tides, coastal erosion, seawater invasion and other disasters," the documents said.

The documents call for strengthening the investigation of the changing sea level, regulating coastal construction projects and building defensive facilities to mitigate the effects of marine disasters.