Gulf of Thailand won't rise with global warming, expert claims

Apr 23, 2007, 3:03 GMT


Bangkok - Global warming is not likely to cause the sea level in the Gulf of Thailand to rise because the body of water is too far from melting glaciers, a leading Thai hydrologist claimed on Monday.

Recent forecasts by the United Nations' Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which predict a 40 centimetre rise in sea levels by the end of the century will cause flooding for up to 94 million Asians living in coastal areas, may not apply to the Gulf of Thailand, according to Suphat Vongvisessomjai, a former professor in water resources engineering at Bangkok's Asia Institute of Technology.

'The climate change panel's projection was wrongly accepted to apply to the Gulf of Thailand,' Suphat told The Nation newspaper. 'We are too far from melting glaciers or ice sheets.'

Suphat added that, in fact, recent research shows that the average sea levels along some coastal provinces on the gulf have declined 0.3 to 0.6 centrimetres over the past eight years.

The hydrologist, now an employee of Team Consulting Engineering, called on the public not to panic over the IPCC findings.

'The climate change panel did not deceive us or exaggerate. Its scientific findings are just based on the environment of their scientists, most of whom live in Europe,' he told the English-language daily.

Asia-Pacific news


LaoPo

Words fail me so



will have to suffice.

And Thailand wants to build intermediate range missiles.....


Soundman.

And the next prediction will be that rain will fall upwards given the right conditions !!!!!!!!!!!

The water levels won't rise because Thailand is to far from the ice caps....................

Is that suppose to be a joke?

Well it made my day

I suppose a good laugh is the most appropriate comment. Is it a complete idiot allowed to speak to the media or is it the media making it up? I sure hope for the later

This post has been edited by Francis Maube: 2007-04-23 19:03:01

Glad I'm not alone in thinking that to be a bizarre statement. Guess the term 'equilibrium' hasn't reached him yet.

There are rumours of talks between Vietnam and Thailand to build a dam between the two countries to protect the Gulf from melting glaciers...

[attachment=30482:map_thai...overview.jpg]

Couldn't find any confirmation yet on google.

LaoPo

Not sure is this the article they are refering to.
Very interesting reading.

http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:mp3hJ29...;cd=1&gl=ie

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=author...amp;oi=scholarr

The worrying thing is this joker actually taught at one of the most prestigious Universities in SE Asia, so......gawd help his students.

The company he works for now are well-known for their let's say, impartiality, in concocting positive EIA's for their employers. About as objective as used car salesmen, when it comes to identifying impacts or potential flaws in the project.

This is just getting better & better...




Soundman.

the melted wated just stay around there.......I am not an hydrologist, so can somebody explain me how it works?

benefit of the doubt ,

something lost in the translation .................

PMSL!

Let me guess...........
next Thailand will build a dam with India to stop water from the Bay of Bengal from comming in over the other side?

This post has been edited by aussiestyle1983: 2007-04-23 19:17:11

"Sir, a comet just impacted in North America. We are afraid that the dust cloud might block the sunlight, with catastrophic consequences for our climate!"

"Oh, that's OK, we are on the other side of the globe. I am sure we won't be affected by it."

im now begining to understand the term "land of smiles"

Yeah, that 'something' must be the water from the melted ice caps...

The biggest threat to the rising water levels in Thailand is the amount of humungous Europeans wearing skimpy bathers jumping into the beach at Pattaya.
So I say ban fat bathers before we worry about global warming.

Right on! I've always said that Al Gore might not be complaining about global warming so much if he lost about 70 pounds and took that blue sportcoat off once in a while. My god, the man's enormous! Of course he's hot...

Article in the Nation

Quote
Gulf sea level 'unlikely to rise'

Global warming will not cause sea levels to rise in the Gulf of Thailand, a leading hydrologist says.

Sea levels in the Gulf of Thailand are, in fact, falling slightly, Dr Suphat Vongvisessomjai said. Forecasts by the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change that global warming would cause sea levels to rise had been misapplied to the Gulf of Thailand, he said, urging the public not to panic.

The phenomenon will vary according to latitude, explained Suphat, a former professor at the Asian Institute of Technology's water resources engineering and management programme.

Global warming will cause significant rises in sea level in areas in the high and middle latitudes only, he said. These areas will be affected by melting glaciers and ice sheets, while areas close to the Equator will not, he explained.

"The climate change panel's projection was wrongly accepted to apply to the Gulf of Thailand. We are too far from melting glaciers or ice sheets [for sea levels to rise]," Suphat said.

He cited data from the Navy's hydrographic department that showed average sea levels at Koh Lak in Prachuap Khiri Khan and Sattahip in Chon Buri were 0.6 centimetres and 0.3 centimetres lower, respectively, over the past 8.6 years than the 25-year average between 1963 and 1987.

He also cited research from a Japanese team. In 1993 researchers Tetsuo Yanagi and Tatsuya Akaki found that sea levels at southern locations in the Sea of Japan, the Korean Peninsula, Indochina and Malaysia had been falling for 40 years, he said.

Suphat said the sea level in the Andaman Sea might also be falling because it occupied the same latitudes as the Gulf of Thailand.

Suphat, now a water and environment expert at Team Consulting Engineering, said the land subsidence reported in many coastal areas of the gulf was the consequence of human activity, including over-consumption of ground water.

Erosion plays a crucial role in land emergence and subsidence, he said.

Although climate change would not cause sea levels to rise in the Gulf of Thailand, Suphat warned against ignoring concerns about the impact of rising global temperatures.

Careful analysis rather than panic is in order, he said.

"The climate change panel did not deceive us or exaggerate. Its scientific findings are just based on the environment of their scientists, most of whom live in Europe," he said.

Since 2001 the panel has been reporting global sea levels will rise between 11 and 28 centimetres by 2100, and that the rate is accelerating. The panel was set up in 1998 by the World Meteorological Organisation and the United Nations Environment Programme.

Pennapa Hongthong

The Nation
unquote

A bit more science in this article. Are there any experts in regional geology, plate tectonics and subsidence rates who wish to comment?

Have a look at 'Bisto's' post in #9, second link; that'll do for you.

LaoPo

Thanks I've copied this from the first link:


quote
Relative sea-level is affected by vertical
land movements caused by tectonic movement,
sedimentation, groundwater and oil extraction.
Warrick et al. (1993) summarized four main
processes affecting sea level changes: (A) glacio-
eustasy, ( emergence/subsidence of land, ©
manmade activity, and (D) ocean-atmosphere
effects (Table 4). These factors vary widely in their
effects on relative changes in sea-level.

Regarding the process (, vertical land
movements, Yanagi and Akaki (1993) studied sea-
level variation rates from 1950 to 1991 in the East
Asian region. Figure 5, in which the shaded area
denotes where the sea-level falls due to the plate
tectonics, shows that the sea-level has fallen for
the past 40 years in an area including the southern
part of the Sea of Japan, the Korean Peninsula,
Indochina, and the Malay Peninsula.
unquote

So maybe there is some 'method in their madness'!

It's announcements like this one that whisper "job security" to me....

Can't wait to see their solution to ozone holes.