Glaciologist Konrad “Koni” Steffen passed away at aged 68 on August 8 in an accident in Greenland. Steffan was a renowned researcher on rising sea levels, and died after falling into the kind of crevasse that global warming has created. “It looks like climate change actually claimed him as a victim,” a colleague said. His body was not found.

Jason Box, an ice climatologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland who was with Steffen before he died, said he believed his friend “remains 8 meters down in the water,” he told CBS News. “Personally, Koni was like a father,” Box told CBS. “Immense man. Immense loss. Tears falling around the world.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=mPJzAl414ps&feature=emb_logo

Professor Steffen contributed to the landmark Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as a lead author on the Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate.

Professor Steffen was Director of the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) and a former director of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

His passion was the polar regions and he devoted his career to research on climate change and the cryosphere in the in the Arctic and Antarctic. He was also a remarkable science communicator, the The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in a report they sent to GreenProphet.

https://vimeo.com/447787913

Steffen is highly recognized for his long-term scientific monitoring work of the Greenland ice sheet. Since 1990 every spring he went to the Swiss Camp meteorological base station in Greenland, where he worked with his colleagues collecting data on snow, ice and the atmosphere.

“The poles of the Earth are of great importance for the climatic balance of our planet. More research and knowledge of how they work is urgently needed,” Steffen said.

Steffen attended ETH Zurich, from which he received a Diploma in 1977 and a Doctor of Science degree in 1984. He was a professor at the University of Colorado, at EPFL in Lausanne and at ETH in Zurich. He was born on 2 January 1952 in Zurich, Switzerland.

A dual US and Swiss citizen, he was married and a father of two. He was a member of the International Glaciological Society, the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society. “We will deeply miss Koni, but are committed to continuing his mission towards making a contribution, big or small, to create a difference,” his colleagues from the Swiss Polar Institute said in a statement.

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Within the next 100 years, global sea levels are expected to rise by at least 1 meter and swallow up coastal towns and cities – a reality from which the Middle East is not exempt. Already geoscientists from the German University of Technology have noted that in certain parts of the Gulf country Oman – the landmass is sinking and shrinking, Gulf News reports.

LiDAR

Using LiDAR (light detection and ranging instruments) technology in a collaborative study with RWTH Aachen University, the scientists found that land losses of a few millimeters occur each year – particularly between Muscat and the beachfront resort Sifah.

They also warned that this discovery should influence coastal development policy, but according to the paper, ocean front housing units are currently under construction and an integrated tourism project that will initiate even further construction along the Gulf.

Hotel owners astride the Dead Sea in Israel learned the hard way that higher water levels are a formidable foe that can only be defeated by setting buildings further away from the sea shore.

Other cities affected by rising sea levels

Oman is not alone. Other coastal cities throughout the Middle East are also vulnerable to rising sea levels. Further up the Gulf, Dubai’s shoreline is cluttered with hundreds of skyscrapers and other costly development projects and in Alexandria saline water is already interfering with the city’s freshwater supply.

It was also noted that Oman could be hit with a tsunami. According to historical records presented by Gulf News, in 1945 then Sultan Saeed Al Saeed wrote that five days after a small earthquake, a tsunami swept ashore, leaving behind molluscs and other sea species in a nearby lagoon.

If we learn nothing else from last year’s tsunami in Japan, at least we should learn this: it’s folly to think that we can control mother nature. We might not be able to stem the tide of higher sea levels, but at least we can permanently disband any seaside construction projects that we know will not survive the next 100 years.

:: Gulf News

More on Rising Sea Levels in the Middle East:

Egypt Moving to Shore up Delta Cities Against Rising Sea Levels

Underwater City Alternative to Floating Islands?

Coastal Erosion Threatens Evolutionary Hotspots in Gulf Region

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