German Geologist Thinks Policymakers Need To Take Geology 101 Before Entering Climate Discussion

Land area gains despite sea level rise: coastal areas have grown 13,500 sq km over past 30 years

By geologist Dr. Sebastian Luning and Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt.
(German text translated/edited by P Gosselin)

On August 25, 2016 there was in Nature Climate Change a small wonder was observed. A team of scientist led by Gennadii Donchyts of the Dutch Deltares Research Institute released a statistic on land area gain and loss in the coastal areas on earth. Given our rising sea levels, a loss of land area was expected. Thus the surprise was even more profound when the official figures were released: coastal regions didn’t shrink, rather they grew by 13,565 sq km over the past 30 years.

That’s a real sensation.

Unfortunately the German media chose to keep silent about it. Inconvenient data that they do not want the public to see. In the publication it is stated:

Earth’s surface gained 115,000 km2 of water and 173,000 km2 of land over the past 30 years, including 20,135 km2 of water and 33,700 km2 of land in coastal areas. Here, we analyse the gains and losses through the Deltares Aqua Monitor — an open tool that detects land and water changes around the globe.

For what is interesting are the figures for the coastal areas (the other figures concern inland bodies of water that are independent of sea level). The calculation is trivial:
33,700 sq km of land gain minus 20,135 sq km of land loss = a net land gain of 13,565 sq km.

The people at the Deltares-Institute did have some fear of the figures. In the original press release, they refrained from presenting this important result:

How the earth has changed over the past 30 years

The world has gained 115,000 km2 of water and 173,000 km2 of land over the past 30 years. The Dutch research institute Deltares developed an open tool that analyses satellite data and visualises land and water changes around the globe. The results were published today in Nature Climate Change.

First global-scale tool that shows water and land conversion

The Deltares Aqua Monitor was developed by Gennadii Donchyts, a remote sensing expert at Deltares. It is the first global-scale tool that shows, with a 30-metre resolution, where water has been transformed into land and vice-versa. The Aqua Monitor uses freely available satellite data and Google Earth Engine, a platform for the planetary-scale scientific analysis of geospatial datasets that is now open to the general public. Gennadii Donchyts: “The Aqua Monitor shows that, around the world between 1985 and 2015, about 173 000 km2, an area about the size of Washington State, has been transformed into land. At the same time, an area of 115 000 km2 has been transformed into water. Both documented and undocumented changes due to man-made interventions, natural variability, and climate change have now been revealed.”

Known versus unknown

While many countries report on dam construction, information about more remote or isolated areas has been lacking. In Myanmar, the Global Reservoir and Dams database shows an increase in the water surface between 1985 and 2010 of about 400 km2. Using the Aqua Monitor, we found 1,180 km2 of new surface water during the same period. The damming of the Rimjin River in North Korea close to the border with South Korea resulted in a storage surface of 12.4 km2 that was actually due to the Hwanggang Dam, which was thought to be located 35 km to the east. These unknown reservoirs may have had a severe impact on the displacement of people and on the ecology. These issues still have to be investigated.

Created by nature or humans

The results of the Aqua Monitor show only the compound impact of natural and human change or variability. It is often hard to tell what has caused a change without determining the details of the local water and sediment budget. While changes in meanders in the Brahmaputra delta are clearly natural, the Mondrian-like shapes near Taiji Nai’er lakes in China are clearly man-made.

Big data at everyone’s fingertips

Universally-available analytics for big satellite data may have major implications for monitoring capacity and associated actions. At the very local scale, members of the general public can now make assessments without expert assistance if their houses are threatened by coastal erosion. At the regional scale, a downstream riparian state can conduct year-to-year monitoring to see whether upstream neighbours are establishing new impoundments. Finally, at the planetary scale, global agencies such as the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction can monitor the appearance of new reservoir storage capacity that may reduce flood hazards.

Jaap Kwadijk, the Deltares scientific director: “This has never been done before. So it is difficult to imagine all the new applications that will be made using this tool. But the tool can be used by everybody and so I am sure multiple applications will emerge in the next few years”.

The BBC took on an approach of transparency and reported explicitly on the land area gain at the coasts:


Why is the result so? Every geologist learns in the first semesters that deltas expand out into the sea when the rate of sediment buildup is faster than then sea level rise. This appears to be the case here. Sea level rise is too small to lead to a flooding of coastal level areas. The system finds itself in a state of regression as many sand coasts are pushing out slowly into the sea.

Policymakers need to take Geology 101

After the end of the last ice age some 10,000 years ago, the case was very different. Back then sea level rise was multiple times greater than what it is today and coasts were covered by the sea. In geological terms this is called “transgression”. Perhaps political policy makers should be required to take Geology 101 so that they are better able to take part in the climate discussion.

Online Aqua-Monitor here. Also see a report (in German) at

13 responses to “German Geologist Thinks Policymakers Need To Take Geology 101 Before Entering Climate Discussion”

  1. Rud Istvan

    So does the closure problem. See my recent guest post on SLR and closure at Climate Etc.

  2. Chris

    How do you gain land AND water area? Is the Earth getting larger?

    1. DirkH

      It should. If you extrapolate backwards the shape of continents fits perfectly on a smaller sphere. This also explains biblical accounts of antedeluvian times. There were no oceans before the flood.

      Of course, this invalidates scientific stories about a past billions of years long, about dinosaurs, creation of life by a lucky accident etc.
      But science is famously self-correcting when new evidence comes to light.

      1. Robert Folkerts

        A courageous post, in todays world Dirk.

        1. DirkH

          Hey it’s fun to ponder old theories like expanding Earth and Hollow Earth. Hollow Earth is not even as crazy as it sounds: Gauss and Newton have independently of each other proven that you are weightless at any point in a hollow sphere.

    2. Robin Pittwood

      Easy. I took a look at few dots near where I live. There were some green dots in one spot, and blue dots nearby. It was near the coast, and what it recorded was the movement of the river mouth. So there’s one example of a plus and a minus.

  3. John F. Hultquist

    I’ve not read enough to know what has been measured. However, because Earth is dynamic there are changes in the shape of the land — mountains can grow higher (or lower) and valleys can deepen (or fill).

    Say, for a cone:
    r is the radius
    h is the height
    l is the slant height (and greater than r)

    The area of the curved (lateral) surface of a cone = πrl, and thus greater than the circle of the base.

    Is the Earth getting larger?
    No. Or, almost no.

  4. handjive

    If the sea level rise was of the predicted catastrophic proportions, the 97% would be pointing at the oldest mean sea level markers on the planet, the Lempriere-Ross mark.


    The silence of the chorus of consensus of the inconvenient truth is deafening.

  5. John Andrews

    It looks to me that the small changes in land and water are the differences between some very large numbers. If this is the case, the error terms are going to be very large, perhaps as large as the small values quoted. I would not bet a very large amount of money on the repeatability of the values.

  6. M E

    In my young day, harumph, students at Edinburgh University Prehistoric Archaelogy department studied Geomorphology.
    We had all of course studied Geography at school and knew most of this about landforms when we took Ordinary Level examinations at Secondary School in England and Scotland too, I suppose.
    Does anyone know if such subjects are widely taught now? Most people are so vague about anything geological. However I must except the people of Christchurch New Zealand where we discuss the latest earthquake knowledgeably when at the bus stop, even with strangers.
    There’s nothing like personal experience.

  7. tom0mason

    The alarming virtual world of science for the last 30+ years based on their reports…

    Sea level has risen causing all the delta areas around the world to become inundated with seawater over the last 30-40 years, with increasing salinity of river estuaries becoming a major problem. Harbors and port are becoming silted up faster as flooded land erodes faster. Low lying places such has Holland, Ganges Delta and Bangladesh, etc., has had large population migrations and famine from the advancing seas increasing salinity destroying large areas of agricultural land and depletion of river fish stocks.
    And as pointed out many times Unesco World Heritage-listed sites in Italy including Venice, the ancient ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum have been swallowed up by rising sea levels…

    Meanwhile back in the real world little of this has, or is happening.

  8. Miner49er

    Climate change is a false premise for regulating carbon dioxide emissions. Nature converts CO2 to limestone. Climate change may or may not be occurring, but is is for sure NOT caused by human fossil fuels use. There is no empirical evidence that fossil fuels use affects climate. Likely causes are well documented elsewhere.

    Here’s why. Fossil fuels emit only 3% of total CO2 emissions. 95% comes from rotting vegetation. All the ambient CO2 in the atmosphere is promptly converted in the oceans to limestone and other carbonates. CO2 + CaO => CaCO3. The conversion rate increases with increasing CO2 partial pressure. An equilibrium-seeking mechanism.

    99.84% of all carbon on earth is already sequestered as sediments in the lithosphere. The oceans convert CO2 to carbonate almost as soon as it is emitted. Everything else is sophistry or mass hysteria.

    A modern coal power plant emits few pollutants except water vapor and carbon dioxide. Coal remains the lowest cost and most reliable source of electric energy.