Greece has lost around 250 square kilometers of its beaches in the last 30 years due to climate change, a Greek expert said on Monday.
Costas Synolakis, a preeminent authority on the impact of natural hazards, warned that Greece will see even more of its coastline being swallowed up as climate change continues to push up the sea level.
“By 2050 even, when the sea level is estimated to rise an additional 20 to 30 centimeters, the coastline at some beaches will recede by as much as 30 meters, depending on the incline of the land,” Synolakis, who is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Technical University of Crete and the University of Southern California, told state broadcaster ERT on Monday, citing European Union data.
The financial cost of climate change in Greece
Synolakis went on to warn of the enormous financial cost of large swathes of tourism-dependent Greece’s heavily developed coastline being destroyed.
“We made a few calculations at the Academy’s research center and, according to these calculations, the cost has already reached some 2.6 billion euros a year,” he said, pointing to estimates according to which every square meter of coastline brings 10-15 euros into the local economy every year.
“This is what we have already lost, and this is also on an annual basis because erosion just keeps increasing,” he warned.
This cost, Synolakis explained, refers only to lost revenues from coastal activities and does not even begin to include the loss of buildings and infrastructure that stand to be affected.
As a case in point, Synolakis referred to Vouliagmeni, one of the most rapidly developing areas on Athens’ southern coast, warning that at the present rate of coastal erosion, the upscale seaside resort will become an island at some point in the not-so-distant future. “Likewise, small islands that lie close to sea level will cease to exist,” he said.
The academic referred to Kalyvia beach outside Chania on Crete, which has disappeared as a combined result of rising sea levels and massive sand mining in the 1950s for the construction of Souda airport, noting that another beach on the island, Platanias, is also at imminent risk.
Greece, he said, is in the “red zone” right now because measures to stabilize the country’s beaches are long overdue.
“The most lenient explanation I can give is that we did not have the necessary know-how in Greece to protect our beaches, so the task was given over to harbor engineers, who only knew how to do one thing, and that is what we call ‘hard’ projects, meaning concrete and rocks. These projects have been shown to exacerbate erosion in many cases instead of reducing it, and this is something that took years to be accepted,” said Synolakis.
Climate change and Delos Island, Greece
Recently another study by Greek scientists focused on how climate change affects Delos Island.
Delos, situated in the middle of the Cyclades in the Aegean Sea, and considered the most sacred of all islands in ancient Greek culture is in danger of flooding due to rising sea levels.
Published in the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, the study says that the seafront of the ancient city of Delos is subject to the effects of the sea rise, which have caused significant coastline retreat and exposure to the northerly winds and waves, whereas parts of the coastal lowland, where the remains of the ancient city lie, are inundated, forming extended wetlands.
The study evaluates the future impacts of sea rise caused by climate change on the seafront of ancient Delos. It warns that a sea rise based on digital surface models ranging from 87 cm to 148 cm is anticipated by 2150.