Climate change – mostly, when talking about this topic, people associate Bangladesh and India, with millions of people threatened by droughts and coastal areas that are about to be submerged in roaring torrents of tsunami-like waters. Yet also in “stable” areas of the world, climate change happens. I recently spent three weeks on the German North Sea-island of Borkum, the western-most of the North Frisian-islands. And believe me, change is in the air…

You talk to a lot of people if you are in one spot for three weeks. And drawing from experiences from other holidays on Borkum, I can only conclude: Climate change is no future-scenario for the folks on the German North Sea-shore and the islands. It’s already happening. If you ask people about the last big flood (and please, don’t whistle Peter Gabriel’s “Here comes the flood”), they won’t tell you stories from 1962 anymore. The last real great flood is now always just a few years ago.

It will be an interesting question how communities on the coast and the islands deal with the coming changes, especially since the islands also serve as wave-breakers for Germany’s mainland coastline. If they go down, flood-incidents will increase in harshness during the 21^st century. Cities like Hamburg and Bremen might be in danger. I’d like to give you, dear gumbooteers, and the interested general public a short overview about what is happening at the “Waterkant” (“Water’s edge”, as the coastal areas are called in North German dialect) and where the challenges for communities are.

Here are some of the consequences that will manifest massively during the next few decades…

…regarding the North Sea:

Definitely, more strong winds and storms are to be expected in general because the water keeps getting warmer. The upside may be that more intense work on wind-energy is possible in the North Sea and the estuary areas of Ems and Weser and the Deutsche Bucht (German Bay). But the downside is that floodings will increase and that the eco-system is in danger because animal- and plant-life is migrating to the North Sea from warmer parts of the world’s oceans – life forms which imbalance the delicate North Sea-eco system.

“Global climate change is happening and the results are already palpable in the North Sea“, Wulf Greve from Hamburg-based research maritime institute Senckenberg told German magazine Focus not long ago. During the last 40 years, the seawater-temperature in the Deutsche Bucht increased about 1.5 degrees centigrade. The result: Codfish have almost disappeared and the life-cycle of plankton has been severly influenced. The larvae of many kinds of fish starve, because plankton-lifecycles and their own “infancy-period” simply don’t match anymore.

On the other hand, species of jellyfish that used to be at home only in the English channel (which is warmer because of the Gulf Stream) are now also sighted in the North Sea, for example off the island of Helgoland. Basically, most researchers conclude, the North Sea is undergoing ecological changes whose impact no-one may yet accurately predict.

I guess I need not tell you as an aside, that a higher sea-level is to be expected in general and that stronger waves and

Fishermen and pirates of the North Sea watch the future with a sceptic gaze.

tidal movements already put more danger to shipping- and transport-routes. And of course, it’s an interesting question what will be fished in the North Sea in fifty years.

Changes in the Tidelands

If you wade through the tidelands off Borkum like I did in my holidays, you find Pacific Oysters en masse! And they again take up space of your usual North Sea-mussels – while seagulls and other birds feeding off shells have a much harder time breaking them, so their populace isn’t kept at bay as much.

Also, the edge of the tidelands is eroding because of stronger winds and tidal movements. Thus the entire area of our “Wadden Sea” national park is dwindling, surrounding saltflats are no longer fully functioning eco-systems and birds / small animals that are mobile will look for new niches. Furthermore, imbalances in micro-organism-populations lead to dropping oxygen levels in the North Sea tidelands and mud flats.

That of course reduces the attractivity of this National Park from a touristic vantage point, which again may have consequences for people, especially those living on our North Sea islands.

What will happen to the Islands?

The cliffs and dunes will certainly continue to erode, beaches won’t be as spacious as they used to be which might be great for an invading army but not for the island as such. Dunes are the best natural protection from flood desasters on the islands, increased land-loss on the tideland-side increases the danger of floods that might not just damages buildings and infrastructure.

Tidelands off Hamburg: Will they still be around in 2060?

Coastal protection-costs will rise and real estate-prices will fall. Salt water intrusion might even lead to shortages of potable water on German North Sea islands during the course of the 21^st century and conflicts between tourism and environmental issues will probably get stronger.

Coast-lines on German mainland will be affected in several ways

The German coastal provinces Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony), Hamburg und Schleswig-Holstein are feverishly pressing projects in order to secure levees and embankments since the turn of the millenia. Hundreds of millions of Euros of tax-payers money are invested (and for once, everyone will benefit from it). Stronger wave-activity will definitely damage embankments more than in the past, drainage systems for the hinterlands will get more elaborate and more complicated, which also calls for big invest.

This may all sound overly dramatic, but you have to bear in mind that especially in not very deep coastal maritime zones like in the North or the Baltic Sea, a rising sea-level may, according to some computer simulations, be above the global average. Why? Because thermic distention of surface water has a much larger effect here, in comparison to the Pacific or the Atlantic. Some researchers even opine that the rise may be thrice as high.

Agriculture may suffer from increased salting of soils, what will happen to tourism is as unclear as on the islands.

Windpower might be a chance for Germany's north, many units are being installed as you are reading this, a great off-shore windpark is being constructed off Borkum as well.

Tourism may in fact even increase due to more sun in Germany’s north (in fact, during the last five years you had more sun near the North Sea than in Italy or parts of Spain), but environmental changes might as well damage visitors’ interest, since a lot of people do visit the north because of the tidelands and the National Parks. All in all, a real challenge to the communities in Germany’s north.