Sea-rise site target of cyber attack

A new website designed to show how the coastline will be affected by rising sea levels and land subsidence has been hit by a cyber attack.

Project co-leader and Victoria University of Wellington earth sciences Professor Tim Naish said the NZ SeaRise website went live yesterday at 5am, and was getting 10,000 hits a second which had “just killed” the website.

“The guess is that these are anticlimate change people or the Russians — who knows. We don’t know for sure, but we think they’re using an autobot. They’re coming from an overseas IP address.

“It’s just hitting us with thousands of hits and our website can’t cope.”

He said it was frustrating because mayors were being asked to comment on the website, but were unable to because it was inaccessible.

It was also frustrating for residents trying to access the site.

The NZ SeaRise website shows location-specific sea level rise projections to the year 2300, for every 2km of the New Zealand coast.

Climate change and rising temperatures are causing sea levels to rise by 3.5mm a year on average, but until now, the levels did not allow for vertical land movements.

Naish said continuous small and large seismic events were adding up to cause subsidence in many parts of New Zealand, and the new projections showed the annual rate of sea level rise could double.

Project co-leader and GNS Science Associate Professor Richard Levy said the team had connected vertical land movement data with climatedriven sea-level rise to provide locally-relevant sea level projections.

“Property owners, councils, infrastructure providers and others need to know how sea level will change in the coming decades so that they can consider how risks associated with flooding, erosion and rising groundwater will shift.”