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the river delta in this image is imbeded in a flat plain, and as sea levels rise the people in the plains will be forced out to higher ground

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the river delta in this image is imbeded in a flat plain, and as sea levels rise the people in the plains will be forced out to higher ground

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As the ice accelerates, the ice connecting it to the bedrock warms with friction and creates high pressure water underneath the ice making it move faster 

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As the ice accelerates, the ice connecting it to the bedrock warms with friction and creates high pressure water underneath the ice making it move faster 

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the flooding in bangladesh is caused by sea level rise because the antarctic ice sheat is melting

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the flooding in bangladesh is caused by sea level rise because the antarctic ice sheat is melting

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sea flooding caused by larger storms do to climate change

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sea flooding caused by larger storms do to climate change

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Sea level rise increases the damage caused by storm surges

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Sea level rise increases the damage caused by storm surges

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This artical shows the danger to the people of bangladesh

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This artical shows the danger to the people of bangladesh

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The UN pushed back against a plan revived by Bangladesh, which would relocate the country's estimated 313,000 Rohingya refugees to a remote island in the Bay of Bengal that floods every year.

Bangladesh suffers from a growing overcrowding crisis, and says it cannot accommodate the influx of thousands more individuals - even those fleeing persecution in the Buddhist-majority Myanmar. The Rohingya in Myanmar are undergoing what the United Nations termed "textbook ethnic cleansing."

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said, however, that any move to the island "has to be voluntary on the part of the refugees," according to the AFP.

More than 300,000 Rohingya have poured into Bangladesh since the latest flare-up in violence in August, adding thousands of refugees already living in overflowing UN-run camps in Cox's Bazar district, close to the border with Myanmar, according to the AFP. Following last year's violence, more than 87,000 Rohingya fled to neighboring Bangladesh between October 2016 to July 2017, according to sources at the International Organization for Migration.

The Bangladeshi government has been scrambling to find a solution and physical space to accommodate these refugees. The relocation plan, which was floated again last week after it had previously been quashed, proposes moving them to a remote, uninhabited island called Thengar Char located 37 miles from the coastline.

Thengar Char is a slit island in located in Ganges-Brahmaputra delta, where two major rivers meet and sink to the Bay of Bengal. The island emerged out of the bay 11 years ago.

The United Nations and human rights groups have decried the plan, calling the island "uninhabitable," due to constant flooding because of high tides and the monsoon season. Moreover, as Foreign Affairs reported earlier this year, "The area is dangerous for other reasons, too. Trafficking routes converge around the island, and criminals roam its waters."

What would motivate the Bangladeshi government propose the relocation plan as a viable option if the island is deemed uninhabitable?

The seemingly sporadic appearance of an island in the Bay of Bengal is not unusual, explained Michael Steckler, a geophysicist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

"Char is a name for a sandy island," Steckler, who has worked extensively in Bangladesh, explained. The sandy islands spring up due to a variety of geological circumstances present in the bay. As Steckler explained, there was a huge earthquake in the area in 1950, which led to massive landslides that dumped sediments into the Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers. This impacted the rivers' delta, meaning the landform that grows due to sediments that are deposited by the flowing rivers, and also provided a significant amount of sediment that allows for the creation of these sandy islands.

Movement is a reality of these islands - many of which are inhabited. "There are lots of char islands that move around a lot from year to year," Steckler explained, "and there are about 700,000 people living on them. They're called char people, and they are used to the fact that everyone few years they're going to have to pick up and move," either because the island will become uninhabitable or because the island itself will move and they'll have to move to a different part of the island, he explained.

Steckler, who reminded weather.com that he has never been to Thengar Char, posited that perhaps "Thengar Char could be part of a larger readjustment of where the [Ganges and Brahmaputra] rivers are. This is a place where the rivers are carrying a lot of sediment and they're depositing and eroding and they're always moving around. The whole area is very dynamic." Meaning it is quite possible that the island could become as habitable as comparable sand-masses.

Steckler drew on a similar island for comparison. "Farther west in the sundarbans, there are two islands that have been growing...and they've pretty much merged into one island." The growth process of these two-in-one islands developed almost in a textbook-like fashion." It started off as just a sandy island, then it starts getting some grasses and you start seeing shrubs and then more bushes and then trees and then finally a mangrove forest and you can walk across that entire succession."

This happens often, throughout the region. Locals have their own methods for testing the durability and habitability of these new location. "What people usually do is they'll notice the island and then plant crops to see if it sticks and then as it gets more stable, people will move there," Steckler explained based on his research and interviews with locals. "It'll be a number of years before the crops grow and people will move and stay there."

Thengar Char is somewhere in that state, currently. Because it is still a young island, it is unclear it it will stick, per se. "Looking at Thengar Char," Steckler explained, "you can see some grasses and you can see that the core is starting to emerge. It's a little bit more stable," he said, comparing it to some other emerging islands he has studied. "So whether that island will continue to emerge and grow or whether the currents might change and it could disappear again."

In addition to its stability, which is in question, the island also faces weather and climate risks. Dr. Leonardo Seeber, seismologist and Research Professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, explained that if there's a cyclone, Thengar Char "is not the place to be," as an island with its makeup, especially one without a cyclone shelter, could easily be literally wiped off the map.

Moreover, as the UN report notes, the island is currently at severe risk for constant flooding. Sea level is higher on the island in the summer than in the winter-- and in a severe monsoon season, like this past year's, the tides could leave the island fully flooded all day. If flooding of this kind persists and the island does not grow, it would remain uninhabitable.

The extent of this sort of flooding can be challenging to predict, due to the shifting makeup of the island and the weather. In the words of Arata Amemiya, a meteorologist for weather.com based in Japan, "monsoon rainfall largely varies from week to week. Sometimes the wind from Bay of Bengal get stronger than usual, or significant weather systems such as tropical cyclones or monsoon depressions can be formed and moved into interior regions. Flooding occurs very often over the country associated with such short-term heavy rainfall events in monsoon season every summer."

That said, Amemiya explained that "it is natural that the island Thengar Char, which is close to sea level, is threatened by frequent occurrence of flooding."

The level and extent that human induced climate change impacts Thengar Char's flooding is not yet fully clear, Amemiya noted. "The impact of climate change on the Asian monsoon is the topic of ongoing study. There is a general agreement that monsoon rainfall will increase in future climate, but careful interpretation is needed because the geographical distribution of rainfall will also change."

The Bangladeshi government did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The government has also yet to receive financial support from the international community either to relocate or harbor the refugees.

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Climate Change Poses Threat to Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh | The Weather Channel

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The UN pushed back against a plan revived by Bangladesh, which would relocate the country's estimated 313,000 Rohingya refugees to a remote island in the Bay of Bengal that floods every year. Bangladesh suffers from a growing overcrowding crisis, and says it cannot accommodate the influx of thousands more individuals - even those fleeing persecution in the Buddhist-majority Myanmar.