Sea-level rise is occurring much faster than scientists expected – exposing millions more people to a destructive combination of storm surges on top of sea-level rise, scientists said. Earlier this year they found sea-level rise had already doubled the annual risk of historic flooding across a widespread area of the United States.

The implications are serious – especially for coastal areas of the US. Large portions of America’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts are regarded as “hotspots” for sea-level rise, with water levels increasing at twice the rate of most other places on the planet. The report notes that more than half of the U.S. population, in over 285 cities, live less that 1 meter above the high tide mark. Scientists previously had expected a global sea-level rise of 1m by the end of the century. “But I would say that if you took a poll among the real experts these days probably they would say that a more realistic figure would be more than that,” Report co-author Grant Foster said.

“The study indicates that this is going to be as bad or worse than the worst case scenarios of the IPCC so whatever you were planning from Cape Hatteras to Cape Cod in terms of how you were preparing for sea-level rise – if you thought you had enough defences in place, you probably need more,” Foster said.

Now knowing the prediction, lets see what it means to all of us on Surging Seas.
The map pages show threats from sea level rise and storm surge to all 3,000+ coastal towns, cities, counties and states in the Lower 48.