Coastal towns doomed by rising sea (UK)

[Dover]

Source: Telegraph

People living on some stretches of coastline will be forced to abandon their homes and move inland as sea levels rise, the new head of the Environment Agency has warned.

Lord Smith of Finsbury said plans need to be drawn up to evacuate people from large stretches which are threatened by erosion.

Work is already under way to identify parts of the south and east coast which are most threatened and Lord Smith said there would be hard decisions to be made about which areas to defend and which to allow the sea to reclaim.

This is the most difficult issue we are going to face as an agency," he said, "We know the sea is eating away at the coast in quite a number of places, primarily on the east and south coasts.

"We are almost certainly not going to be able to defend absolutely every bit of coast – it would be simply and impossible task both in financial and engineering terms."

The coastlines of Norfolk and Suffolk have been identified as facing the most immediate danger....>


Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/global/main.jhtml?xml=/global/2008/08/18/noindex/eaflood118.xml&CMP=EMC-expat2008

[dipsydoodle]

1. A lot of east Anglia is reclaimed land anyway

Much of East Anglia (including parts of Lincolnshire) consisted of marshland and bogs until the seventeenth century, despite the construction of early sea barriers by the Roman Empire. During the seventeenth century the alluvial land was converted into arable land by means of systematic drainage using a collection of drains and river diversions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Anglia

Presumably one day Cambridge will be a port. :shrug:

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. Indeed - a sea level rise of 5m illustrated here:

http://flood.firetree.net/?ll=52.4962,-0.2856&z=10&m=5

[Ghost Dog]

10. Useful maps, thanks.

My place is about 100m from the Atlantic coast on this island, and about 5m above max springs high tide, built on volcanic rock (an old lava flow) surrounded by sand.

I'm hoping for another 20 years grace in this location, but the way things are going...

[Virginia Dare]

6. Same situation with Washington DC and Boston MA....n/t

[truthisfreedom]

2. And just when will the US government face facts about the US going under water?

Florida is toast, as well as a lot of the east coast, and a large portion of California.

[no_hypocrisy]

3. When Wall Street is under water.

[Virginia Dare]

7. ....

[Xithras]

9. Not a large portion of California

The SF Bay Area will hide behind seawalls and be largely uneffected. The Central Valley is low and flat, but elevation-wise it's high enough to escape all but the most extreme rises without flooding (all of Antarctica would need to melt). The only area in any real danger is the Sacramento Delta between Tracy and Sacramento, which would become an inland sea.

[bertman]

4. Norfolk and Suffolk, England, I assume. Not Norfolk and Suffolk, Virginia, USA, which are also

coastal cities.

[Virginia Dare]

8. Yep, they're pretty much doomed as well..n/t