Sea-level rise and coastal management: An introduction

摘要

This issue of Shore & Beach is focused on sea level rise (SLR) or, more accurately, what potential future SLR may mean for our coasts. The space-eye view of Antarctica on the cover shows how the continent has warmed over the past half-century. Notice that the (red-colored) warming is concentrated in West Antarctica, home of the Ronne Ice Shelf facing the Weddell Sea in the South Pacific (top) and the Ross Ice Shelf in the Ross Sea and the South Atlantic (bottom).rnAntarctica is on the cover since it's the "big elephant in the room." If all the ice should melt, average global sea level would rise about 70 meters, or over 200 feet! If we didn't have important advertisers for that space, we could have put a similar picture of Greenland on our back cover.