NEW BEDFORD — August 26, 2012 — Sea levels are rising much faster on the northeast coast of the United States than they are anywhere else around the globe, according to a study released recently in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Florida-based oceanographer Dr. Asbury Sallenger, who led the study, said that rising sea levels are nothing new. What is new, he said, is the discovery that they are rising an average of three to four times faster between Cape Hatteras, N.C., and Boston, than they are anywhere else on the globe.
Sallenger called the region a "hot spot" for rising sea levels, likening it to "traveling a highway at 70 miles per hour and suddenly jamming on the accelerator."
Using computer models, the scientific community has long theorized that the rise in the global sea level is accelerating. Sallenger and his team set out to find if that was the case by looking at measurements of sea levels throughout the United States from 1950 to 2010.
The rapidly rising sea levels Sallenger found within the hot spot could have large impacts by the end of this century. Many scientists have predicted that sea levels will have risen globally by an average of one foot by 2100. But between Boston and North Carolina, sea levels could rise a total of two feet in that same time span.
Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard Times.