Report: Calif. to get seas rising 6 inches by 2030

Associated Press ^ | Jun 22, 2012, 5:23 PM EDT | JEFF BARNARD AP Environmental Writer

[Hunton Peck]

The West Coast will see an ocean several inches higher in coming decades, with most of California expected to get sea levels a half foot higher by 2030, according a report released Friday.

The study by the National Research Council gives planners their best look yet at how melting ice sheets and warming oceans associated with climate change will raise sea levels along the country's Pacific coast. It is generally consistent with earlier global projections, but takes a closer look at California, Oregon and Washington.

Although the 6 inches expected for California by 2030 seem minor, the report estimated that sea levels there will be an average of 3 feet higher by 2100. About 72 percent of the state's coast is covered by sandy cliffs, and the rest include beaches, sand dunes, bays and estuaries.

Seaside cliffs will be cut back about 30 yards over the next 100 years, and sand dunes will be driven back even more, said Robert A. Dalrymple, a professor of civil engineering at Johns Hopkins University and chairman of the group that wrote the report. Coastal wetlands will be able to keep pace for about 50 years, but will eventually be overwhelmed without new sources of sand, and room to move inland.

The report noted that dams hold back about a third of that sand, which once washed into the sea from the Klamath River in Northern California.

Northern California, Oregon and Washington can expect a less dramatic increase - about 4 inches by 2030 and 2 feet by 2100 - because seismic activity is causing land to rise north of the San Andreas Fault, offsetting increasing sea levels, and drop south of it. The fault runs out to sea at Cape Mendocino.

Oregon has the advantage of tough basalt formations on much of the...

[Godzilla]

These people cannot get tomorrow’s forecast correct most of the time - predicting 100 years into the future - complete manure.