Coastal infrastructureN.C. panel to issue sea-level rise forecast to guide coastal, infrastructure development

Scientists with the North Carolina Coastal Resources Commission (CRC) will have their last public meeting today (Monday) before the group issues its projections on sea level rise around the state’s coastal areas. The science panel’s report will be the first in the nation to issue separate projections for four different geographic zones within a state.

“I don’t know anyone who’s gone that far,” said Skip Stiles, executive director of Wetlands Watch in Norfolk, Virginia. “In Virginia, that’s been a big head-scratcher for us.”

In a 2010 prediction, the science panel said North Carolina’s sea levels would increase by thirty-nine inches by 2100. Climate-change skeptics and coastal developers protested the report, claiming the scientists’ range of 15.7 to 59.1 inches of sea level rise by 2100 was based on bias methodologies.

Today, the revised forecast is limited to thirty years, focuses on four separate zones and not the entire state of North Carolina, and based on methodologies not used in the previous report. Climate change study supporters note that the new approach could scale back sea level rise projections in the state by including tidal gauge readings from southern parts of the state, which tend to have had lower sea level measures. The Charlotte Observer notes that the difference between sea levels in the northern and southern coasts of North Carolina are due to shifting geologic masses which are descending at a faster rate in the north. The tectonic shifts are the result of melting glaciers in the last ice age, and the gradual compression of glacier sediments deposited on the state’s northern coast.

Dave Burton, an adviser to NC-20, a group of coastal developers who oppose the panel’s initial projections, says sea level rise projections by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are based more on ideology than on science and wants the science panel to give less weight on the IPCC findings, which formed the basis of the science panel’s initial forecast. “I am hopeful that it will be a substantial improvement,” said Burton, referring to the new projections. After reviewing the new projections, the science panel will circulate the report among other scientists in January, release it for public comment on 31 March, and submit a final report to the state legislature on 1 March 2016.

In 2012, the state legislature barred any state agency from adopting a policy based on any sea level forecast other than the CRC’s projections, adding that the CRC cannot adopt the science panel’s findings until July 2016. The move will make the science panel’s conclusions the guide for future infrastructure or building developments that may be affected by sea level rise or climate change. The science panel will be responsible for issuing updated 30-year predictions every five years.