New Warning of Rising Sea Levels in Northeast

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: May 27, 2009
Filed at 12:15 p.m. ET

More Politics NewsWASHINGTON (AP) -- Drip, drip, drip come the studies one after another, reinforcing the threat to the Northeast from rising sea levels along the U.S. and Canadian east coast.

If Greenland's ice melts at moderate to high rates, ocean circulation by 2100 could shift and cause sea levels off the Northeast coast of North America to rise by about 12 to 20 inches more than other coastal areas, researchers report Wednesday in Geophysical Research Letters.

''Major northeastern cities are directly in the path of the greatest rise,'' researcher Aixue Hu of the National Center for Atmospheric Research said.

''The oceans will not rise uniformly as the world warms,'' NCAR scientist Gerald Meehl, a co-author of the new paper, said in a statement. ''Ocean dynamics will push water in certain directions, so some locations will experience sea level rise that is larger than the global average.''

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/05/27/us/politics/AP-US-SCI-Rising-Seas.html