Sea-Level Rise Aided by Sinking Land.

• Position: EASTERN SEABOARD

In the coming decades, cities and towns up and down the Eastern Seaboard will have to come to terms with the impact of rising sea level due to climate change. However, a study by researchers from Harvard and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution suggests that rising sea levels may be only part of the picture--because the land along the coast also is sinking.

Peter Huybers (professor of earth and planetary sciences), Jerry Mitrovica (professor of science), and Christopher Piecuch (assistant scientist at Woods Hole) used everything from tide gauges to GPS data to paint a picture of sea-level rise along the East Coast of the U.S.

"What we are seeing at a large scale--and this was a surprise to me--is a very clear pattern that you would expect if the response to the last ice age were the primary control on the differential rates of sea-level rise across the eastern U.S.," says Huybers. In other words, between 20,000 and 95,000 years ago, the Laurentide Ice Sheet, which covered most of northern North America, levered the land upwards. "Now, thousands of years after the ice is gone," Huybers explains, "The mid-Atlantic crust is still...