US East Coast “hot spot” sees faster sea-level rise

Science News : Not only has sea-level rise not been uniform along the West Coast of the US, as noted in yesterday’s News Pick , researchers have been monitoring a similar phenomenon along the East Coast. Asbury Sallenger Jr of the US Geological Survey and colleagues have noted a “hot spot” that extends from Boston to North Carolina’s Cape Hatteras. In a paper published 24 June in Nature Climate Change, they show evidence that between 1950â79 and 1980â2009, sea-level rate increases in that area were 3â4 times higher than the global average. They attribute the accelerated pace to local dynamic processes, including wind patterns and currents, which may be changing due to global warming.