![]() “Our 100-metre threshold is conservative since most beaches’ width is below 50 metres, especially near human settlements and in small islands, such as the Caribbean and the Mediterranean.” “The length of threatened seashores incorporates locations that will be submerged by more than 100 metres, assuming there are no physical limits to potential retreat,” said Michalis Vousdoukas, an oceanographer at the JRC and lead author of the study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change. In these areas, beach retreat is predicted to be five times the national average. The study predicts that the hardest-hit areas in the UK will be west Dorset, north Devon, Great Yarmouth, Barrow-in-Furness and north-east Lincolnshire. The Gambia and Guinea-Bissau have short coastlines, but both are predicted to lose more than 60% of theirs. Australia (14,849km lost) and Canada (14,425km) are predicted to be the worst-affected countries, followed by Chile (6,659km), Mexico (5,488km), China (5,440km) and the US (5,530km). In the best-case scenario, the UK will lose 1,531km or 27.7% of its sandy coast, and 2,415km (43.7%) in the worst case. Flatter or wilder coastlines will be more affected than those where waterfronts are steeper, or those artificially maintained as part of coastal development. ![]() If this happens, a total of 131,745km of beaches, or 13% of the planet’s ice-free coastline, will go under water.Īround the globe, the average shoreline retreat will be 86.4 metres in the RCP4.5 scenario or 128.1 metres in the high-carbon scenario, though amounts will vary significantly between locations. However, if the world continues to emit carbon at its current rate, sea levels will rise by an estimated 80cm, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
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