Coasts Should Plan for 6.5 Feet Sea Level Rise by 2100 as Precaution, Experts Say

"Coastal decisions by and large require long lead times, and it would be nice if we could wait for the science to clear up, but we can’t," one scientist said.

As coastal communities prepare for the impacts of climate change, a new report warns that ice loss from Antarctica and Greenland could cause far more sea level rise than previously thought, and it says planners should not ignore that peril.

If planners are working with a mid-range projection of sea level rise, their efforts might protect coastal regions from the most likely scenarios depicted in climate models, but that still leaves a lot of risk, say the authors of the study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Coastal decisions by and large require long lead times, and it would be nice if we could wait for the science to clear up, but we can't," said Michael Oppenheimer, an atmospheric scientist at Princeton University and one of the authors of the study.

"If you knew there was a one-third or even 10 percent chance a plane would crash, you wouldn't get on it.  It's the same with sea level rise," he said.

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