On East Coast and North Carolina Shoreline

Rising waters threaten the coast of North Carolina

Climate change is carving its name into the state's retreating shorelines. Planners are taking official notice as they prepare for a wetter world.

Waves crash under a row of beach houses in south Nags Head, which plans a $36 million project to pump fresh sand onto its eroding strand this spring. Rising sea level will only magnify the damages of erosion and storms on the state's oceanfront and sounds, scientists say. {JOHN D. SIMMONS}

Jan. 16, 2011 - MANNS HARBOR The sea that sculpted North Carolina's coast, from its arc of barrier islands to the vast, nurturing sounds, is reshaping it once again.

Water is rising three times faster on the N.C. coast than it did a century ago as warming oceans expand and land ice melts, recent research has found. It's the beginning of what a N.C. science panel expects will be a 1-meter increase by 2100.

Rising sea level is the clearest signal of climate change in North Carolina. Few places in the United States stand to be more transformed.

About 2,000 square miles of our low, flat coast, an area nearly four times the size of Mecklenburg County, is 1 meter (about 39 inches) or less above water. {continued}