Hacker News Reader

Comment by midasuni | Hacker News Reader

Scotland’s ground level has risen due to isostatic rebound, upto about 10cm/century over time, but about half that currently.

Current sea level rise due to climate change is higher than that, on the order of 20cm/year

View on HN

Do you mean sea levels are currently rising 20cm per century? I think that’s maybe why you got some downvotes

Didn't downvote, but I do know Scotland's land has been rising for quite a long time, and I believe the sea level rising is a relatively recent thing, so it is possible the land has been rising by more than the sea for a while, even if it isn't any longer. Actually, according to https://www.nature.scot/landforms-and-geology/scotlands-rock... "[land] uplift rates are now modest – no more than 0.6mm per year. At the same time, coastal waters around the UK are rising at rates of up to 2mm per year."

The thing they do mention in the video is that the site and especially some of the spots being excavated is quite close (1m) from a constantly eroding cliff. Under such circumstances, rising sea levels are probably a minor (or at least only one of a number of) contributor(s); other factors are the increasing energy that more frequent and more violent storms bring in (also related to climate change), and of course that parts of the land that are already underwater now do little to protect the parts that are still above sea level (unrelated to climate change). Parts of the German North Sea coast have been experiencing losses of 1m of shoreline per year for many decades, maybe centuries; this means I personally used to know entire dune ridges and valleys that are, mere decades later, somewhere out there in the sea when you stand at the shore. On the bright side, other parts of the littoral are experiencing a relatively expansive ongrowth of new flat sand plains; in some places those are wide enough to harbor their own ephemeral ponds, incipient carpets of vegetation and maybe the beginnings of new dune ridges. What the future will bring we do not know, but for the part of the coast between Belgium and Denmark the outlook is not rosy as the land has been slowly sinking for millennia; IOW it's complicated. Not all that far from Burghead the sea level equation is rise of sea plus sinking of land, whereas in Scotland it's more like rise of sea minus rise of land.

Doh yes per century, recoil figures from memory from a long time ago, thanks for updated ones

Reply on news.ycombinator.com