Maine Coast Could Soon Be Inundated by Rising Seas, Scientists Warn

Sea levels are likely to rise at least three feet across the globe in the next 90 years, which is a lot more than previous estimates — and Maine will probably get the worst of it. That was the message delivered by two climate change experts who just returned from the Arctic Circle and are on a tour of the East Coast to highlight their research and discuss possible policy solutions.

The so-called “Hip-Boot Tour” arrived at Becky’s Diner on the Portland waterfront. Standing in the parking lot of Becky’s Diner, Bill Burtis of the non-profit “Clean Air Cool Planet” donned a pair of hip boots, or waders as they’re sometimes called, and using some blue tape, marked the point on the boots where he expects the sea level to be by the end of the century, if things carry on as they are.

This parking lot, he predicts will be under 18 inches of water — knee deep. And that’s based at the lower end of the latest estimates being touted this week by acclaimed climate scientists from the University of Maine and University of New Hampshire.

“So that’s what sea level rise from melting in the Arctic thermal expansion, and Antarctica would look like on Commercial Street in Portland,” Burtis said.

Gordon Hamilton from UMaine, and Mark Fahnstock of the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space at the University of New Hampshire, have been surveying the diminishing glaciers of Greenland regularly since the mid-90s. But in the last few years, says Hamilton, they’ve noticed an even more worrying trend.

Maine Public Broadcasting Network