Mapping Africa’s changing coastline
For generations, communities along the Gulf of Guinea have watched the coastline change. Beaches have narrowed, homes have flooded, freshwater has turned salty and the shores that support fishing, trade and some of West Africa’s oldest coastal cities have steadily retreated.
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By reconstructing the causes of past sea-level rise locally – and measuring how much faster the rise is happening today than it was a few decades ago – scientists are helping policymakers confront excruciating choices about where to build protections and in some cases what land should be abandoned.
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Developed by scientists at Harvard University’s Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability as part of a broader climate adaptation project run in collaboration with researchers at the University of Ghana, the Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny in Côte d’Ivoire and the University of Lagos, a new interactive platform reconstructs sea-level change at 950 locations around Africa’s coastline from 1900 and projects how it could change through to 2100 under different emissions scenarios.
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The platform shows that sea level has already risen along South Africa’s coastline, she said. “Across the west, south and east coasts, sea level has risen since the mid-20th century, although the amount varies from place to place.”
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