What Would Happen If Sea Level Rose 10 Feet In California

Picture the Pacific 10 feet higher than it is today. That is the height of a basketball rim, added to every high tide along California's coast. At San Francisco International Airport, planners are designing a wall about 7.6 miles long to wrap around the runways, and it is built for 3.5 feet of rise. Ten feet is almost three times that. The Bay Area around that airport is expected to take about two-thirds of California's economic damage from rising seas, and the bay is only one stretch of the coast at stake. NOAA's Sea Level Rise Viewer already maps the state's shoreline in half-foot steps up to 10 feet. What those maps leave out, erosion and sinking land, plays a large part in what a 10-foot sea would do here. The first question is how soon it could arrive.

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