lightblueline

Wired News reports on Jim Titus's data, which show the vulnerability of Eastern US beaches to even small amounts of sea-level rise. (Jim has been providing EPA data for the Lightblueline effort).

You can read the whole article on the Wired site: EPA Scientist Says East Coast Beaches Threatened by Sea Level, But Nobody’s Listening

Here is an excerpt:

Here are the GIS data sets for coastal California from the Pacific Institute website:

GIS Data Downloads

NOTE: These are designed to be used in professional GIS applications.

lightblueline has been trying to access US Government elevation data for months, only to be told that the data is being held back until a report is published by the US Climate Change Science Program office.

A recent (February 7, 2007) article in Wired Online notes that that office has several reports which never seem to get published:

"The [US Senate] committee hoped to hear from representatives from the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy, which advises the White House on science issues, but none showed up, leaving William Brennan, acting director of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, to defend the administration.

Kerry saved his most withering comments for Brennan, expressing outrage over the amount of progress on climate change achieved by Brennan's program, which seeks to integrate research on climate change from 13 federal agencies.

'I think this is the most serious dereliction of public responsibility that I've ever seen,' Kerry said. 'This is a disgrace. You're turning your backs on future generations in this country and potentially inviting a global catastrophe.'

Here is Alex Tingle's global sea level rise layers on Google Maps. These data are derived from the NASA SRTM (Space Shuttle radar) mission.

Dynamic maps of sea level rise. Does global warming matter to you?

You can get the KMZ file here:

Santa Barbara Google earth layers

Files for the lightblueline contours will be added to this page. Instructions for using the data will also be found here.
File Descriptors:
VBA_LightBlueLine.zip: This is the VBA code that defines the ArcGIS macro that writes the KML file. Creator: Darren Hardy 10/2006.
 LightBlueLine_Santa Barbara.kmz: This is the KMZ file for the santa barbara light blue line. open it in the Google Earth application. Creator: Darren Hardy 10/2006. Data Source: 3m DEM from UCSB.
Additional Instructions for use: If you have Google Earth installed, you can double-click on the attached Placemark file and it will fly you to a location. If not, you will need to install Google Earth first (available at http://earth.google.com).