Rising sea levels threaten Britain’s shores

LOCOMOTIVES HAVE plied the Dawlish railway seawall, which hugs Devon’s beaches between Exeter and Newton Abbot, since 1846. Passengers are treated to magnificent views of the English Channel—and occasionally to a frisson, when rough seas break on the concrete groynes and envelop oncoming trains in sea spray. If, that is, the trains are running, which increasingly they are not. Service was suspended for a day in mid-October after storm Callum wrecked a culvert. In 2014 the line closed for two months to repair storm damage.

Such disruptions are likely to become more common. A report published on October 26th by the Committee on Climate Change, which advises the government, warns that rising waters pose a growing threat to England’s shores. They have edged up by 15cm (six inches) since 1900 and could rise by another 50-80cm by the end of the century, as a result of man-made global warming. Unlike Kiribati or other atoll nations, the sceptred isle would not be wiped off the map. But stretches of its coastline would be.