by Will Self 2006 novel free, Dave’s book – in which the author melds a contemporary comic novel with a science fiction dystopia – featuring a map showing London After the Flood. All that remains of the rest of England, now known as the Ing Archipelago, are a few rugged islands. It is an extreme version of the apocalypse predicted by climatologists.
In fact, if sea levels were to rise well above the two feet already considered highly likely – and no action is taken to build new coastal defences, London would not fare as badly as West Sussex , Somerset, Kent or Lancashire, at least according to. the projections made by NGO Climate Central. And Lincolnshire and the Eastern Third of Yorkshire would be almost entirely gone.
Coastal erosion is already changing the shape of the UK. On Sunday morning, a large section of the cliff at Newhaven in East Sussex, close to a public footpath and dozens of mobile homes, fell into the sea. The photographs below taken of Birling Gap, a few miles down the coast, in 1960 and 2014, show how the top of the cliff rose.
At West Bay in Dorset, a 400-tonne rock fall on 29 March was followed by two more – on 8 April, also at West Bay, and on 9 April, when thousands of tonnes of rock broke off the 140ft cliff at Burton Bradstock in nearby. Heavy rain from Storm Kathleen was blamed for creating the unstable conditions. A massive landslide at Lulworth Cove in February was also captured on a smartphone camera. Scroll back over the years and you might get the impression that much of Dorset is falling into the sea.
East Anglia is another region with falling cliffs. Last year, the Environment Agency reported that more than 2,500 homes in Norfolk and Suffolk were directly at risk from coastal erosion. He said the area has “some of the fastest eroding coastlines in Europe”.
At Trim, near Cromer, an 18th century farmhouse had to be demolished when coastal erosion left it hanging from a cliff. Twelve coastal houses in Norfolk were demolished last year because of fears they would fall into the sea. The village of Hemsby, 18 miles down the coast from Trimingham, has also been badly affected by a cliff fall.
The coast of Great Britain, including its islands, is 19,491 miles long, according to the Ordnance Survey, and 11,072 miles on the mainland. Cornwall is the county with the longest coastline (675 miles) followed by Essex (562 miles) and Devon (509 miles). Our island nation experiences some of the largest tides in the world, with a range of up to 50 feet.
That’s a lot of coast to monitor and a lot of history and routine to consider. The counties mentioned above are among the counties most popular with holidaymakers and although a large proportion of the local population lives inland, they are some of the most at-risk tourist locations. Infrastructure is also at risk. The Committee on Climate Change (2018) estimates that approximately 995 miles of major roads, 404 miles of railway, 92 railway stations and 55 former landfill sites are likely to be at risk of flooding or coastal erosion by the end of the century.
Coastal erosion has a wide-ranging impact on ordinary people and can be devastating. Residents must relocate. Beauty spots become danger zones. Holiday destinations are all about bad news. In mid-April, a massive rockfall occurred at a luxury development site at Newquay’s Whipsidery Beach, earmarked for seven new homes worth £7 million.
An interactive map created by environmental charity One Home shows 21 coastal communities in England at risk of coastal erosion. These include seaside villages in Cornwall, Cumbria, East Yorkshire, Essex, Kent, Isle of Wight, Northumberland, Norfolk and Sussex. They calculate that 2,218 properties could be lost by 2100, worth around £584 million.
This is probably a conservative estimate. The British Geological Survey’s (BGS) GeoCoast dataset, used by developers and government to inform coastal planning, notes that “low-lying coastal areas are already at risk of inundation. [but] with rising sea levels and storminess, impacts could be felt over a wider area than we think.” The BGS puts the number of properties now within 25 meters of potentially highly susceptible coastline at 30,000.
In terms of mitigating erosion, the Environment Agency and other bodies are facing a number of dilemmas. Is the return on investment worth it? Will elaborate coastal protection be effective in the long term? Data collection, flood forecasting, land flood resilience and river flow management are critical. Seawalls, seawalls, rock retaining walls, breakwaters are some of the hard engineering options and can be expensive. Managing a beach and ensuring that sand acts as a coastal defense is a softer approach.
However, according to Dr Luciana Esteves, a coastal scientist at Bournemouth University: “Paradoxically, coastal defense works often contribute to coastal erosion and the effects are quite rapid and long-lasting. Sea walls or retaining walls that protect cliffs from erosion are reducing the supply of sediment to the coast and this will result in lower beach levels in front of the cliff or more current.
“A net is built to hold the sediment over the structure and this usually means less sediment is available for downstream beaches. Any engineering works that directly or indirectly affect the sediment budget will have an immediate and/or long-term impact on coastal change.”
Also, as a spokesperson for Dorset Council bluntly told the BBC: “The Jurassic Coast looks the way it does because of erosion – which means it’s always moving. A rock fall can, and does, happen at any time.
“Any remedial/preventive measures would damage the nature of this coast.”
A side effect of coastal erosion is the creation of new coastlines and islands. The BGS is predicting that Flamborough Head’s tidal marshes (and campsites) could eventually be flooded. Almost half of the flint shingle beach – around 43 miles – at Dungeness is at risk of drowning by 2100.
Spurn Point is a three-mile long natural defense of the Humber estuary and the port of Hull, and an important site for migratory birds. Composed of shingle beach and smooth tidal deposits, it is an ever-changing environment. It has been overrun by storms many times, most notably in December 2013 with a massive tidal surge. Sea level rise is predicted to completely cut off Head Spurn by 2050, according to UKCP18 climate change model scenarios.
Climate change could make all current predictions hopeless. Some sources indicate that about 58 percent of coastal erosion, sea level rise, and storm surge can be attributed to climate change. A widely cited 2022 paper from Imperial College says rocky coastlines are likely to disappear at a rate not seen before for 3,000-5,000 years. At sites in Yorkshire and Devon, the researchers say, sea level rise will cause coastal rock cliffs to retreat at least 10-22 meters inland – an erosion rate likely to be three to seven times today’s rate and maybe up to ten times.
So Dave’s book maybe it’s not so far off after all – although the humor may be lost on readers who find their static Norfolk caravan perched on a cliff or their dream home in Cornwall suddenly undermined by a floor-to-ceiling hole ceiling where the French windows are. used to be.
