King Tides Photo Contest

Winning Photographs

Ron Sher Seabrook Beach, NH

Bill Grabin Kennebunk, ME

Mike Barron Hampton, NH

Finalists

Sabrina Napoli Plum Island, MA Finalist

Abigail Krolak Portland, ME Finalist

Garry Meus Barnstable, MA Finalist

Neil Robichaud New Brunswick Finalist

Thanks to all who submitted photographs!

Additional Photographs

Aaron Godfrey Parker Portland, ME	Dawn Hellier Lubec, ME	John Apte Wells, ME	Katie McLean Annapolis Royal, NS	Ken Gross South Portland, ME
Kristyn Peterson Portland, ME	Lynn Main Hampton Harbour, NS	Lynn Main Hampton Harbour, NS	Maren Bhagat Hampton, NH	/Marilu Hornak Seabrook, NH
Mark Slippe Wolfville, NS	Moira Rose Mahegan Damariscotta, ME	Nancy Eaton Kennebunk, ME	Riley Young Morse Portland, ME	Ryan James Jordan Portland, ME
Sara Grady Marshfield, MA	Sarah Scouten St Andrews, NB	Steve Tinker St Andrews, NB	Susan Bickford Wells, ME	Susan Plutsky Gloucester, MA

As sea level rises, today’s king tide is tomorrow’s routine high tide. Daily high tides, monthly lunar tides, and intermittent storm surges are all moving steadily higher. It is important to grasp the magnitude and inevitability of this… [while] there is time to plan and adapt.
— John Englander, High Tide on Main Street: Rising Sea Level and the Coming Coastal Crisis

The collaborative Gulf of Maine King Tides Project helps communities in the US Northeast and Atlantic Canada anticipate impacts from rising sea levels. Join in this international effort by helping document—via cameras and smart phones—extreme high tides, which will become average water levels in coming years. Images of King Tides help scientists and planners assess future flood risks and anticipate associated hazards.

This regional volunteer effort—which encompasses much of the shoreline of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia—is part of a global King Tides Network that includes projects elsewhere in the US and Canada, as well as in Australia, New Zealand, Europe and Asia.

The steady rise in global sea levels, recorded by tide gauges around the world, is due primarily to

• the expansion of the oceans as they warm (recent studies have found that the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than 99 percent of the world’s oceans;
• regional land subsidence (evident in parts of Atlantic Canada, where Nova Scotia has experienced roughly 7 inches (17 cm.) subsidence over the last century); and
• water from melting glaciers and land-based ice sheets.

Sea levels will increase markedly in coming decades, but the rate of increase depends on how quickly the Earth warms and the melting occurs. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “it is virtually certain that global mean sea level rise will continue for many centuries beyond 2100, with the amount of rise dependent on future emissions.”

The Gulf of Maine Council’s Climate Network is working with more than a dozen other organizations and agencies to help the region anticipate sea-level rise impacts. Learn more at gulfofmaine.kingtides.net.

• Precipitation from extreme events in the GOM region has increased 74 percent since 1958 (NOAA).
• Extreme weather already poses economic and ecological challenges, and these events are expected to grow more frequent in coming decades, with precipitation increasing 5-9 percent (IPCC 2013).

Credit: Sherry Godlewski

• By 2050, climate scientists project a more rapid increase of 2.5 to 3.5°C (4.5 to 6.3° F) in regional air temperature (IPCC 2013).
• Temperatures in the Gulf of Maine have risen much more in recent decades than many other coastal waters around the world, and a 2012 "heat wave" in sea surface temperatures had damaging economic impacts.

Projected Temperature Changes in the Gulf of Maine Region by the 2050s (°C.), reflecting the most recent IPCC models (Credit: Adam Fenech, UPEI Climate Lab)

What’s Climate Change and What’s Just the Weather?

This one-minute animation by Ole Christoffer Haga, produced by Teddy TV for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, clearly and humorously illustrates the difference between long-term climate trends and variable weather patterns.