On the Kenai Fjords National Park Visitor Center plaza, a triangular-shaped kiosk displays three signs.
The sign's title appears over an aerial view of Bear Glacier taken in August, 2005. Icebergs pattern the water.
Sign Text:
"The evidence is clear: Earth's warming temperatures are causing glaciers and ice sheets to shrink, sending record levels of melt water into rivers, lakes, and bays. Our planet's oceans are also heating up, causing their waters to expand. The result: Global sea levels are rising nearly 1.5 inches each decade. Scientists expect these trends to continue and even increase, if we don't take steps to reduce the carbon in our atmosphere.
Effects of sea level rise are felt around the world. Higher seas create damaging floods and storm surges, and warmer oceans intensify storms. Roughly a third of the US population lives in coastal areas and over 80 of our national parks and monuments lie along shorelines. What impacts will sea level rise have where you live?"
Four inset photographs demonstrate impacts around the world.
Shishmaref, Alaska.
A photo shows a house lying sideways, on a collapsed shoreline.
Caption: "People have lived in the northern Alaska village of Shishmaref for 400 years. But today's residents face evacuation. Rising global temperatures are melting sea ice, allowing higher storm surges to reach the shore — a shore made vulnerable by thawing permafrost. More homes, roads, and infrastructure are being damaged as coastline washes away."
Dry Tortugas National Park, Florida
A photo shows the ocean surrounding a brick six-sided military fort on a barrier island.
Caption:
"Since construction of this Civil War-era fort in the late 1800s, sea level has risen nearly a foot. That rise continues at an accelerated pace — due in large part to fossil fuel emissions. Already, storm surge crashes over the fort's sea wall, damaging the 150-year-old masonry."
Malé, Capital of the Maldives.
A photo shows an island covered in buildings. Some are clusters of skyscrapers.
Caption:
"With an average elevation of just 4 feet above sea level, the Maldives' 1,200 islands are at risk of being completely submerged by rising seas. The government is constructing concrete barriers along shorelines, but only a drastic cut in worldwide carbon emissions will save this low-lying nation."
Bangladesh.
A photo shows villagers forming a relay line in waist-high water as they hand-build a dam.
Caption:
"Bangladeshis are accustomed to flooding: Two-thirds of their land measures less than 15 feet above sea level. Yet generations of successful adaptations to coastal flooding are failing now — in the face of sea level rise. Damage to homes and communities increases every year."