Climate expedition traces Atlantic's future coastline

A team of three Cambridge graduates are embarking on a 31-country expedition — dubbed “Atlantic Rising” — that aims to follow the contours of where the coastline will be after 100 years of rising sea levels driven by climate change.

Aimed at raising awareness of the dangers of global warming, the 35,000-kilometre expedition will circumnavigate the Atlantic Ocean by following a 1-metre contour line which scientists predict will become the new coastline in the next century.

Atlantic Rising team members Tim Bromfield, Lynn Morris, and Will Lorimer — winners of the £10,000 “Go Beyond” Bursary awarded by the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) and Land Rover earlier this year — will follow the route in a Land Rover Defender 110.

Along the way, the team members plan to visit schools and create an educational network with up to 10,000 students along the route. They will report from some of the remotest coastal regions bordering the Atlantic Ocean and establish a sea-level change education project that can be used in 1,200 schools throughout the world via the Rafi.ki online schools network.

“Education is the most powerful weapon we have to combat climate change,” said Bromfield. “By encouraging students around the Atlantic to work together, we want to highlight our shared responsibility in dealing with this critical issue.  By encouraging international friendships, we hope to make people care enough to act.”

“This project, made possible through our partnership with Land Rover, focusses on one of the most challenging issues we face — the potential impacts of climate change in coastal regions,” said Rita Gardner, director of the Royal Geographical Society. “As recipients of the Bursary, Atlantic Rising have been granted the opportunity to ‘go beyond’ their normal limits and boundaries and at the same time support one of the Society’s objectives, which is to promote the wider understanding and enjoyment of geography.”

The Atlantic Rising team will blog about their experiences throughout the expedition, which will wind through the UK, France, Spain, Morocco, the Western Sahara, Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote D’Ivoire, Ghana, Brazil, French Guiana, Surinam, Guyana, Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, Mexico, the US and Canada.