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The Outer Banks Prepare for the Impact of Rising Sea Levels

Posted Nov 13, 2023Updated Aug 3, 2026

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Climate
climate change
Environment

RODANTHE, N.C. — Miles off the coast of the mainland of North Carolina, exposed to the fury and beauty of the Atlantic, the only constant for the Outer Banks is change.

The chain of barrier islands has been moving, growing, eroding, and reforming for millennia, but those changes don’t always coexist with the development that’s cropped up across the islands over the past several decades.

For more than 20 years, Dr. Reide Corbett, the executive director of the Coastal Studies Institute, has watched the conflict firsthand from Roanoke Island.

“Barrier islands want to change with sea level rise,” he said, “They want to change with an oncoming storm and we want to maintain the barrier islands as they are.”

Corbett has helped advise local and state officials on the changes taking place on the islands, and where those conflicts are most likely to crop up, but he said the most important part of that role, is helping them determine what is and isn’t sustainable as the Outer Banks face the combined threat of the island’s natural cycles and accelerated sea level rise due to climate change.

“We always need to be thinking about what this looks like 10 years, 20 years, 30 years down the road,” Corbett said. “We can’t continue to protect everything.”

Since the 1990s, global sea levels have risen about four inches, and NOAA estimates they will rise another 10-12 inches over the next 30 years. It may not sound like a lot, but Corbett said it will have a dramatic impact on our coastal communities. We’re already some of those impacts today.

“Not just because of that rise in sea level but you add onto that tides, you add onto that a storm surge associated with a storm or a nor’easter and the flooding that we saw ten years ago.

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The Outer Banks Prepare for the Impact of Rising Sea Levels

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