Sea level is climbing faster in southern England partly because land in Scotland is rising. GPS records show eastern Scotland lifting roughly a millimetre a year as the crust rebounds, tipping England down at a similar rate, like a plank on a fulcrum

Sea level is climbing faster in southern England partly because land in Scotland is rising. GPS records show eastern Scotland lifting roughly a millimetre a year as the crust rebounds, tipping England down at a similar rate, like a plank on a fulcrum

Rest a long plank across a log and press one end into the ground. The other end lifts. Let the pressed end spring back up, and the far end drops. That, more or less, is what the island of Britain has been doing for the last twenty thousand years, only in slow motion and with the crust of the Earth as the plank. Land rising in one part of the country is one of the reasons the sea is climbing faster in another. It isn’t only a story about melting …