Wildlife fear as 30m of Arctic coast washed away in a year - Scotsman.com News

Arctic coastlines are crumbling away and retreating at the rate of two metres or more a year due to the effects of climate change, it has been claimed.

World Climate Report » Settling on an unstable Alaskan shore: A warning unheeded

For instance, Gerald MacCarthy, in an article published in Arctic in 1953 entitled “Recent Change in the Shoreline Near Point Barrow, Alaska” wrote:

At ‘Nuwuk’ [Point Barrow] the evidence of rapid retreat is especially striking. The abandoned native village of the same name, which formerly occupied most of the area immediately surrounding the station site, is being rapidly eaten away by the retreat of the bluff and in October 1949 the remains of four old pit dwellings, then partially collapsed and filled with solid ice, were exposed in cross section in the face of the bluff. In 1951 these four dwellings had been completely eroded away and several more exposed.