Dunes Gone, Mile 10, South Padre

Some places on South Padre, the dunes have already been washed away. There is a certain level of sea level rise where beach disintegration begins. The US Global Change Research Program says this rate is 10 mm per year. NOAA says sea level rise on South Padre is between 4 and 5 mm per year, but NOAA looks at 30 to 70 years of tide records and draws a trend based on the full record. When one looks at the last ten years of sea level rise records from NOAA, one sees a 10 mm per year sea level rise rate.