If you don't live in a coastal city, sea level rise is likely one of the impacts of climate change that doesn't sound like a big deal. Especially because it's happening so slowly, by only a few millimeters every year in most places around the world.
But if you live in a place like South Florida or along the coast of Louisiana, rising sea levels already are beginning to interfere with daily life. Witness the street flooding that now regularly occurs during high tides in parts of Miami Beach, with or without rain.
Events like these were the inspiration for a series of portraits titled "Sea Level Rise in My Lifetime," commissioned by Florida Atlantic University for its annual Sea Level Rise Summit, and shown in the photo slideshow above.
Created by Florida-based photographer Mary Brandenburg, the portraits aim to show what kind of future awaits for the children now living in many of the nation's biggest coastal cities, by depicting how far sea levels will rise by the time those children reach their natural life expectancy.
"I don't think we realized how powerful they would be," said Mary Beth Hartman of the university's Center for Environmental Studies, who worked with Climate Central's Ben Strauss to calculate for each photo how far in inches sea levels are expected to rise in different coastal cities around the U.S.
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