Art installation makes it easier to visualize sea level rise

A community in Washington state has built a memorial – not to honor the past, but to acknowledge the future of climate change.

Bainbridge Island on Puget Sound is at risk of flooding during very high tides, also known as king tides. And as sea levels rise, this threat will increase.

Lara Hansen, a scientist who lives on the island and works for the nonprofit EcoAdapt, conceived of an art installation to make sea level rise feel more tangible.

She calls it a reverse time capsule.

Hansen: “Time capsules … preserve the past for the future to see. We wanted to preserve the future for the current to see.”

The piece, built last year, is a stone bench by the water.

People who use it rest their feet at the current king tide mark and sit about 18 inches above that – the height sea levels could reach by midcentury under the most extreme projections.

A five-foot-high stone pillar next to the bench marks one of the worst-case sea level rise projections for the end of the century.

Hansen hopes it encourages people to consider the risks.

Hansen: “Art allows people to be approached by science when they’re not expecting it … and maybe convince them to take action in a way that hearing the droning numbers won’t.”

Reporting credit: Ethan Freedman / ChavoBart Digital Media