The Surface Crisis

The Surface Crisis is the term the survey uses for the cascade of climate failures, accelerating sea-level rise, and atmospheric instability that ran from approximately 2095 to 2125. The label is convenient and probably wrong. The cascade did not begin in 2095, and it did not end in 2125; the dates were retrofitted to a period during which administrative records of the surface civilisation became too sparse to maintain.

What was lost

Coastal lowlands. Seasonal stability. The continental shelves of three principal coasts as habitable land. A great deal of paper. The official close-date of the period is debated; the working convention is to mark its end at the first decade in which planned, engineered descent began to outpace forced relocation.

What was kept

Less than the surface tradition would prefer to remember. Several inland highlands remained habitable and remain so. Some Surfaceborne communities trace their continuous occupation to this period. Most do not. Most are reconstructions.

On the dating

The archive's working chronology lists the crisis as 2095–2125 because that is the convention adopted by the Bathymetric Conservancy at its founding. The Conservancy did not invent the dates; it inherited them. The dates are useful, and their accuracy is approximate.