Rising sea levels could swamp major cities and displace almost 200 million people, scientists say
One meter is about 39 inches!!!
Rising sea levels could swamp major cities and displace almost 200 million people, scientists say
With a business as usual approach to carbon emissions, the world's oceans could plausibly rise two meters by the end of the century.
May 22, 2019, 12:00 PM CDT
By Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky and David Freeman
The risk posed by rising seas may be even more dire than we thought.
A provocative new study suggests that as Earths climate continues to warm and the planets ice sheets continue to melt, seas could inundate coastal cities around the world, submerging vast swaths of land and displacing almost 200 million people by the end of the century.
If we continue to take a business as usual approach to carbon emissions, sea level rise could plausibly exceed two meters (about seven and a half feet) by 2100, the study showed. A rise of that magnitude which is more than twice as high as the upper limit predicted in a 2013 U.N. climate assessment would have profound consequences for humanity, the scientists behind the new research concluded.
New York, New Orleans, Miami, Shanghai, Mumbai and some island nations could become permanently flooded, according to that scenario, disrupting economies and displacing up to 187 million people. Almost 1.8 million square kilometers (about 700,000 square miles) of land, including some used for farming, could be permanently flooded.
It really is pretty grim, study co-author Jonathan Bamber, a professor of physical geography at the University of Bristol in England, told CNN. Two meters is not a good scenario.
That grim scenario is just one of several possibilities. But the oceans are rising fast and will rise faster than we thought a few years ago, said study co-author Robert Kopp, director of the Institute of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. And there is significant risk of much faster sea level rise if we dont cut our emissions.................
There are more residents living in high-risk flood zones in New York City than in any other U.S. city.Ron Antonelli / Bloomberg via Getty Images file
TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)thought ahead 50 or a hundred years.
Turin_C3PO
(13,650 posts)And sadly, it doesnt look like were looking ahead to climate change either. I wish there was a way to make people care about their childrens and grandchildrens future.