Rising seas could affect three times more people by 2050 than
previously thought, according to new research, threatening to all but
erase some of the world’s great coastal cities.
The authors of a paper published Tuesday developed a more accurate way
of calculating land elevation based on satellite readings, a standard
way of estimating the effects of sea level rise over large areas, and
found that the previous numbers were far too optimistic. The new
research shows that some 150 million people are now living on land that
will be below the high-tide line by midcentury.
More than 20 million people in Vietnam, almost one-quarter of the population, live on land that will be inundated.
Much of Ho Chi Minh City, the nation’s economic center, would disappear
with it, according to the research, which was produced by Climate
Central, a science organization based in New Jersey, and published in
the journal
Nature Communications. The projections don’t account for future population growth or land lost to coastal erosion.
Standard elevation measurements using satellites struggle to
differentiate the true ground level from the tops of trees or buildings,
said Scott A. Kulp, a researcher at Climate Central and one of the
paper’s authors. So he and Benjamin Strauss, Climate Central’s chief
executive, used artificial intelligence to determine the
error rate and correct for it.
In Thailand, more than 10 percent of citizens now live on land that is
likely to be inundated by 2050, compared with just 1 percent according
to the earlier technique. The political and commercial capital, Bangkok,
is particularly imperiled.
Climate change will put pressure on cities in multiple ways, said
Loretta Hieber Girardet, a Bangkok resident and United Nations disaster
risk-reduction official. Even as global warming floods more places, it
will also push poor farmers off the land to seek work in cities.
The disappearance of cultural heritage could bring its own kind of
devastation. Alexandria, Egypt, founded by Alexander the Great around
330 B.C., could be lost to rising waters.
In other places, the migration caused by rising seas could trigger or exacerbate regional conflicts.
Basra, the second-largest city in Iraq, could be mostly underwater by
2050. If that happens, the effects could be felt well beyond Iraq’s
borders, according to John Castellaw, a
retired Marine Corps lieutenant general who was chief of staff for United States Central Command during the Iraq War.
Source fr above text:
NY Times, here.
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