Horrifying new visualizations by the nonprofit Climate Central depict how much land will be submerged in water due to rising sea levels, resulting from a modest amount of global warming. The images show several landmarks across the globe at the present day, contrasted with the flooding that is possible if global warming continues at the same pace.
An estimated 10% of the land where the world’s current population lives could be submerged in water by the year 2100. At that point our planet will exceed the 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit warming threshold, reports The Guardian. This will only happen if required actions aren’t taken to curb global warming.
Many regions will be underwater
The changes are eye-opening. The Space Center in Houston would be completely underwater by the time global warming reaches its peak. Even the pentagon could be flooded. The visualizations were released just days before the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow.
“The decisions that we make at Glasgow and the actions that we take this decade will ramify for hundreds and thousands of years,” Benjamin Strauss, CEO and chief scientist at Climate Central told The Guardian. “This group is going to be remembered for what they chose: did you choose a thriving future with a livable climate or did you choose to drown the coastal places of the world?”
According to Strauss, “we’ve seen about a foot of sea-level rise over the last century. Over the next century, we could experience anywhere between ten and 30 feet,” he added.
Are we underestimating global warming?
As per research by scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), satellite measurements of the temperature of the troposphere, which is the atmosphere’s lowest region, might have underestimated global warming in the last 40 years. The team examined four properties of tropical climate change. Each one of them is a ratio of trends in two “complementary” variables.
Besides, researchers at Purdue University have created an ultra-white paint that can reflect 98.1 percent of solar radiation while outputting infrared heat efficiently. This will be a useful solution if we need to curb global warming.
