At some point in the future, your favorite city might be a patch of sea floor.
Spatialities, a site devoted to spatial information and visualizations, has unveiled a series of maps that show how several urban cities and coastal regions would be impacted by various rises in sea level. And it’s bad news all around for cities like New York, Los Angeles, San Diego, Vancouver, Seattle, London, among others, which are prone to flooding—and total submersion.
All the depicted sea levels are possible scenarios: They’re all less than the maximum rise in sea level calculated by the U.S. Geological Survey, which estimates that if all the planet’s glaciers melted, then the potential sea rise is about 80 m., or 262 ft.
But the good news is that you won’t see a sea level this high in your lifetime — according to one study, it would take about 1,000 to 10,000 years.
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A map of the New York City region based on a 30 m. (100 ft.) rise in sea level.Jeffrey LinnA map of the London Bay based on a 40 m. (131 ft.) rise in sea level.Jeffrey LinnA map of the Vancouver Archipelago based on a 80 m. (262 ft.) rise in sea level.Jeffrey LinnA map of the Los Angeles Bay based on a 79 m. (260 ft.) rise in sea level.Jeffrey LinnA map of the San Diego Sea based on a 81 m. (265 ft.) rise in sea level.Jeffrey Linn