Climate Change’s Worst-Case Scenario: 200 Feet of Sea Level Rise

Burning all of the world’s known fossil fuel reserves has a scary result:  submerging New York, Tokyo, Shanghai and other cities, new research shows.

If you ever wondered what the worst-case scenario for climate change would look like, a set of researchers shared your curiosity.  Their answer, which they published Friday, is scary:  sea levels nearly 200 feet higher than today—enough to submerge an 18-story building—putting some of the world’s largest cities under water.

That’s what's in store if all available fossil fuel reserves are burned, releasing about 10,000 gigatons of carbon and almost completely melting the Antarctic ice sheet, according to the research published in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances.

"Global sea level rise of that magnitude is unprecedented in human civilization," said Ricarda Winkelmann, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and the lead author of the study.  "Dozens of major coastal cities would be threatened, including New York, Tokyo, and Shanghai."

Winkelmann and colleagues found that seas could rise nearly 10 feet each century in the first 1,000 years under this scenario, and would continue to rise for thousands of years after that. Some scientists reviewing the study, though, said researchers may have even underestimated the speed of ice melt and sea level rise.

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