Want to now How Sea Level Rise Will Impact Your Hometown? There’s a Map for That

If you want to know whether your city has the potential to be underwater due to rising sea levels, there’s now a map for that.

In conjunction with research published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Climate Central launched Mapping Choices, an interactive tool that lets users compare sea level rise in different cities based on various carbon scenarios, from aggressive carbon cuts to unchecked pollution.

This is a story that can have different endings, and the endings depend on what we do

“I think we read a lot of projections about future temperature increases or impact, but it can be hard to understand what they really mean,” Ben Strauss, vice president for sea level and climate impacts at Climate Central and lead author of the study, told ThinkProgress.  “We wanted to do a research project that would literally give people a picture, or a map, of the different outcomes that we could see.  This is a story that can have different endings, and the endings depend on what we do.”

If left unchecked, carbon pollution could lead to between 14 and 33 feet of long-term global sea level rise, the study found.  That magnitude of sea level rise would threaten to submerge land that is currently home to between 20 and 31 million Americans, including at least 20 major U.S. cities with more than 100,000 residents.  With aggressive carbon cuts, the study found, half of these cities could be spared from rising seas — but major cities like New Orleans and Miami are likely to be permanently threatened by rising sea level even with aggressive action on climate change.

Read more at Want to now How Sea Level Rise Will Impact Your Hometown?  There’s a Map for That