Famous beaches, commercial districts, and swaths of farmland will be threatened at this elevated level of climate change, which the UN warned this week is a very real prospect unless nations reduce their carbon emissions.
Data from the Climate Central group of scientists analyzed by Guardian journalists shows that 3C of global warming would ultimately lock in irreversible sea-level rises of perhaps two meters. Cities from Shanghai to Alexandria, and Rio to Osaka are among the worst affected. Miami would be inundated - as would the entire bottom third of the US state of Florida.
The Guardian has found, however, that local preparations for a 3C world are as patchy as international efforts to prevent it from happening. At six of the coastal regions most likely to be affected, government planners are only slowly coming to grips with the enormity of the task ahead - and in some cases have done nothing.
This comes ahead of the latest round of climate talks in Bonn next week, when negotiators will work on ways to monitor, fund and ratchet up national commitments to cut CO2 so that temperatures can rise on a safer path of between 1.5 and 2C, which is the goal of the Paris agreement reached in 2015.
The momentum for change is currently too slow, according to the UN Environment Program. In its annual emissions gap report, released on Tuesday, the international body said government commitments were only a third of what was needed. Non-state actors such as cities, companies, and citizens can only partly fill this void, which leaves warming on course to rise to 3C or beyond by the end of this century, the report said.
Read more at From Miami to Shanghai: 3C of Warming Will Leave World Cities Below Sea Level
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