Low‐elevation land areas and their populations are at risk globally from rising sea level. Global sea level has risen by about 2 millimeters per year over the past century. About half of this rise may be attributed to thermal expansion of the ocean and the melting of temperate‐latitude glaciers [Dyurgerov and Meier, 1997]. The remainder of the rise is believed to come from a net loss of mass from the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, although the exact contribution is unknown.
Future sea level rise caused by climate change would disrupt the physical processes, economic activities, and social systems in coastal regions. Based on a hypothetical global sea level increase of one to six meters, we developed GIS methods to assess and visualize the global impacts of potential inundation using the best available global datasets. After susceptible areas were delineated, we estimated that the size of the areas is between 1.055 (one meter) to 2.193 million km 2 (six meters). Population in the susceptible areas was estimated to range from 108 (one meter) to 431 million (six meters) people. Among the seven land-cover types in the susceptible areas, forest and grassland account for more than 60 percent for all the increments of sea level rise. A suite of interactive visualization products was also developed to understand and communicate the ramifications of potential sea level rise.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.