Megacities hit hard by surging sea levels even at 2C rise
PARIS: Large swathes of Shanghai, Mumbai, New York and other cities will slip under the waves even if an upcoming climate summit limits global warming to two degrees Celsius, scientists reported Sunday. A 2 C (3.6 Fahrenheit) spike in Earth’s temperature would submerge land currently occupied by 280 million people, while an increase of 4 C (7.2 F) — humanity’s current trajectory-would cover areas lived on by more than 600 million, the study said. “Two degrees Celsius warming will pose a long-term, existential danger to many great coastal cities and regions,” said lead author Ben Strauss, vice president for sea level and climate impacts at Climate Central, a US-based research group.
Sea level rises corresponding to these 2 C or 4 C scenarios could unfold in two hundred years, but would more likely happen over many centuries, perhaps as long as 2,000 years, according to the research, published by Climate Central. Capping the rise in Earth’s temperatures to 2 C above pre-industrial levels is the core goal of the 195-nation UN climate summit in Paris from November 30 to December 11. The most effective way to slow global warming is to slash the output of the greenhouse gases which drive it.
But even if emissions reduction pledges-many of them conditioned on financial aid-submitted by 150 nations ahead of the Paris summit are fulfilled, it would still put us on a pathway for a 3 C (4.8 F) world, the United Nations has warned. Achieving the two-degree goal remains a serious challenge. Strauss and colleagues apply on a global scale the same methodology they used for a recent study that focused on temperature-linked sea level rise in the United States, published in the US Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
That study concluded that both Miami and New Orleans are doomed to crippling impacts. In the new report, the country hit hardest by sea level rise under a 4 C scenario is China. Today, some 145 million people live in Chinese cities and coastal areas that would eventually become ocean were temperatures to climb that high. Four of the 10 most devastated megacities would be Chinese: land occupied today by 44 million people in Shanghai, Tianjin, Hong Kong and Taizhou would be underwater. India, Vietnam and Bangladesh do not fare much better. —AFP