<< December 2007 | Home | February 2008 >>

Future Beachfront property

Happened to run across this site - firetree flood maps in which a guy has mashed up elevation data from NASA with Google maps, and can show (very roughly) what would be flooded if the oceans rose by differing amounts. The link above shows Houston (an area I know pretty well, and which seems like a very flood-prone area) with a 14 meter increase. Pretty scary, if the oceans actually did rise that much.

The system can generate overlays for sea level rises of 0 - 14 meters. 1 meter sounds like a whole lot to me, given that some quick research on WikiPedia shows only 20 cm per century. That said, a 1 meter rise doesn't affect Houston a whole lot . Of course, this ignores all sorts of things like tides, seawalls, etc. More details at his "about" page, along with lots of comments both positive and negative.

Some of the more dire predictions (like if the whole Greenland ice sheet melts, or even all of Antarctica) have sea levels rising 20 to 60 meters!