Rising Oceans Could Force 230 Million People To Move

A new study in the journal Nature shows that sea levels only need to rise by a small amount to flood areas where 230 million people live completely. If seas rise even modestly more, that number will rise to one billion. 

The study, “Warming of +1.5 °C is too high for polar ice sheets,” begins by examining how rapidly Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets are melting. The paces have quadrupled since the 1990s. 

The authors created models to show how this would affect coastal areas. “Hence, continued mass loss from ice sheets poses an existential threat to the world’s coastal populations, with an estimated10 one billion people inhabiting land less than 10 m above sea level and around 230 million living within 1 m.”

A $1 Trillion Problem

The second effect is financial. If seas rise simultaneously, the cost of damages across the world’s 136 largest coastal cities will be $1 trillion annually by 2050. The models are based on SLR (sea-level rise).

The warning the authors offer is staggering. “Given the catastrophic consequences for humanity of a rapid collapse of one or more ice sheets leading to multi-metre SLR, we conclude that adopting the precautionary principle is imperative and that a global mean temperature cooler than present is required to keep ice sheets broadly in equilibrium.”

From a practical standpoint, the authors do not say where the displaced people would go. The answer to that may not be solvable.

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