NASA's Interactive Flood Maps

First time accepted submitter jackandtoby writes "Whether you buy into global warming or not, you can have a go at being Charlton Heston and raise sea levels on a biblical scale thanks to NASA's online flood maps. Click away and cause your own Sim Flooding."

Comments

I don't see how NASA's name got attached to this.

[mongoose(!no)]

It's based on their DEM (digital elevation model) dataset, specifically the Shuttle Radar Terrain Mapping project, but I doubt that they had anything to do with this. There's also an ad at the bottom for flood insurance. It also looks like the guy just went through and generated a blue overlay for land lower than the sea level rise you select, which wouldn't include any backwater effects from going up rivers. He's got a website about what he did here: http://blog.firetree.net/2006/05/18/more-about-flood-maps/

Re:Why the hell is NASA...

[Goaway]

It was not actually done by NASA, and if it was, it would probably not have made a terribly big dent in their budget, seeing as how it was actually done by some guy just for fun.

Re:Where's the Waterworld Option

[jonadab]

Also, 1000 meters of ocean level rise wouldn't really be enough to give you a Waterworld scenario. It would be a global catastrophy, certainly, but there would still be quite a bit of dry land -- in large continuous strips, some which would extend for more than a quarter of the earth's circumference in length. Dry land would certainly not be so difficult to locate as to approach mythical status. A lot of Asia would still be above water (not just the Himalayas, either), plus a good portion of Africa, a sizable chunk of North America (just for example, Denver would still be more than half a kilometer above the new elevated ocean level), a long strip of South America running from Columbia all the way to Tiera Del Fuego, and quite a bit of Antarctica (yes, even with all the ice melted off), as well as various mountains and islands scatter around every geopolitical region in the world.