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New Interactive Map For Understanding Global Flood Risks
An anonymous reader writes "Using computations on the massive near-global SRTM surface model from NASA, this map lets you query watersheds, interactively set the sea-level and flood the world (North America at 500m increase in sea-level), or play around with river thresholds on a global or regional scale (computed rivers around NYC/NJ). It can be used to get an understanding of the watersheds and water flow paths in your local neighborhood; do you know where rain (or pollutants) that falls in your backyard end up? The map is freely available to the public."
Why not go the whole hog and allow for a FALL in sea-level by enabling negative values? Surely we have the necessary sea-floor maps and people who think climate change is running the other way.
I do not have the link right now but I remember there *was* an interactive map from NASA that allows user to input the sea-level (either hike or lower the sea/river/lake-level ) and see the changes appear in seconds.
I'll try to find that link (no guarantee), but if anyone has that link as well, mind sharing it with us ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
So according to the map, Netherlands is already completely flooded with just millimetres of sea level rise. Somehow I think they forgot some factors.
Shite, that map is scary - if the water raises 1 mm, the fjord where I grew up will be flooded! All that water, covered by 1mm water ...
Best hydrology resource I've seen online, sorry to be so positive.
Put in an 8 meter rise (this is the worst case scenario until 2100CE) and see what goes down. It's pretty devastating for North America coastal cities, but survivable.
For funsies I decided to see how much the sea level would have to rise before the area I live in would be flooded, and that's at 133 meters or so, where I live, and the closest shopping mall become an Island. About 6 city blocks. I wasn't actually aware that I was that high up, though the University on the top of the hill has far more sea level rise wiggle room. I then went and looked up the area I grew up in which is up in the mountains, a 470 meter rise would be required. So I think between these two silly reasons I'm living in a good place that isn't susceptible to immediate flood risk.
The thing is, the airport is like the first thing to go at around 1 meter rise, and at 3 meter rise most of the area south of the river is lost (all lost at 8 meters) So I was right for not wanting to live on that side of the river hehe...
If you go look at places like the San Francisco bay or New Orleans, these areas are gone at even 10cm rise because the map can't compute areas that are already below or near sea level.
If we start taking this sort of alarmist garbage seriously, my beachfront condo might get reassigned into a higher-risk flood zone, potentially increasing my insurance payments to something vaguely resembling actual cost! Then, if it should happen to flood for a third time this decade, I'll have to make do with less taxpayer money to rebuild it. How is that fair?
(In case it wasn't abundantly obvious, I don't actually espouse that point of view; but there's a reason why flood-estimate maps are Big Political Business at least in the US: because stuff getting flooded happens approximately all the time, we have the 'National Flood Insurance Program'. Your level of estimated risk governs your premiums; but not your payout in the event of an incident, so people are even less happy than usual to hear from Mr. Pessimism, when it comes time to redraw the Flood Insurance Rate Maps, regardless of his accuracy.
Luckily, with a suitable understanding of the political process and access to a few lawyers and engineers, it is frequently possible to evade such heinous miscarriages of justice as 'being classified as high risk just because your property has a recent history of flooding' and the like.
like fluids off a sucker's back https://news.yahoo.com/oil-closes-orleans-port-part-miss-river-005544210.html
looks to me that a lot of problems might be solved if those areas were to submerge, assuming of course that they didn't migrate
It shows, all being similar, would be the coastline if the water somewhat magically rises so much in a calm way, as in what causes the water rises is an isolated event that only happen in Antarctica and Greenland, that causes the ice melt, global sea rise and thats it. But will be process that will be happening in all the world, sometimes in violent ways, that will cause floods (even in places far from the coast), droughs, high winds events, extreme heath (and cold), probably in a scale far bigger than we've seen in the last 6 months. The afected areas won't be in a so uniform way as the map shows.
And if well it shows that coastal cities will be flooded, it don't show the chaos that it will imply, with maybe in the order of a billon of people living in those areas, only having their now worthless house, that will have to move to slums of then very expensive new/old cities that should be far enough from sea, to be surely hit by extreme weather events. And don't forget about food. What about crops that get ruined if a heavy rainstorms or hailstorms hits them?
Anyway, don't get too scared by the 500m sea level rise, even if the entire antarctica ice melts sea should not rise a lot more than 100m. Probably will be a lot of more things to worry about if that manages to happen.
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Coastal regions are frequently composed of sediments; if sea levels rise, they rise along with it. Many low-lying islands work the same way. You cannot predict the effects of sea level rise on most coastal regions by taking a height map and adjusting the sea level.
Even more stupid is the fact that they "model" sea level rise of up to 500m. The maximum sea level rise that is possible from melting all of the earth's ice is about 80m. But no matter how hot it gets, a complete melting of Greenland and Antartica would take thousands of years.
If all the ice covering Antarctica, Greenland, and all the glaciers around the world were to melt, sea level would rise about 70 meters (230 feet). I've seen numbers in this range from several different sources, e.g. Nat Geo says 216 ft.
Bad, sure. But 500m is not even in the bounds of reality.
This is great! And I'm not being facetious. I've wanted a good interactive watershed map for a long time. I probably missed my calling and should have been a hydrologist.
Proverbs 21:19
Is this map a joke? Seriously... 500 meters? I don't think that is even possible. Give me a f&##$'in break already with the catastrophic climate mindset.
What is going on at NASA that they are stooping to this level of sensationalism?
But Denver sure is looking a lot safer!
What it tells you is the part that is certain: that if sea level rises by X, places that are less than X above mean high tide will be under water -- once for places with diurnal tides and twice for places with semi-diurnal tides. Flooding is much more complex than that.
Natural disasters are never actually "natural". It is human behavior that turns what would otherwise be just a natural phenomenon like an earthquake or flood into a "disaster". So changes in flood risk will occur where human engineering and settlement practices don't adapt to changes in local sea level and weather.
What we've done in planning development over the past century is look at historical records to figure out what a "ten year flood" or a "hundred year flood" would be, and site things near the coast according to our tolerance for it being flooded. A hundred year flood is probably not going to be a factor at all in siting something, but a ten year flood is going to be a big deal.
Here's the important part: the levels in a hundred year flood aren't going to be 10x as high as in a ten year flood; in many places it might only be just a little bit higher. But people build right up to the line because sharp demarcations are baked into building codes and insurance rates. So a slight increase in sea level could well have a disproportionate economic effect due to flooding.
Another issue not to discount in a climate change scenario is greater weather variability. Even with no local sea level rise, an increase in the frequency of unusually large coastal storms can create a dramatic shift in flooding frequency. Just like an unchanging sea level is built into our calculations of a "hundred year flood" an unchanging climate is as well.
So the climate change/flooding connection not as simple as dialing up sea level by a certain number of meters. Depending on local conditions like tidal dynamics and wind exposure, a modest (or non-existent) change in global sea levels along with a modest change in the frequency of large storms could mean a lot of stuff along the edges of the flood plain that never flooded in the past could flood quite frequently. That's what we should be worried about not a 500m or even 5m increase in sea level.
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Am I missing something, or have they missed the Great Basin? It seems they depict the Columbia River watershed abutting the Colorado River watershed and they both appear to go all the way to the base of the Sierras.