November 9, 2013

2 min read

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Will Sea Level Rise Drown Your Town? [Slide Show]

A creative Google Earth application shows cities flooded under one, 25 even 80 meters of water

By Mark Fischetti

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Climate change is causing seas to rise and we hear frequent warnings about how future flooding will inundate cities. Visualizing the flooding may be more powerful than words when it comes to understanding what this really means. So, Andrew David Thaler, a deep-sea ecologist and population geneticist in San Francisco, devised a creative application for Google Earth maps that shows what cities around the world would look like under various levels of flooding, from one meter up to 80 meters.

Thaler, who also oversees a marine science blog called Southern Fried Science, started the exercise as a way to depict his serial science fiction novel, Fleet, which describes a world in which the oceans have risen 80 meters. He first depicted his home town of San Francisco and then began taking requests from individuals around the world who wanted to see their cities under similar conditions. Thaler posted the fascinating visualizations on a Twitter page, #DrownYourTown, and they caught on. He received so many requests that he posted instructions onlineto help people create their own simulations. Enthusiasts worldwide are now posting their visualizations to the Twitter hashtag.

>> View a slide show of drowned cities

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We asked Thaler to send us some of his favorites among the flood images that he created, which are reproduced here in the accompanying slide show. It would only take one meter of sea level rise, for example, to seriously flood Tokyo and Miami. The maps are not validated by scientific data and many variables influence actual sea level rise at any location. Still, the images are curiosities and represent a captivating way to spread awareness about climate change.

Mark Fischetti was a senior editor at Scientific American for nearly 20 years and covered sustainability issues, including climate, environment, energy, and more. He assigned and edited feature articles and news by journalists and scientists and also wrote in those formats. He was founding managing editor of two spin-off magazines: Scientific American Mind and Scientific American Earth 3.0. His 2001 article “Drowning New Orleans” predicted the widespread disaster that a storm like Hurricane Katrina would impose on the city. Fischetti has written as a freelancer for the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, Smithsonian and many other outlets. He co-authored the book Weaving the Web with Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, which tells the real story of how the Web was created. He also co-authored The New Killer Diseases with microbiologist Elinor Levy. Fischetti has a physics degree and has twice served as Attaway Fellow in Civic Culture at Centenary College of Louisiana, which awarded him an honorary doctorate. In 2021 he received the American Geophysical Union’s Robert C. Cowen Award for Sustained Achievement in Science Journalism. He has appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press, CNN, the History Channel, NPR News and many radio stations.

More by Mark Fischetti

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