Mumbai and many other coastal cities may go under water by 2050 due to rising sea level

Major coastal cities of the world – including Mumbai in India – may go under water by 2050, a paper published in scientific journal Nature said. This is due to the rising sea levels, driven by climate change.

Mostly the southern part of the city might be affected, the paper said. Along with Mumbai, other cities that are under similar threat are South Vietnam, Bangkok in Thailand, Shanghai and surrounding cities in China, Alexandria in Egypt and Basra in Iraq.
The authors of the paper published in Nature – Scott A Kulp and Benjamin H Strauss of New Jersey based non-profit Climate Central – have developed a more accurate way of calculating the effects of rising sea level and came to the above conclusion.

The paper has also said that three times the people currently projected in existing findings may be affected due to this.

The change in numbers comes due to a major restructuring of the way that the data has been collected. The researchers said that the current measurement techniques often calculate the relative elevation of land and tops of buildings and trees wrongly. To refine the results, the researchers used artificial intelligence to determine the error rate and correct the elevation data.

The new figures indicate that nearly 150 million people are at risk by 2050. The paper has shown that around 360 million people globally will be exposed to annual floods in 2100.

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