Mapping the Issue

My last post presented figures for the number of people living in low elevation coastal zones, however I am aware that simply presenting figures doesn't necessarily make it easy to visualize the full extent of the issue. A better understanding of the threat can be gained by looking at the sea level rise maps as published by The Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets. On their website they have sea level rise maps for one meter increments up to a six meter rise, for eight regions of the world, as well as providing a complete global view. As well as individual images there are also movies for each region which show the area of land submerged with increasing global sea level. From these images it is easy to see the extent of land submerged and it highlights well the considerable impact that sea level rise is likely to have. 

An example of the imagery provided can be seen below, where each image shows the area of land submerged for sequential one meter increases in sea level for the Southeast Asian region.

Inundation due to Sea Level Rise (source).