Data Journalist David McCandless: "When Sea Levels Attack"
David McCandless of Information is Beautiful teamed up with two designers for an info-graphic entitled "When Sea Levels Attack: Which cities will flood when?" One of the irreversible and uncontested effects of climate change is melting ice sheets and polar caps, which have already created a 20 to 40 cm rise in sea levels. At the going rate, the sea will rise one meter every century. Compared to the cataclysmic projections of extreme weather, this slow effect seems benign at first.
McCandless pulled data from NASA, NewScientist.com, Potsdam institute, Sea Level Explorer and ICPP to show how far above sea-level major cities stand. Los Angeles and Amsterdam average one meter above sea-level. San Francisco, Lower Manhattan, St. Petersburg and Hamburg average two meters above sea-level. As the sea levels rise one meter per century, all five cities will begin to flood in two hundred years.
The info-graphic shows rising sea-levels on the left at a steady rate over 1000 years. Major cities are listed by their meters above sea-level across the bottom. In 800 years, New York, London and Taiwan will be flooding. Many of America's major cities will be underwater in a thousand years.
You can view more of McCandless's excellent information design on his Flickr stream. It is well worth the trip.





