A radical reduction: See the graphic “Surging Seas: 2°C Warming and Sea Level Rise” on the Climate Central website.
Jeff Goodell runs through: Jeff Goodell, The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World (New York: Little, Brown, 2017), p. 13.
Atlantis: The historical basis, if any, for this legend remains a subject of debate and dispute, but for an overview (and the suggestion that the society was submerged by a volcano eruption on today’s Santorini), see Willie Drye, “Atlantis,” National Geographic, 2018.
as much as 5 percent: Jochen Hinkel et al., “Coastal Flood Damage and Adaptation Costs Under 21st Century Sea-Level Rise,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (February 2014), https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1222469111.
Jakarta is one: Mayuri Mei Lin and Rafki Hidayat, “Jakarta, the Fastest-Sinking City in the World,” BBC News, August 13, 2018, www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44636934.
China is evacuating: Andrew Galbraith, “China Evacuates 127,000 People as Heavy Rains Lash Guangdong—Xinhua,” Reuters, September 1, 2018, www.reuters.com/article/us-china-floods/china-evacuates-127000-people-as-heavy-rains-lash-guangdong-xinhua-idUSKCN1LH3BV.
Much of the infrastructure: Ramakrishnan Durairajan et al., “Lights Out: Climate Change Risk to Internet Infrastructure,” Proceedings of the Applied Networking Research Workshop (July 16, 2018): pp. 9–15, https://doi.org/10.1145/3232755.3232775.
nearly 311,000 homes: Union of Concerned Scientists, “Underwater: Rising Seas, Chronic Floods, and the Implications for US Coastal Real Estate” (Cambridge, MA, 2018), p. 5, www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/global-warming-impacts/sea-level-rise-chronic-floods-and-us-coastal-real-estate-implications.
$100 trillion per year by 2100: University of Southampton, “Climate Change Threatens to Cause Trillions in Damage to World’s Coastal Regions If They Do Not Adapt to Sea-Level Rise,” February 4, 2014, www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2014/02/04-climate-change-threatens-damage-to-coastal-regions.page#.UvonXXewI2l.
$14 trillion a year: Svetlana Jevrejeva et al., “Flood Damage Costs Under the Sea Level Rise with Warming of 1.5 °C and 2 °C,” Environmental Research Letters 13, no. 7 (July 2018), https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aacc76.
continue for millennia: Andrea Dutton et al., “Sea-Level Rise Due to Polar Ice-Sheet Mass Loss During Past Warm Periods,” Science 349, no. 6244 (July 2015), https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaa4019.
two-degree scenario: “Surging Seas,” Climate Central.
about 444,000 square miles: Benjamin Strauss, “Coastal Nations, Megacities Face 20 Feet of Sea Rise,” Climate Central, July 9, 2015, www.climatecentral.org/news/nations-megacities-face-20-feet-of-sea-level-rise-19217.
the twenty cities most affected: Ibid.
flooding has quadrupled since 1980: European Academies’ Science Advisory Council, “New Data Confirm Increased Frequency of Extreme Weather Events, European National Science Academies Urge Further Action on Climate Change Adaptation,” March 21, 2018, https://easac.eu/press-releases/details/new-data-confirm-increased-frequency-of-extreme-weather-events-european-national-science-academies.
by 2100 high-tide flooding: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “Patterns and Projections of High Tide Flooding Along the US Coastline Using a Common Impact Threshold” (Silver Spring, MD, February 2018), p. ix, https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/publications/techrpt86_PaP_of_HTFlooding.pdf.
affected 2.3 billion and killed 157,000: United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, “The Human Cost of Weather Related Disasters 1995–2015” (Geneva, 2015), p. 13, www.unisdr.org/2015/docs/climatechange/COP21_WeatherDisastersReport_2015_FINAL.pdf.
increase global rainfall to such a degree: Sven N. Willner et al., “Adaptation Required to Preserve Future High-End River Flood Risk at Present Levels,” Science Advances 4, no. 1 (January 2018), https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aao1914.
at risk of catastrophic inundation: Oliver E. J. Wing et al., “Estimates of Present and Future Flood Risk in the Conterminous United States,” Environmental Research Letters 13, no. 3 (February 2018), https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aaac65.
floods in South Asia killed 1,200: Oxfam International, “43 Million Hit by South Asia Floods: Oxfam Is Responding,” August 31, 2017, www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2017-08-31/43-million-hit-south-asia-floods-oxfam-responding.
António Guterres, the secretary-generaclass="underline" United Nations Secretary-General, “Secretary-General’s Press Encounter on Climate Change [with Q&A],” March 29, 2018, www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/press-encounter/2018-03-29/secretary-generals-press-encounter-climate-change-qa.
eight times the entire global population: U.S. Census Bureau, “Historical Estimates of World Population,” www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/international-programs/historical-est-worldpop.html.
Noah’s Ark story: There are a number of theories about historical flood events that may have inspired the biblical story, but this popular one was presented at length in William Ryan and Walter Pitman, Noah’s Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries About the Event That Changed History (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000).
700,000 Rohingya refugees: Michael Schwirtz, “Besieged Rohingya Face ‘Crisis Within the Crisis’: Deadly Floods,” The New York Times, February 13, 2018.
When the Paris Agreement was drafted: Meehan Crist, “Besides, I’ll Be Dead,” London Review of Books, February 22, 2018, www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n04/meehan-crist/besides-ill-be-dead.
“sunny day flooding”: Jim Morrison, “Flooding Hot Spots: Why Seas Are Rising Faster on the US East Coast,” Yale Environment 360, April 24, 2018, https://e360.yale.edu/features/flooding-hot-spots-why-seas-are-rising-faster-on-the-u.s.-east-coast.
things accelerating faster: Andrew Shepherd, Helen Amanda Fricker, and Sinead Louise Farrell, “Trends and Connections Across the Antarctic Cryosphere,” Nature 558 (2018): pp. 223–32.
melt rate of the Antarctic: University of Leeds, “Antarctica Ramps Up Sea Level Rise,” June 13, 2018, www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article/4250/antarctica_ramps_up_sea_level_rise.
49 billion tons of ice each year: Chris Mooney, “Antarctic Ice Loss Has Tripled in a Decade. If That Continues, We Are in Serious Trouble,” The Washington Post, June 13, 2018.
several meters over fifty years: James Hansen et al., “Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise, and Superstorms: Evidence from Paleoclimate Data, Climate Modeling, and Modern Observations That 2°C Global Warming Could Be Dangerous,” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 16 (2016): pp. 3761–812, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-16-3761-2016.
13,000 square miles: University of Maryland, “Decades of Satellite Monitoring Reveal Antarctic Ice Loss,” June 13, 2018, https://cmns.umd.edu/news-events/features/4156.
determined by what human action: Hayley Dunning, “How to Save Antarctica (and the Rest of Earth Too),” Imperial College London, June 13, 2018, www.imperial.ac.uk/news/186668/how-save-antarctica-rest-earth.