NASA's Interactive Flood Maps

First time accepted submitter jackandtoby writes "Whether you buy into global warming or not, you can have a go at being Charlton Heston and raise sea levels on a biblical scale thanks to NASA's online flood maps. Click away and cause your own Sim Flooding."

Death Valley

[LasVeganLucy]

Somehow Death Valley, California seems to fill up with water with a slight rise in sea level.

Lex Luthor was on to something.

[Brad1138]

In Superman 1. I need to buy up all the real estate 20 miles inland and wait for Global warming to make me rich! Maybe I should set off some nukes at the north and south poles to help speed things up...

Re:Where's the Waterworld Option

[pjbgravely]

What no negative? I wanted to see what it would look like with sea levels lower.

Re:Where's the Waterworld Option

[jonadab]

Also, 1000 meters of ocean level rise wouldn't really be enough to give you a Waterworld scenario. It would be a global catastrophy, certainly, but there would still be quite a bit of dry land -- in large continuous strips, some which would extend for more than a quarter of the earth's circumference in length. Dry land would certainly not be so difficult to locate as to approach mythical status. A lot of Asia would still be above water (not just the Himalayas, either), plus a good portion of Africa, a sizable chunk of North America (just for example, Denver would still be more than half a kilometer above the new elevated ocean level), a long strip of South America running from Columbia all the way to Tiera Del Fuego, and quite a bit of Antarctica (yes, even with all the ice melted off), as well as various mountains and islands scatter around every geopolitical region in the world.

Re:Death Valley

[Anonymous Coward]

1-2 meters worldwide, maybe not. 1-2 meters in an area where engineers need to improve an existing system, I'd give them a chance. They are already planning for it. Considering the map shows 1 meter as flooding the entire country, I doubt it factors in that some regions are already below sea level.

I'm not talking about problems when there are natural disasters. Many regions around the world would have problems with natural disaster flooding even if the oceans receded several meters. The map implies those lands would be underwater under dry conditions, which assumes either an instantaneous rise or that engineers aren't building systems to prevent flooding.

Another post below has a link to where the creator of the web site lists his limitations. The fifth one is about coastal defenses.

Re:Death Valley

[Grismar]

Actually, the Dutch water defenses can take quite a bit and do so regularly when storm surges occur. Of course, when a storm surge would come on top of a sea level increase of 1m overall, that would cause flooding sooner, at least temporarily.

However, this lame website simply colors every bit of land that just happens to be below the set level and ignores any defense that would keep the water out, even at the lower settings. It's utter bollocks and I'm betting it's only there to generate ad revenue. Oh /., how sad to see you slip into senility.. (not directed at parent, but at the so-called editors that decided this should run)