A combination of rising sea levels and sinking river deltas means global flooding is even more likely than previous forecasts of doom. Scientists are now predicting that global delta flooding could increase by 50 percent. The image above is of the Pearl River Delta in China, taken by NASA's space shuttle Endeavour, with the areas below sea level shown in purple (Source: NASA, CSDMS, University of Colorado).
From Psyorg:
A new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder indicates most of the world's low-lying river deltas are sinking from human activity, making them increasingly vulnerable to flooding from rivers and ocean storms and putting tens of millions of people at risk.
The study concluded that 24 out of the world's 33 major deltas are sinking and that 85 percent experienced severe flooding in recent years, resulting in the temporary submergence of roughly 100,000 square miles of land. About 500 million people in the world live on river deltas.
"Every year, about 10 million people are being affected by storm surges," said CU-Boulder's Overeem, also an INSTAAR researcher and CSDMS scientist. "Hurricane Katrina may be the best example that stands out in the United States, but flooding in the Asian deltas of Irrawaddy in Myanmar and the Ganges-Brahmaputra in India and Bangladesh have recently claimed thousands of lives as well."
The researchers predict that similar disasters could potentially occur in the Pearl River delta in China and the Mekong River delta in Vietnam, where thousands of square miles are below sea level and the regions are hit by periodic typhoons.
