A new research on climate change and sea levels has revealed that rising seas could affect three times more people by 2050, that what was previously thought. Looking at India, the study predicts that the country's financial capital Mumbai, is at risk of 'being wiped out'. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, was done by Climate Central, a science organisation based in New Jersey.
According to a report in The New York Times, the authors of the paper developed a more accurate way of calculating land elevation based on satellite readings. The study also states that places like Southern Vietnam could 'all but disappear'. The study also looks at Thailand, where 'more than 10 percent of citizens now live on land that is likely to be inundated by 2050'.
About Mumbai, the study says that 'built on what was once a series of islands, the city’s historic downtown core is particularly vulnerable'.
The new research shows that some 150 million people are now living on land that will be below the high-tide line by midcentury. “We’ve been trying to ring the alarm bells. We know that it’s coming,” Dina Ionesco of the International Organisation for Migration, an intergovernmental group that coordinates action on migrants and development, told The New York Times.