Far More People at Risk of Rising Seas Than Feared-Climate Study

The authors said they had used artificial intelligence to correct systematic errors in a previous dataset that had suggested many inhabited coastal zones were at higher elevations -- and thus safer -- than they actually are. "We now understand that the threat from sea-level rise and coastal flooding is far greater than we previously thought," said Benjamin Strauss, chief executive of Climate Central and co-author of the three-year study. "It's also true that the benefits from cutting climate pollution are far greater than we previously thought – this changes the whole benefit-cost equation," Strauss told Reuters. The threat that advancing seas will overwhelm the ability of countries to build coastal defences and force many millions of people to migrate has long been regarded as one of the most potentially destabilising impacts of the climate crisis. The risks were underlined last month when the U.N.-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a landmark report on oceans that said sea levels could rise by one metre (3.3 ft) by 2100 -- ten times the rate in the 20th century -- if carbon emissions keep climbing.