Sea Level Rise Map

Named sea levels

Press one to set the map to it. The map opens with all the ice melted, because smaller rises are hard to see on a world map. Zoom in to a coast for those.

How much will the sea rise?

Global sea level rose about 0.20 m between 1901 and 2018, and it is speeding up. These are the IPCC’s central estimates for what comes next, with the likely range in brackets, in metres compared with 1995–2014.

These are medium-confidence figures. Ice-sheet processes that are not well understood could add more: with them, the likely range under very high emissions runs from 0.62 m to 1.61 m by 2100. The rise at any one coast will differ from the global figure, because land moves and the ocean does not rise evenly.

Data: Garner, G. G., et al. (2021), IPCC AR6 Sea Level Projections, version 20210809, CC BY 4.0. Fox-Kemper, B., et al. (2021), Ocean, Cryosphere and Sea Level Change, IPCC AR6 WGI Chapter 9. Kopp, R. E., et al. (2023), the FACTS framework, Geoscientific Model Development. The 1901–2018 figure is from the AR6 WGI Summary for Policymakers.

Which coasts flood first? One, two and five metres

How soon a place floods comes down to how high its ground is. For each of three round levels, here are the places the sources name, and the earliest the IPCC’s projections reach that level. Press a button to see the map at that level.

The timing is worked out from the table above: the earliest of 2050, 2100 and 2150 at which a scenario’s figure reaches the level. The IPCC measures from 1995–2014 and the map from today, so treat it as a guide. Places are listed with the figures their sources give, which differ in method and date. Averages hide the low spots, and the amber and blue on the map are the better guide to any one street.

What is making the sea rise?

Two things raise the sea: ice on land that melts into it, and the ocean itself, which takes up more room as it warms. Together they account for about 86% of the rise measured since 1993.

Warming water is the largest single cause, at 42%. Water takes up more room as it warms, so a warmer ocean is a higher ocean. The other 44% is meltwater from ice on land, in three very different stores:

• 
  21%

  Mountain glaciers

  Glaciers outside the two big ice sheets hold only about 0.32 m of sea level between them. Even so, they have supplied about a fifth of the rise since 1993.

  The Baltoro Glacier in the Karakoram, from the air. Photo: Guilhem Vellut from Paris · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons

• 
  15%

  The Greenland ice sheet

  Greenland lost about 3,900 gigatonnes of ice between 1992 and 2018, enough to raise the sea by about 11 mm. If all of it melted, the sea would rise 7.42 m, but that would take many centuries.

  Source: IMBIE Team (2020), Nature

  The Greenland ice sheet from space. Photo: NASA satellite image, via USGS · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

• 
  8%

  The Antarctic ice sheet

  Antarctica holds by far the most ice, 57.9 m of sea level, yet has added the least so far. The worry is in the west: the Thwaites Glacier alone holds about 65 cm, and researchers think its retreat could pull more of the West Antarctic ice sheet with it.

  Source: Wikipedia: Thwaites Glacier

  The edge of the Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica. Photo: NASA · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Coasts the sea meets first

Eight low-lying places, some of them already dealing with the sea today. Press a button to set the map to that level and fly to the place. The levels are round figures chosen to match each story, not forecasts, and the caveats in “How this map works” apply to all of them.

• 
  Indian Ocean

  The Maldives

  The lowest country on Earth

  The highest natural ground in the Maldives is only 2.4 m above the sea (some sources say 5.1 m), and the average is about 1.5 m. More than 80% of the land is coral islands that rise less than a metre, though where land is built on it has been raised to several metres.

  Show the Maldives at +2 m

  Malé, the capital of the Maldives, from the air in 2008. Photo: steve_l · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia: Maldives

• 
  Pacific Ocean

  Tuvalu

  Nine low atolls, no hills

  Tuvalu’s land area is only about 26 square kilometres, and its highest point is 4.6 m above the sea, on Niulakita. Its atolls already flood in cyclones and storms, and the tide gauge at Funafuti shows the sea rising by 3.9 mm a year, about twice the global average. Yet a study of four decades found that the islets’ land area grew by about 3%, as waves move sand onto their shores, so the picture is not simply one of loss.

  Show Tuvalu at +2 m

  A beach on Funafuti atoll, Tuvalu. Photo: Stefan Lins · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia: Tuvalu

• 
  Italy

  Venice

  A city built in a lagoon

  The lowest part of Venice, around St Mark’s Basilica, is only 64 cm above sea level, and between autumn and early spring the city is often threatened by flood tides pushing in from the Adriatic. The MOSE barrier was designed to close the lagoon’s three entrances with 78 gates that rise when tides above 110 cm are forecast.

  Show Venice at +1 m

  Piazza San Marco under water during an acqua alta in November 2004. Photo: Wolfgang Moroder · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia: Venice

• 
  Indonesia

  Jakarta

  A capital that sinks while the sea rises

  Much of Jakarta lies on a low alluvial plain, with ground from below sea level up to about 50 m. Land subsidence, which pumping groundwater and the weight of buildings make worse, is a major driver of coastal flood risk in the north of the city. In 2022 Indonesia began the legal process of moving its capital to Nusantara, in East Kalimantan.

  Show Jakarta at +1 m

  Houses in Tanjung Duren, Jakarta, flooded on 1 January 2020. Photo: Cun Cun · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia: Jakarta

• 
  The Ganges–Brahmaputra delta

  Bangladesh

  The biggest river delta in the world

  Most of Bangladesh lies less than 12 m above the sea, on the Ganges Delta, the largest river delta in the world. One estimate is that about 10% of its land would flood if the sea rose by 1 m. The map is set to that level: compare it with the estimate.

  Show Bangladesh at +1 m

  A floating vegetable garden in Barisal, Bangladesh. Farmers grow crops on rafts that rise with the water. Photo: Azimronnie · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia: Bangladesh

• 
  Florida, USA

  Miami

  High ground is a few metres at best

  Ground in most Miami neighbourhoods averages only about 1.8 m above sea level, and around 40% of homes are built on floodplains. A 2020 report from Resources for the Future named Miami among the world’s cities most vulnerable to storm and coastal flood damage from sea level rise.

  Show Miami at +2 m

  A kayak in a flooded Miami Beach street in 2009, during a high tide that rain made worse. Photo: maxstrz on Flickr · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia: Miami

• 
  Louisiana, USA

  New Orleans

  Below sea level, and only levees between

  Estimates differ with how sea level is defined, but the city’s ground averages about 0.3 to 0.6 m below it, and the lowest parts of the east side lie about 2 m below. When the federal levee system failed during Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, more than 80% of the city flooded, and the storm killed more than 1,300 people. The button switches on “If the defences failed” at today’s sea level.

  Show New Orleans if its defences failed

  A damaged levee beside the Industrial Canal, New Orleans, on 30 August 2005, the day after Katrina. Photo: FEMA · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia: New Orleans

• 
  Egypt

  The Nile Delta

  Egypt’s farmland and its second city

  One estimate is that a 1 m rise would put about 887,000 people at risk in the Nile Delta and flood about 450 square kilometres, much of it cropland. The delta’s Mediterranean coast is already losing land, because the Aswan Dam has cut off the sediment that once rebuilt it. Alexandria, on its western edge, is one of the cities most exposed to sea level rise.

  Show the Nile Delta at +1 m

  The Nile Delta at night from the International Space Station. Each cluster of light is a town or city. Photo: ISS Expedition 25 crew · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia: Nile Delta

Looking for the places that are already below the sea, and how they stay dry? See land below sea level.

The Ice Age coast: four lands that are now sea

About 20,000 years ago the ice sheets held so much water that the sea stood 124 m lower than today’s, the level this map uses (sources often round it to about 120 m). Whole lands that are now sea floor were dry. Press a button to see each one: the sea bed laid bare shows in sand colour. The map does not draw the ice sheets, so the far north shows land that was then under ice.

Show the whole world at −124 m

• 
  The North Sea

  Doggerland

  When Britain was not an island

  When the sea was this low, much of the southern North Sea was dry land. After the ice retreated, a region joining eastern Britain to Denmark’s Jutland, northern France, Belgium, the Netherlands and north-western Germany was flooded between 10,000 and 7,000 years ago, first into a scatter of low islands and then completely. In 1931 a trawler dragged a barbed antler point out of the sea 40 km east of Norfolk. It dates from between 10,000 and 4,000 BCE, when the spot was tundra.

  Show Doggerland at −124 m

  The Dogger Bank, outlined in red, in a satellite view of the North Sea. Photo: NASA, outline of the Dogger Bank added · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia: Doggerland

• 
  Between Siberia and Alaska

  Beringia

  The land bridge to the Americas

  The Bering Strait is only 40–50 m deep, so a land bridge opened as soon as the sea fell by more than 50 m. At its greatest it was up to 1,000 km wide and covered about 1.6 million square kilometres, as much as British Columbia and Alberta together. A small population is thought to have reached Beringia from eastern Siberia at the Ice Age low, before spreading into the Americas.

  Tip: The date line cuts Beringia in half, and the flat map stops there, so it shows only the Alaskan side. Switch the map to 3D to see both.

  Show Beringia at −124 m

  Tundra and thaw lakes at the tip of Cape Espenberg, Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, Alaska. Photo: Greta Burkhart, National Park Service · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia: Beringia

• 
  Southeast Asia

  Sundaland

  One landmass where there are now islands

  At the Ice Age low the sea fell by about 120 m and the whole Sunda Shelf stood dry, joining Borneo, Java, Sumatra, Bali and the Malay Peninsula into a single landmass. Today’s land is about half its greatest extent. The shelf was flooded between about 18,000 years ago and about 5000 BC.

  Show Sundaland at −124 m

  Borneo from space, in a NASA image from 2002. Photo: NASA MODIS · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia: Sundaland

• 
  Australia and New Guinea

  Sahul

  Australia and New Guinea, joined

  Mainland Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea and the Aru Islands were one continent, called Sahul. As the sea rose at the end of the Ice Age, New Guinea separated from the mainland about 8,000 years ago and Tasmania about 6,000 years ago.

  Show Sahul at −124 m

  Warraber Island in the Torres Strait, which now lies between Australia and New Guinea. Photo: DE Hart · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia: Sahul

How this map works, and what it leaves out

Frequently Asked Questions

People at risk: Hooijer & Vernimmen (2021); Kulp & Strauss (2019). Ice: BedMachine (Morlighem et al.) and Farinotti et al. (2019), via AntarcticGlaciers.org. Ice Age level: PaleoMIST (Gowan et al. 2021). Heights: Mapterhorn, Terrain Tiles and NOAA ETOPO 2022; see data sources.