NASA Data + Google Maps API = Climate Change Flood Map

flood.firetree.net

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More information and caveats:

http://blog.firetree.net/2006/05/18/more-about-flood-maps/

Climate change predictions on sea level rise:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise

Snippet:

More recent research from 2008 observed rapid declines in ice-mass balance from both Greenland and Antarctica, and concluded that sea-level rise by 2100 is likely to be at least twice as large as that presented by IPCC AR4, with an upper limit of about two meters.

The most recent IPPC report[1] has lowered the sea level rise forecast somewhat. Depending on the atmosphereic CO2 scenario[2] the 5-95% range of sea level rise will be from 0.26-0.54 meters (RCP2.6) to 0.45-0.82 meters (RCP8.5). It is very unlikely that sea level rise will be much more than a meter, say over 1.3 meters. It is now generally thought it will take several hundred years or longer to get rises over a few meters.

It is important to give accurate information on the impact of global warming as we already have a huge problem of the public misunderstanding the issue. Your map seems very well done but a default rise of 7 meters, while it shows off the technology, may just add to the confusion.

[1] http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/uploads/WGIAR5_WGI-1... (see 13-4 for summary).

[2] Atmospheric CO2 scenarios are now known as RCPs for Representative Concentration Pathways in the IPCC AR5 report.

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