Visualize the impact of sea level rise in google earth.

Note: page is outdated.

I found this great layer for google earth which allows you to visualize the impact of sea level rise on your coast line in google earth. It is limited by the quality of the local terrain and geoid used in google earth but it is still very useful to get an idea about the local sea level rise in your region.

Here’s what you need to do to get i to work:

  • Install google earth. It can be found here.
  • Open the “rising sea level animation” layer for google earth. It can be found here.
  • Zoom to the area of interrest. (Note: this only works when zooming quite alot since it depends on the precision used in the so called zbuffer of the graphics hardware.)
  • Change the settings in google earth as shown in the image on the right. Click it to view a full size version.

Sometimes you can see the problems with the terrain/geoid if +1m of sea level doesn’t cover the sea in your region. E.g. near Helsinki, Finland.

Over the next century sea level will probably rise by 1-2m globally (assuming no catastrophic collapse of e.g. the west antarctic ice sheet.) On top of this you have the natural variability caused by tides and storm surges.

Note: we have just published a study where we project ~1m sea level rise by 2100.

Share