An NPR article titled: Study: 634 Million People at Risk from Rising Seas

I found this article on the NPR website and thought it was an interesting addition to what we discussed in this lecture, "Monitoring, Surveillance and Rapid Response Capabilities." The article was about how it is known that sea levels are expected to rise in the next century perhaps by as much as a foot, and with the rise of the ocean will come more flooding of low-level cities and it has even been hypothesized that with global warming hurricanes might become more intense. However there has not been much data about who exactly this will affect. Using satellite data and census information, the researchers discovered that that low-elevation areas are home to 634 million people, which is about 1 in 10 people in the world. Those countries with the most people in these low-elevation coastal areas are China, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan, Egypt, United States, Thailand, and the Philippines, and the countries with the largest share of their population living in these areas are the Bahamas, Suriname, the Netherlands, Vietnam, Guyana, Bangladesh, Djibouti, Belize, Egypt, and Gambia. In addition, two thirds of the world's largest cities are in these low-elevation levels, which is a huge deal considering populations will continue to shift to urban areas throughout this next century. This article highlights the need to look to what is going to happen in the future and how well prepared we are and should be to handle the future effects of global warming on weather patterns. The people in these areas will be greatly affected by these weather changes and hopefully governments will work to achieve good monitoring and effective strategies to deal with the inevitable weather disasters that will strike in their homes in the future.