Tuesday, April 05, 2022

Uninhabitable Earth

Yesterday the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest report on climate change. In the report the IPCC warns that the Earth is currently heading towards increased temperatures of more than 3C.This will have catastrophic effects for life on Earth.

In Where the Earth Will be Uninhabitable the Berliner Morgenpost has used a 3D globe to highlight all the locations in the world which will be unable to support human life by the end of this century. Under current climate change projections the areas shown in red on this globe will become uninhabitable by 2100, because of extreme heat, rising seas or tropical cyclones. The height of the red bars on the map show the current population now living in each of these future uninhabitable locations.

As you scroll through the Berliner Morgenpost story the globe updates to look in turn at where extreme heat, water stress, rising sea levels and tropical cyclones will make locations uninhabitable for humans. For each of these extreme events the globe uses colored height bars to show the population currently living in each of the future uninhabitable locations. 

The Uninhabitable 3D globe also includes an 'Explore' option, which allows you to explore the global heating projections for yourself. In this mode you can select any of the extreme climate conditions to see how they will effect the habitability of any location by 2100. This mode informs you of the five countries which will be impacted the most by each individual extreme climate event. If you select an individual country you can also discover which regions of that country will be most effected by each of climate event. For example, in the USA New Orleans is likely to have the highest population effected by rising sea levels, while tropical cyclones will effect the habitability of Houston more than any other U.S. city.

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