Mangaluru, Mumbai to be first Indian cities to submerge: NASA study

Mangaluru, Nov 18: In what will come as a big shock for the residents of both Mumbai and Mangaluru, their beloved cities are in big danger and they should be aware of what is likely to happen, sooner rather than later.

The port city of Karnataka, Mangaluru is currently at risk of flooding from the sea levels. As per the data released by NASA, this is due to melting glaciers. In next 100 years, glacial melting may push sea levels of the city by 15.98cm as compared to 15.26cm for Mumbai and 10.65cm for New York respectively.

The study has been carried out in journal Science Advances. The study is based on findings by the scientists at NASA’S Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The research is based on forecasting tool and gradient fingerprint mapping (GFM). The tool helps planners to find out on how melting glaciers can push up sea levels for nearly 293 major port cities, including Mangaluru, Mumbai in Maharashtra and Kakinada in Andhra, a report said.

The GFM tool shows how troubling the rise of sea-levels is. An ice sheet is a glacier that covers huge area and the melting will release huge amounts of water into the sea, it added.

“By exhaustively mapping these fingerprint gradients, we form a new diagnosis tool, henceforth referred to as gradient fingerprint mapping (GFM), that readily allows for improved assessments of future coastal inundation or emergence,” the study said.

Erik Ivins, senior scientist at the laboratory said that even as cities and countries across the globe plan to weaken flooding, they have to think about next 100 years. As most of the earth’s freshwater is stored in glaciers and ice sheets, their melting owing to global warming is a major reason rising sea level, the paper added.

The melting ice sheets lead to lower gravitational pull on sea waters, permitting them to flow out. The shrinking ice mass results in the swell of the land below. This also impacts the rotation of the earth.

The rise in sea level diminish coasts and can also lead to surges of storm and flooding. Under the high emissions scenario for greenhouse gases, sea level will rise by 0.51 -1.31m by 2100, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as per report.