Rising Water

    The Challenge

    Sea levels are rising around the world, and approximately 40% of the human population lives in coastal zones. Your challenge is to help communicate the impacts of rising oceans by creating a visualization tool that illustrates the changes caused by rising sea levels in your region.

    Background

    Global climate change involves the rising of sea level around the world. This is driven by two primary factors: the thermal expansion of water as it heats up, and the melting of ice at the poles increasing the amount of liquid water in the oceans. The oceans currently rise at a rate of slightly more than three millimeters each year.

    Approximately 40% of the entire human population lives in coastal areas, and eight of the ten largest cities in the world are located on the coast. As sea level continues to rise, these coastal areas will face increasingly severe impacts from hurricanes, storm surge, and flooding in general, affecting billions of people.

    Although this issue is one of the first that comes to mind when considering the effects of climate change, it is difficult to envision the effects of oceans rising by less than a centimeter each year. How can you help communicate the impact visually? Your challenge is to create a visual tool to illustrate the cumulative impacts of small changes associated with sea level rise over decades.

    Potential Considerations

    In designing your visualization tool, be sure to include ways to change related variables and view the impacts on sea level in the future. Such variables could include shifts in human population or behavior, changes in land use, and/or global temperatures overall, just to name a few. Ensure that features such as these exist in your visualization in order to keep it as interactive and user-friendly as possible while still effectively presenting an educational message about the impacts of climate change. Focus on local and regional scales; how will further sea level change impact your region?