Inundation scenarios

Contact Mark Mulligan . Click here to access the database (requires Google Earth version 4+). If your version of Google Earth shows errors when downloading zipped data files from these sites, please right mouse button click the links to the data and choose save link from the context menu that appears. This will then open the link in your web browser.

This is an inundation analysis based on the CSI-corrected 90m SRTM V3 data available here coupled with the coastlines and water body dataset derived from the NASA SRTM Water Body dataset. The water bodies and coastlines (at 30 metre resolution) are shown for the area of the earth in which you Fly To. Choose the radio buttons to also show modelled new coastlines at the following sea levels:

• • -120m - sea levels during the last glacial maximum (approx, 18,000 years ago). This is calculated using the ETOPO2-V2 topographic and bathymetric dataset available here

  • +0m - calculated for error assessment according to the CSI processed SRTM topographic dataset available here

  • +1m - calculated according to the CSI processed SRTM topographic dataset available here

  • +4m -calculated according to the CSI processed SRTM topographic dataset available here

4m catastrophic sea level rise (detail for Mindanao, Philippines)

Note that whilst the SRTM dataset at 90m resolution is the best publicly available topographic datasets for near-global use, there may be better local data for your region of interest. Given that the typical error in SRTM altitudes is of the order of 3 metres in most coastal areas (see Rodriguez, E., C.S. Morris, J.E. Belz, E.C. Chapin, J.M. Martin, W.Daffer, S. Hensley, 2005, An assessment of the SRTM topographic products, Technical Report JPL D-31639, Jet Propulsion Laboratory,Pasadena, California, 143 pp. here

The +0m assessment is an error guide. Where this coastline is far from the actual coastline as visible in Google Earth and the SWBD dataset (yellow line) then the SRTM is likely to be much in error. Where the +0m assessment is close to the SWBD line then the error will be less and one can have more confidence in the inundation assessment. In any case this is a very preliminary analysis intended as a global first assessment and can be much improved by taking on board (a) tides and tidal ranges, (b) better error assessment, (c) improved DEMs in critical areas such as coastal cities. Please contact Dr Mark Mulligan if you would like collaborate in that. The datafiles are also available to download in zipped ARC ASCII format in the geographic coordinate system, WGS84 datum. The data processing and the visualisation, subtiling and Google Earth KML interface were developed by Dr Mark Mulligan of Kings College London.

Sea levels during the last glacial maximum (18000 ybp)