Mumbai and other fast-growing coastal megacities in Asia are particularly vulnerable to climate-related flooding. Twenty-one of the world’s 31 megacities hug a coastline, 13 of which are in Asia. These cities of 10 million or more often drive their national economies and are home to both rich and poor. Captions and Photo source: Science News / Janak Rathod
Excerpts;
Climate change is raising sea levels, while also making storms more severe and bringing heavier rains to some places. For densely populated coastal cities like Mumbai — the financial heart of India, which is the world’s fastest-growing major economy — those risks threaten to throw personal incomes and national economies into chaos…
Mumbai’s current predicament is partly due to the power of engineering over nature. Large parts of the city are built on land that, 300 years ago, was mostly underwater. When the Portuguese settled the region in the 16th century, they maintained Mumbai as a sleepy collection of coastal islands. But the British, who took over in 1661, reimagined Mumbai as a contiguous landmass and created a peninsula by filling in land gaps to connect the islands even in the wet season…
Read Full Article, Science News (08-15-2018)
Rising sea levels threatens coastal cities with more tsunamis, scientists warn; The Telegraph UK (08-15-2018)
Tsunamis will become more common and more ferocious with global warming, scientists have warned after a study found that global sea level rises will increase the risk of coastal cities being wiped out…
Cities from the sea: the true cost of reclaimed land; Guardian UK (05-02-2018)
Sea-level rise and the precious commodity of sand; The Coast News (05-17-2018)
Satellite photos reveal how Mumbai killed its mangrove forests to risk epic floods; Quartz (08-30-2017)
Mumbai is essentially a peninsula jutting into the Arabian Sea. Since the 1980s, the city’s population has more than doubled. That’s led to rapid urbanisation of the surrounding areas, as well as encroachment of the mangroves on the city’s edges…
