SYDNEY (AP) – Due to rising sea levels, many of Australia’s iconic places could disappear into the waters by 2100. This bleak scenario maps new interactive maps for the “Coastal Risk Australia” tool, developed by two Australian companies that enables users to simulate the effects of changing Climate on the coastal areas.

Popular beaches such as Sydney’s surfing area Manly and Byron Bay in northern New South Wales will be hit hard. Tourist hotspots such as Noosa and Cairns in the tropical region of Queensland or Hindmarsh Island in South Australia can also be inundated by floods.

Between fire and flood

The maps are based on figures from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which projects an additional 84cm of sea levels rise by the end of the century if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise as sharply as before. Greenpeace warned in May that other regions of the Southern Hemisphere could fall victim to polar caps melting: “Many islands such as shallow South Sea atolls could be flooded within 50 to 100 years.”

However, hardly any other country has suffered the consequences of global warming like Australia in recent years: droughts, heat waves, floods and coral bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef have been frequent. Devastating wildfires destroyed more than twelve million hectares of land from August 2019 to March 2020.

© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210921-99-297229 / 5