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When illustrator Nikolay Lamm read a recent New York Times series on how various U.S. cities would fare with projected levels of sea-level rise from global warming, he wanted to visualize that process more clearly. So Lamm contacted Remik Ziemlinksi from Climate Central, who had helped the Times create its interactive maps last November and went to work. The result? The most terrifyingly life-life depiction yet of South Beach sinking into the ocean.
“I felt that if I could bring these maps to life, it would force people to look at sea level rise in a new way,” Lamm said.
Check out Ocean Drive and South Beach as water levels creep upward:
Lamm’s GIFs, which also imagine New York, Boston and DC sinking beneath the waves, aren’t pure imagination — he used the same data the Times did, which extrapolates current sea-level rises out to the year 2300, which is when that full South Beach flooding effect would be felt.
The Times site, which you can check out here, lets you control sea levels a decade out, a century out and projected past 2300. Here’s how Miami would look if oceans actually did rise by 25 feet:
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