Sea level rise during the next several centuries may inundate the world's largest cities, cultural treasures from New York to London to Shanghai. The eventual course of sea level rise will greatly depend on decisions made now, including at the upcoming Paris Climate Summit in early December, when world leaders will attempt to adopt a new climate treaty to go into effect in the year 2020.
Because the giant ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica respond to climate change relatively slowly, a business-as-usual path of global warming pollution could doom future generations to centuries of ever-increasing sea levels, to the point where many cities will become uninhabitable.
