How Serious is the Warning About Coastal Cities Submerging by 2050

What kind of environmental damages is the Climate Central report projecting for India in 2050? - The Big Story

What kind of environmental damages is the Climate Central report projecting for India in 2050?

(Photo: The Quint)

“Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata may be submerged by 2050” – you must have read many such headlines, but what does the report say?

The climate is definitely changing. It’s not just a future that is dramatised in sci-fi movies, but it’s quite tangibly changing. In India, summers are getting hotter and drier, we're getting irregular monsoons, and now some fresh warnings have come up on how much worse the situation might get by 2050.

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A new report says that if emission levels aren’t checked, many coastal areas including some of India’s populated metropolitans cities like Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata may get completely submerged.

Other Asian coastal countries like China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Japan, Indonesia Thailand and Philippines are also expected to be affected.

In India, according to a report on IndiaSpend, currently an estimated 31 million people live in coastal areas, which are at risk of annual flooding, and that population is estimated to go up to 35 million by mid-century and rise further to 51 million by the year 2100.

What kind of damages is the report projecting in the future? And what are the assumptions the report is based on? Tune in to The Big Story to know.