When a Greek Myth becomes real in the 21st Century.
By 2050, not 2100, global sea level is going to rise up to 2 meters.
Recently, The New York Times has published an article cited from Nature Communication about a new sea-level rise forecast. In the original paper, it is reported that errors are caused by a green cover by trees on ground land. Using new technology, researchers re-calculate and realize that all prior forecasts are too optimistic. It is estimated that damage is triple and around 300 million people will be affected.
This study is conducted by applying new techniques from machine learning, an emergent branch of computer science and statistics — now so-called “Artificial Intelligence” of the 21st century) According to a study, researchers apply algorithms to fix a systematic error in the previous model built by NASA on top satellite photos.
Most of the global map you see in the geographic classroom is followed a scale of 1:1,000,000. It means 1 cm equals 1,000,000 km. Normally in science, especially physics, a common strict threshold of acceptance error is 10^-6. It means we don’t care about the seventh position after a decimal. Let’s take a simple example to understand about error applied for a map by taking an insignificant number multiply by a scale.
Say, 0.0000001 x 10⁶ = 0.1 km = 100 m = a 20-floor building
If you can’t feel how tall it is, climbing stairs is probably the best exercise to grasp a physical and mental feeling.
Most of the coastal cities around the world will be underwater. Some of them will be the Atlantis of the 21st century including my hometown, Ho Chi Minh as well as Bangkok, Jarkata, Shanghai and Mumbai. In the U.S., it would be more 250 cities affected by flooding and high tide with 99% of the population in 2019. This list would go on and on with New York, Seattle, Miami, San Francisco
My family lives in the most flooding areas of Ho Chi Minh city, especially after big rains and moon tide period. Life is super difficult to commute between places for school and work. But when a big tide happens near the sea, no one would have enough time to react. Recall my memory about a Tsunami in Japan in 2011 — a series of natural disasters happened at the same time — an earthquake, a tsunami, an explosion of nuclear power, and radiation leak threatening to the safety of millions of people.
Indeed, Japan is one of my favorite countries, especially known by the innovation of technology and science as well as their attitude to thrive beyond an adversarial environment. Another country I recently learned is Holland from their stories to fight against storms and seawater invasion — before that, I only know Holland as a country that knows how to do commerce. (Probably you don’t know that Uber HQ International is based in Netherland)
Last June, a group of top researchers in machine learning also present a paper to propose a set of solutions to mitigate and adapt to climate change across 13 domains. Here is a list of top 10 recommendations suggested by a top technology magazine.
- Improve prediction of how much electricity is needed;
- Discover new materials;
- Optimize logistics;
- Lower barriers to electric-vehicle adoption;
- Help make building more efficient;
- Better estimators for how much energy we are consuming;
- Make precision agriculture possible at scale;
- Improve deforestation tracking;
- Nudge consumers to change how we shop.
Join me and blueskin.tech to raise awareness of the public audience about climate change.
Emma, CEO&Founder
XLab
Edit: 4/11/19: I changed the name of this blog from “Only 30 years to fight against climate change.” to “Only 30 years for protecting our coastline.”
