Our planet will look like. What will the Earth be like in millions of years? Scientifically: Earth Doom
The ice on Earth is 24 million cubic kilometers. Can you imagine this amount? Difficult. Have you ever wondered what our planet would look like if all the ice melted?
National Geographic has mapped the ice-free continents. Curious!
Europe
Netherlands, Riga, Estonia, Lithuania, Venice - everything will be flooded with water. If he talks about the Caucasus, then it will be cut off in Asia, and the Crimea will turn into a real island.
St. Petersburg will be under water, and the Gulf of Finland will stretch to Pskov and Veliky Novgorod.
North America
Much of the US east coast will be submerged. Florida will be completely flooded. The same will happen with Cuba and the countries of the Gulf of Mexico. The west coast will be the least affected.
South America
The Amazon will turn into a real huge sea bay. Thanks to the Andes, the west coast will hardly be affected.
Australia
The deserts of Australia will turn into the sea.
Asia
China will be almost completely flooded. Cambodia will turn into a group of small islands, and the Indian Ganges will repeat the fate of the Amazon and flood everything around.
Africa
Africa will suffer less than other continents. Alexandria and Cairo will disappear. The population will get along in the compressed territories of the desert.
Antarctica
Antarctica will become a group of small islands and archipelagos.
Of course, the melting of glaciers is a slow process. But if we continue to neglect the environment, then we will accelerate the onset of global warming several times.
More than 68% of the Earth's fresh water is solid, including glaciers, snow cover and permafrost. The ice sheet in Antarctica contains about 80% of all fresh water on the planet. Scientists are inclined to believe that at current rates it will take more than 5 thousand years to melt all the ice on the planet, but if this happens, the level of the World Ocean will rise by more than 60 meters. On these maps, you will see the world as it would become if all the glaciers melted. Thin white lines mark the land borders that still exist today.
Europe
Thousands of years later, under such a scenario, Denmark and the Netherlands would become almost entirely part of the sea, including the capitals and largest cities of Europe. In Russia, the same fate would have befallen the second largest city of St. Petersburg. In addition, the expanding waters of the Black and Caspian Seas would swallow up many coastal and remote cities, most of which are in Russia.
North America
In this case, the waters of the Atlantic Ocean will completely bury the state of Florida and many coastal cities in the United States. Significant territories of Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama will also be under water.
South America
The Amazon waters will become a giant bay, as will the confluence of the Uruguay and Parana rivers on the southeastern coast of South America. The capitals of Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and Peru, as well as a large number of coastal cities will be under water.
Africa
Had a global ice melt happened, Africa would have lost less land than other continents. But a rise in Earth's temperature would render parts of Africa uninhabitable. The northwestern part of the continent would suffer the most, with the result that the Gambia would be almost completely submerged, and part of the land would be significantly affected in Mauritania, Senegal and Guinea-Bissau.
Asia
As a result of the melting of ice, all Asian states that have access to the sea in one way or another will suffer. Indonesia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, and part of Vietnam will suffer greatly. Singapore and Bangladesh will be completely submerged.
Australia
The continent, which will become almost completely desert, will acquire a new inland sea, but will lose all coastal cities in which most of the population currently lives. Today, if you leave the coast and travel about 200 kilometers deep into Australia, you can find only sparsely populated areas.
Antarctica
The Antarctic ice sheet is the largest on Earth and is approximately 10 times larger than the Greenland ice sheet. The ice reserves of Antarctica are 26.5 million km³. The average ice thickness on this continent is 2.5 km, but in some areas it reaches its maximum value - 4.8 km. Studies show that due to the severity of the ice cover, the continent sank by 0.5 km. This is what Antarctica will look like without an ice sheet.
At this point, you are probably fully aware of global warming. But in case you don't know about it, it must be said: the temperature is really rising rapidly.
In fact, 2016 was the hottest year in history. Temperatures this year have risen 1.3 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average. This brings us dangerously close to the 1.5 degree limit that has been set by international policymakers for global warming.
Climatologist Gavin Schmidt, who is director of the Goddard Institute for Space Research (NASA), says global warming is not stopping. And everything that has happened so far fits into this system.
This means that even if carbon dioxide emissions drop to zero tomorrow, we will still see climate change for centuries. But, as we know, no one is going to stop emissions tomorrow. Thus, the key issue now is the slowing down of climate change, which must be sufficient for humanity to adapt to it.
So what will the Earth look like over the next 100 years if we can still adapt to climate change?
Changes in degrees
Schmidt estimates that 1.5 degrees (2.7 Fahrenheit) is an unattainable goal in the long run. Most likely, we will reach this indicator by 2030.
However, Schmidt is more optimistic about a temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. Although it is precisely such indicators that the UN hopes to avoid.
Let's assume that we find ourselves somewhere in between. This means that by the end of the century, the world will be 3 degrees Fahrenheit or so warmer than it is now.
Temperature anomalies
However, the average temperature of the Earth's surface cannot fully reflect climate change. Temperature anomalies - that is, how much the temperature in a given area will deviate from what is normal for that region - will become commonplace.
For example, last winter, temperatures in the Arctic Circle went above freezing in one day. Of course, it's cold for our latitudes, but extremely hot for the Arctic. This is not normal, but it will happen more often.
This means that years like this, when the lowest sea ice levels were recorded, will become commonplace. Summers in Greenland could be completely ice-free by 2050.
Even 2015 was not as dire compared to 2012, when 97% of the Greenland ice sheet began to melt during the summer. As a rule, such a phenomenon can be observed once every hundred years, but we will be able to see it every 6 years by the end of this century.
Sea level rise
However, ice in Antarctica will remain relatively stable, making a minimal contribution to sea level rise.
The best-case scenario is that oceans will rise 60-90 centimeters by the end of 2100. But a rise in sea level of even less than 90 centimeters will lead to the destruction of houses of 4 million people.
However, changes in the oceans will take place not only at the poles, where the ice is melting. It will continue to oxidize in the tropics. The oceans absorb about a third of all carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which leads to an increase in their temperature and acidity.
If climate change continues, virtually all coral reef habitats will be devastated. If you stick to the best scenario, half of all tropical corals will disappear.
Hot Summer
But the oceans are not the only place where things will heat up. Even if we limit emissions, the number of extremely warm summer days in the tropics will increase by 1.5 times after 2050. Further north, 10 to 20% of the days of the year will be hotter.
Let's compare this to a common scenario in which temperatures in the tropics remain unusually high throughout the summer. This means that in areas with a temperate climate, the number of warm days will increase by 30%.
But even a slight warming will affect water resources. In a 2013 paper, scientists used models to estimate how the world would look after a drought that is about 10% stronger than it is now. Climate change could lead to severe drought on 40% of our planet, which is twice as much as now.
Weather anomalies
Pay attention to the weather. If El Niño in 2015-2016 was any kind of a sign, then we will face more dramatic natural disasters. By 2070, more extreme storm surges, wildfires and heat waves will hit the earth.
It's time to make a decision
Now humanity is on the edge of the abyss. We can ignore the warning signs and continue to pollute the Earth, resulting in what climatologists call a "very different planet." This means that the climate in the future will be different from the current one, just as the current one is not similar to the one that was in the ice age.
Or we can make innovative decisions. Many of the scenarios proposed here were based on the assumption that we will achieve negative emissions by 2100, which means that we can absorb more than we can emit with carbon capture technology.
Schmidt says that by 2100, the planet will reach a state that will be somewhere between "slightly warmer than today" and "much warmer than today."
But the difference between small and large on the scale of the Earth is counted in millions of lives saved.
On the scale of the history of the planet and even humanity, the life of one particular person is catastrophically small. We, who were born at the turn of the millennium, were lucky to witness unprecedented technological progress and the flourishing of civilization. But what will happen next? In 50, 10, 1000 years? In these documentaries, eminent scientists and researchers will try to imagine what awaits humanity and our planet in the future.
Age of Fools
The film will paint us a picture of the near future (2055), when global warming is already destroying humanity. The main character of the film must compose a message for those people who may survive. The purpose of the message is to draw conclusions about why all this happened.
Scientifically: Earth Apocalypse
Imagine our planet in 250 million years. It will faintly resemble today's Earth, most likely it will be one large continent, mostly occupied by deserts. There will be no oceans in today's performance. Coastal zones will be destroyed by devastating storms. Ultimately, planet Earth is doomed to perish.
Wild world of the future
Without a time machine, you will be transported into the future for 5,000,000, 100,000,000 and 200,000,000 years to see a world worthy of the pen of a genius science fiction writer. But what will appear to your eyes is not fiction at all! Using the most complicated calculations, strictly substantiated forecasts and the richest knowledge in biology and geology, leading scientists from the USA, Great Britain, Germany and Canada, together with masters of computer animation, created a portrait of our planet and its inhabitants many centuries after the last man left it.
The world in 2050
Can you imagine our world in 2050? By the middle of the century, there will already be about 9 billion people on the planet, consuming more and more resources, surrounded by an increasingly technological space. What will our cities look like? How will we eat in the future? Is global warming coming or will engineers have the opportunity to avert a climate crisis? This BBC documentary examines the problem of overpopulation in the earth. Undoubtedly, demographic problems await us in the future. Rockefeller Institute theoretical biologist Joel Cohen suggests that most of the world's people are likely to live in urban areas and their life expectancy will be significantly higher.
New World - Future Life on Earth
Programs from the "New World" series tell us about the latest technologies, developments, radical ideas that are already shaping the world of the future today. What will life on our planet be like in a few decades? Will sub-ocean cities, bio-suits and space tourism really exist; machines will be capable of developing super-speed, and human life expectancy will reach 150 years? Scientists say our descendants will live in floating cities, fly to work and travel underwater. The time of polluted megacities will end, because people will stop driving cars, and the invention of the teleport will save cities from eternal traffic jams.
Earth 2100
The very idea that life as we know it may end over the next century will seem very strange to many. Our civilization can collapse, leaving only traces of human existence. To change your future, you must first imagine it. It seems outlandish, extraordinary, and even impossible. But according to cutting edge scientific research, this is a very real opportunity. And if we continue to live as we live now, all this will definitely happen.
Life after people
This film is based on the results of a study of areas suddenly abandoned by people, as well as the possible consequences of the termination of maintenance of buildings and urban infrastructure. The abandoned world hypothesis is illustrated with digital images showing the subsequent fate of such architectural masterpieces as the Empire State Building, Buckingham Palace, Sears Tower, Space Needle, Golden Gate Bridge and the Eiffel Tower.
Scientifically: Earth Doom
Planet Earth: 4 billion years of evolution, all of this will disappear. Titanic forces are already at work, which will destroy the world that we know. Together with scientific researchers, we will make a grandiose journey into the future of the Earth in which natural disasters will erase all living things from the face and destroy the planet itself. We're starting the countdown to the end of the world.
There are many options for how our mother Earth will look in a million years. And paradoxically, its appearance will largely depend on the factor of humanity.
That is, on how much we change our behavior in our own home. But what is there - the face of the Earth will be determined even by the very fact whether humanity will remain to live on it or will fly away to interstellar distances in search of either paradise, or salvation from the impending Apocalypse.
If we proceed from the fact that people will continue to inhabit the Earth in a million years and at the same time learn to treat nature delicately, then the appearance of the planet from space will change slightly. But it will still be different, since no one has canceled the geological activity.
For example, although the continents will move from their current position, they will be no more than a few kilometers away (maximum 50–55 km). The day will also consist of 24 hours, and the Moon will turn around the Earth in a month.
Perhaps the most significant changes will be the outlines of the coastline of the seas and oceans, as a result of volcanic activity, new territories will appear. So, a new island may appear in the Hawaiian archipelago - here, off the southeastern coast, an active underwater volcano is actively growing.
He was even given a name in advance - Loihi. But some other Hawaiian islands under the influence of wind and ocean waves, on the contrary, will decrease or disappear altogether.
If the convergence of the continents turns out to be significant, then the colors with which they are painted (that is, the structure of vegetation) will noticeably change. True, the Sahara Desert, as it looked from space yellow-gray, will most likely remain so.
Of course, the coloring of individual "patches" on the motley body of the planet will change. But this will largely depend on human activity and the degree of his greed in deforestation. If, in a million years, forests are also actively disappearing, the amount of brown in the terrestrial spectrum will increase significantly.
The ocean, as scientists suggest, will retain its blue palette.
Well, if humanity, God forbid, still by the hour X for one reason or another will die or fly away to other worlds, leaving everything acquired to the mercy of fate? Then nature will take some several thousand years for our planet to "run wild" again.
Cities will gradually collapse, dams and highways will overgrow, where people once lived, a dense forest will rustle or the steppe will spike with grass.
Of course, emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere will completely stop, the greenhouse effect will disappear, and after 25 thousand years a new ice age will begin on Earth. Europe, North America, Siberia with all traces of human civilization will be the first to be "buried" under a multi-kilometer layer of ice ...
Of course, we all hope that this will not happen, or - in extreme cases - for all the misfortunes of the Earth, humanity will be watching from a safe distance.
We will still have enough time to think about our behavior - the final death of the Earth, along with the entire solar system, is "postponed" by the seers for a completely incomprehensible to the human mind 8 billion years!
