'Mumbai at risk of being wiped out by rising seas'

India’s financial capital, Mumbai, is at the risk of being ‘wiped out’, new research has found. It also reinforced the fact the rising seas could affect three times more people by 2050 than previously thought.

The New York Times has reported that the “authors of a paper published on Tuesday developed a more accurate way of calculating land elevation based on satellite readings, a standard way of estimating the effects of sea-level rise over large areas, and found that the previous numbers were far too optimistic.

The research paper was produced by Climate Central, a science organization based in New Jersey, and published in the journal ‘Nature Communications’.

However, the projections don’t account for future population growth or land lost to coastal erosion.

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According to the new research, some 150 million people are now living on land that will be below the high-tide line by mid-century.

Much of India’s Financial Capital, Mumbai is at risk of being wiped out, the new projections suggest. Built on what was once a series of islands, the city’s historic downtown core is particularly vulnerable, it said.

The outlet quoted Dina Ionesco of the International Organization for Migration as saying that – Overall research shows, that countries should start preparing now for more citizens to relocate internally.

International Organization for Migration is an intergovernmental group that coordinates actions on migrations and development.

“We’ve been trying to ring the alarm bells. We know that it’s coming. There is a little modern precedent for this scale of population movement,” Ionesco was quoted as saying.

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