Many UNESCO cultural world heritage sites are located near the coasts and therefore threatened by warming-induced sea-level rise. To preserve them for the benefit of as many future generations as possible, impacts on cultural sites should be analysed over a very long time period.
With spatially resolved sea-level estimates over the next 2,000 years and high-resolution topography data, Ben Marzeion of the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and Anders Levermann of Potsdam University, Germany, identified the cultural sites that will be affected by sea-level rise under different global mean temperature levels. If the current temperature level is sustained over the period considered, 40 of the 720 UNESCO sites are likely to be affected, whereas a temperature rise of 3 °C would bring the number up to 136. The researchers warn that, given uncertainties in the analysis, the results are more likely to be an underestimation of the impacts of sea-level rise rather than an overestimation.
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Contestabile, M. Cultural world heritage at risk. Nature Clim Change 4, 243 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2189
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2189
