Coastal areas currently home to 300 million people will be vulnerable by 2050 to flooding made worse by climate change, no matter how aggressively humanity curbs carbon emissions, scientists said Tuesday.
By mid-century and beyond, however, choices made today will determine whether Earth's coastlines remain recognisable to future generations, they reported in the journal Nature Communications.
Destructive storm surges fuelled by increasingly powerful cyclones and rising seas will hit Asia hardest, according to the study.
More than two-thirds of the populations at risk are in China, Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand.
Using a form of artificial intelligence known as neural networks, the new research corrects ground elevation data that has up to now vastly underestimated the extent to which coastal zones are subject to flooding during high tide or major storms.
"Sea-level projections have not changed," co-author Ben Strauss, chief scientist and CEO of Climate Central, a US-based non-profit research group, told AFP.
"But when we use our new elevation data, we find far more people living in vulnerable areas that we previously understood."
"As the tideline rises higher than the ground people call home, nations will increasingly confront questions about whether, how much and how long coastal defences can protect them."
"Sea level rise is not a slow onset problem -- it's a crisis of extreme weather events."
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