Sea areas map

Use the window in the top left of the map frame to change the amount of sea level rise.

The map above shows areas of San Francisco, the Bay Area and the Sacramento Valley that would be flooded at various stages of sea level rise. You can select a value of sea level rise using the dropdown box in the upper left corner of the map. The navigation buttons can be used to zoom in/out and pan across the map.

The map clearly shows that a sea level rise of only a few meters would inundate hundreds of square miles of land. San Francisco Bay and San Pablo Bay would enlarge, covering industry, residences and infrastructure. More surprising would be the enormous area of flooding that would occur in the Sacramento Valley. Hundreds of square miles would be underwater there and the intrusion of this salt water would have major environmental impacts.

This map is not a carefully surveyed and extremely accurate presentation. It is intended to provide a visual impression of which geographic areas might be flooded if global warming and climate change continue unabated.

This sea level rise map was created by Alex Tingle of firetree.net using the Google Maps API, NASA data and lots of programming savvy. He explains how the map was created, the sea level data and issues about map accuracy here. We thank Alex for allowing us to share this map on Geology.com. Also thanks to Google and NASA for providing the resources needed to make this map.