NASA Develops Tool To Predict Cities That Face Flood Threat

Global warming has triggered the melting of ice sheets in different parts of the Poles of the Earth. Now, NASA has developed a tool that can predict the cities that face a threat of flooding due to the melting glaciers. The tool takes into account the  Earth's spin and gravitational effects to predict how water will be "redistributed" globally.  Researchers said that this provides a picture of glaciers, ice sheets, and ice caps that are of specific importance.  Erik Ivins, senior scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the US said that while cities and countries are devising steps to mitigate flooding, they should look 100 years into the future and assess risks just like the insurance companies. According to the study published in the journal Science Advances, three key processes influenced "the sea-level fingerprint," the pattern of sea-level change around the world. The three factors are - gravity,  "push-pull influence" of ice, and the rotation of the planet itself. The tool helps to compute the exact sensitivity - for a specific town - of a sea level to every ice mass in the world. It renders a way for governments to decide which ice sheets they must be worried about and work on them. The tool has suggested that changes in the north-western part of the Greenland ice sheet can considerably increase the sea level in London. Researchers said,  for New York, the area of concern is the ice sheet's entire northern and eastern portions.