Stunning maps show what major cities would look like under hundreds of feet of water
The US Geological Survey estimates that if all the world's glaciers melted, sea level would rise by about 80 meters, or more than 260 feet. This scenario could be thousands of years in the future, but it would render many of the world's best-loved coastal cities unrecognizable.
Jeffrey Linn, a Seattle man with a background in geography and urban planning, has created a series of maps of major US cities based on this doomsday scenario. He used actual geographic data from the areas to make the maps as realistic as possible.
Linn says his interest in the subject was sparked by the book "Always Coming Home," by Ursula Le Guin.
"The novel is sort of a future anthropology of California's Napa Valley, and in it she looks into the future and sees the California Central Valley flooded by sea-level rise," Linn says. "Since then, I would often think about what would the world around us would look like once all the ice caps melted."
While this extreme amount of sea-level rise isn't expected to happen for millennia, Linn's cheeky names for the potential new landforms and bodies of water that emerge in his maps give often humorous insight into life in the cities of the future.
Linn has mapped eight US cities so far, and is currently working on mapping several locations in the UK. His maps, along with more information, can be viewed on his website. We've put together a slideshow of some of his work here.