PBS Terra asks 'What Will Our World Look Like at 4 Degrees?'

Change of plans — instead of a driving update, I'm following up on PBS examines 'THE RISKIEST Places to Live in the US as Our Climate Changes' with a longer term look as PBS Terra asks What Will Our World Look Like at 4 Degrees?
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Hurricane Helene and Milton are painful reminders that our oceans are changing. Warmer ocean waters are acting on higher sea levels, causing catastrophic damage to our coastal communities. And what’s scarier is that the sea level rise we’ve witnessed over the past 30 years is nothing compared to what we’ll see in our lifetimes.

In this episode, we take a peek at brand-new flood imagery created by Climate Central’s FloodVision team - imagery that shows just what our coastal communities will look like in 2050, 2100 and beyond. And we’ll uncover detailed maps showing just what our coastlines will look like as the seas rise. So stay tuned to see if your home is on these maps, and what we can do to lessen the impacts in the future.

Weathered is a show hosted by weather expert Maiya May and produced by Balance Media that helps explain the most common natural disasters, what causes them, how they’re changing, and what we can do to prepare.

These models are going back to the Sangamonian Interglacial, which was warmer than the Holocene with higher sea levels to match, but did not have as much carbon dioxide as today's atmosphere. We have to go back 3.6 million years ago to the Pliocene for carbon dioxide levels like today's. As I wrote in 2021, "That was so long ago, terror birds and hyenas roamed North America." Sea levels were even higher then than during the Sangamonian, so in the long term, Maiya May and the experts she's interviewing may not be pessimistic enough. Worse yet, carbon dioxide levels are on the verge of passing the high estimates for the Pliocene and are heading to Miocene levels. Welcome to the 400 ppm world.

Stay tuned for the driving update tomorrow.