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Malti🌊 Sea Level Rise Simulation
Watch coastal flooding unfold as sea level rises — adjust the emissions scenario and target year to see thermal expansion and ice-melt contributions in real time.
This simulation models how rising sea levels gradually flood a coastal landscape. Choose an emissions scenario and a target year to see how thermal expansion of the ocean and melting land ice combine to raise the waterline — and watch low-lying land disappear beneath the water.
🔬 What It Demonstrates
Sea level rise is not a single process — it is the sum of thermal expansion (water expands as it warms) and land-ice melt (glaciers and ice sheets adding new water to the ocean), and the balance between them shifts as emissions and time increase.
🎮 How to Use
Pick a Low, Medium or High emissions scenario, then drag the year slider to any point between 2026 and 2150, or press Animate to watch the coastline flood automatically. The info bar reports the exact thermal vs. ice-melt split.
💡 Did You Know?
Ice-melt contributions accelerate over time because ice-sheet flow speeds up and floating ice shelves can collapse, while thermal expansion grows more steadily — so the High scenario's extra rise by 2150 comes disproportionately from ice loss.
About the Sea Level Rise Simulation
This simulation draws a simplified coastal cross-section — hills, valleys and a shoreline — and floods it as global sea level rises between 2026 and 2150. The rise is computed from two simplified physical processes: thermal expansion of ocean water as it absorbs heat, and land-ice melt runoff from glaciers, Greenland and Antarctica. Both contributions scale with the chosen emissions scenario (Low, Medium or High), and the ice-melt term accelerates over time to reflect how ice-sheet dynamics speed up under sustained warming.
The on-screen panel lets you pick a scenario, drag the year slider, and press Animate to watch the waterline climb smoothly across the century. The live info bar splits the total rise into its thermal-expansion and ice-melt components in centimetres, so you can see which process dominates under each scenario. The constants are tuned to give illustrative, order-of-magnitude-correct results — roughly 30–50 cm by 2150 under Low emissions, 60–90 cm under Medium, and 120–200 cm under High — rather than an exact IPCC-calibrated forecast.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does this simulation show?
It shows a coastal landscape being gradually flooded as sea level rises between 2026 and 2150. The water level responds to your chosen emissions scenario and target year, combining thermal expansion of the ocean and melting land ice into a single rising waterline.
What is thermal expansion, and why does it raise sea level?
Water expands slightly as it warms, a property called thermal expansion. Because the ocean has absorbed most of the extra heat trapped by greenhouse gases, that warming causes the existing seawater to occupy more volume, raising sea level even without adding a single extra drop of water.
Why does ice melt contribute separately from thermal expansion?
Melting glaciers, the Greenland ice sheet and the Antarctic ice sheet add water to the ocean that was previously locked up on land. This is a genuinely new source of ocean volume, distinct from the expansion of water already in the sea, so the simulation tracks it as a separate, accelerating contribution.
What do the Low, Medium and High emissions scenarios mean?
They represent different simplified futures for greenhouse gas emissions. Low assumes emissions fall quickly, limiting warming and ice loss; Medium assumes a gradual transition; High assumes emissions keep rising, which both accelerates ocean warming and speeds up ice-sheet melt, producing substantially more sea level rise by 2150.
What do the controls do?
The emissions scenario selector sets both the ocean-warming rate and the ice-melt acceleration; the year slider moves the simulation clock from 2026 to 2150; the animation speed slider controls how fast the Animate button sweeps through the years; and Reset restores all defaults.
Why does the ice-melt line curve upward instead of staying straight?
Ice-sheet loss is not a steady drip — as ice sheets warm, glaciers can flow faster and floating ice shelves that hold back land ice can weaken or collapse, releasing ice more quickly. The simulation models this with a term that grows faster than linearly with time, so the ice-melt contribution accelerates, especially under the High scenario.
Is the simulation physically accurate?
The two contributing processes, their relative growth patterns and the resulting orders of magnitude are realistic, but the constants are simplified for clarity rather than calibrated against a full climate model. Treat the numbers as illustrative estimates of plausible sea level rise, not as an official IPCC projection.
Watch coastal flooding unfold as sea level rises — adjust the emissions scenario and target year to see thermal expansion and ice-melt contributions in real time.
2D · HTML5 Canvas 2D · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install