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- Facebook’s office may be fully underwater by 2100, based on worst-case scenario sea level rise projections.
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- Shayanne Gal/ Business Insider
The world’s oceans are rapidly rising as waters warm and ice sheets melt. Coastal locations, like the San Francisco Bay Area, will be among the hardest hit by the rising tide.
Beyond sea level rise, San Francisco is slowly sinking at a rate of up to 10 millimeters per year in a process called subsidence.
All this incoming water will have devastating consequences for the area, where pricey real estate developments and clusters of billion-dollar tech companies may be forced to relocate.
Research group Climate Central has created a plug-in for Google Earth that illustrates how catastrophic an “extreme” sea-level rise scenario would be if the flooding happened now, based on projections in a 2017 report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA).
The group’s estimates are based on the worst-case scenario forecasting from NOAA’s data, and it puts into perspective how dangerous the situation could get for San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and the Greater Bay Area.
While Apple’s brand-new office in Cupertino will be safe, companies based in Menlo Park, like Facebook, will be totally inundated (assuming these companies stay in the same place for the next several decades).
Check out below which tech companies could have their offices flooded if climate change continues unabated.
Here’s San Francisco today.
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- Google Earth
And here’s what the city’s core may look like by 2100, if the worst-case scenario sea level rise pans out.
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- Climate Central
Linkedin’s San Francisco office is just at the edge of the predicted flood plain, while Square and Twitter look safe — for now.
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- Climate Central
Here’s what Facebook’s Menlo Park campus — just south of San Francisco — looks like now.
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- Google Earth
It’ll be totally flooded by the end of the century, based on Climate Central’s worst-case scenario map.
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- Facebook NOAA 100 year
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- Climate Central
As if the social media giant didn’t have enough problems on its hands already.
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- Climate Central
Yahoo, in Sunnyvale, won’t fare any better than Facebook.
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- Google Earth
Yahoo’s headquarters and surrounding neighborhood are set to be inundated by 2100.
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- Climate Central
Here’s eBay’s office today.
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- Google Earth
It may become a beach-front office by the end of the century.
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- Climate Central
San Francisco’s airport, and the surrounding area, are low-lying and prone to flooding.
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- Google Earth
Good luck flying in and out of SFO in 2100.
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- Climate Central
Apple’s campus, the big ring in the center of the photo, will stay high and dry.
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- Google Earth
Many San Jose-based companies, like Adobe, are further removed from the coast and will be less affected by the rising tide.
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- Google Earth
New Yorkers, don’t get on your high horse. Manhattan is an island, after all.
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- Google Earth
The city’s buzzing Financial District, including Business Insider’s own office and Spotify’s new headquarters, are set to get much wetter by the end of the century.
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- Climate Central