Dozens of famous European landmarks could sink below sea-level if global temperatures rise by more than 1.5°C, new visualisations show.

Iconic sites like Buckingham Palace, Barcelona Cathedral and – ironically – the venue for COP26 in Glasgow could be submerged in hundreds of years due to decisions made this century.

The bleak visuals of besieged architecture are only the tip of the iceberg globally. New data from nonprofit Climate Central shows that roughly 10 per cent of the world’s population, over 800 million people, live on land which will be lost if current carbon emissions trends continue.

Using cutting-edge global elevation and population data, the scientists applied different scenarios of warming to see where communities are most vulnerable within the next 200 to 2,000 years.

Fifty major cities, mostly in Asia, would need to mount “globally unprecedented defenses” to survive, they found, while many small island nations face near-total loss of their land.

Climate Central’s new research was released just weeks before COP26 – widely viewed as the world’s “best last chance” to halt runaway climate change.

“The decisions that we […]