New research suggests many UNESCO World Heritage sites could be in danger as a result of climate change.
Some of these sites include the "Statue of Liberty in New York to the Tower of London or the Sydney Opera House," a Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) news release reported.
"The physical processes behind the global rise of the oceans are gradual, but they will continue for a very long time," climate scientist Ben Marzeion, said in the news release. "This will also impact the cultural world heritage."
The researchers used a computer model to look at "sea-level rise for each degree of global warming" and identified what spots were most at risk of destruction.
UNESCO's World Heritage List includes over 700 cultural monuments; the computer model showed that if the global temperature rises only one degree Celsius 40 of these sites will be in grave danger of water damage over the next 2000 years.
"One-hundred and Thirty-Six sites will be below sea-level in the long-run in that case if no protection measures are taken," Marzeion said. "The fact that tides and storm surges could already affect these cultural sites much earlier has not even been taken into account."
Some of these sites included the city centers of "Bruges, Naples, Istanbul and St. Petersburg and a number of sites in India and China," the news release reported.
"If large ice masses are melting and the water is dispersed throughout the oceans, this will also influence the Earth's gravitational field," Anders Levermann from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said in the news release. "Sea-level rise will therefore vary between regions."
"Our analysis shows how serious the long-term impacts for our cultural heritage will be if climate change is not mitigated," Levermann said. "The global average temperature has already increased by 0.8 degrees compared to pre-industrial levels. If our greenhouse-gas emissions increase as they have done in the past, physical models project a global warming of up to five degrees by the end of this century."
