Tagged: climate

Artist impression of the planet Venus in a remote future after terraforming, with oceans and continents, cloud patterns and an impressive ring system

The Rings of Venus

Terraforming is the modification of a planet in such a way that terrestrial life can thrive there. One should not underestimate such an enterprise. The terraforming of Venus or Mars is a huge project that will take centuries, if not millennia. But on which of our two neighboring planets is such a project the most promising? They both have their pros and cons, but on this page I mainly want to talk about Venus. Sister planet This closest planet in our solar system looks suspiciously like Earth, at first glance. With a diameter of 12,104 kilometers, Venus is only a… Read More

The Dry Earth: Reversed Terraforming

After terraforming Mars quite a few times, I’ve now done the reverse thing: martifying our own planet. What would Earth look like without a drop of water? When all lakes, seas and oceans suddenly disappeared? Our world would become a Pale Yellow Marble, a kind of cross-over between the Moon and Mars. Warming Exactly how much water is there on Earth? According to recent estimates, we’re talking about 1400 million cubic kilometers. That is a cube with sides of about 1,100 kilometers. The vast majority of that amount, 97 percent, is salt water. The other three percent consists of fresh… Read More

The Drowned Earth: a world map as it looks after the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica have melted, around 4000 AD

The Drowned Earth: 4000 AD, After The Thaw

What happens when all the polar ice melts? What would the world map look like after a maximum sea level rise? And how long does it take to get there? These are interesting questions now that climate change is – finally – on the political agenda. And as a cartographer, I could not resist the temptation to visualize the worst case scenario. Gravity When the Greenland ice sheet melts, the sea level rises 7 meters, when the ice melts in Antarctica it causes a rise of 58 meters. So together that makes 65 meters. But that is an average. Because… Read More