Rising sea levels due to climate change could damage hundreds of thousands of properties and millions of hectares of land along Australia’s coastline by 2100, according to a recent study. This could cost the country an economic loss of $855 billion, researchers estimate. To calculate the costs, researchers in Australia used existing projections of sea level rise and storm surges to map out the areas that could suffer flooding by 2100. Then they identified all the houses, properties, agricultural land, and other land and infrastructure in the vulnerable areas and used real estate sources to estimate their values and arrive at what their damage could cost. The analysis showed that by 2100, under a scenario where greenhouse gas emissions remain moderate, sea level rise and storm surges could damage roughly 268,000 properties and 2 million hectares (4.9 million acres) of land in Australia. That’s a present-value economic loss of $855.1 billion. Under a high-emissions scenario, nearly 720,000 properties and 3.7 million hectares (9.1 million acres) of Australian coastal properties could suffer damage, amounting to present-value losses of up to $1.91 trillion. “Sea level rise may physically affect a large number of Australians who live near the coast, as the majority of Australians live within 50 kilometres [31 miles] of the coastline,” Tom Kompas, study lead author and a professor of environmental economics and biosecurity at the University of Melbourne, said in a statement. Australia’s coastline is massive, extending roughly 34,000 kilometers (21,000 miles). The analysis found that every region of…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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