Large cities in China and India are most exposed to the danger of rising sea levels in the coming decades, threatening both urban populations and the valuation of buildings and infrastructure.

Sea levels are widely expected to rise as a result of global warming, with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change saying that the seas are already rising by 3.6mm a year and that the acceleration of this rate will result in water levels rising by between 30cm and 110cm from current levels by 2100, depending on the path of global greenhouse gas emissions.

If the IPCC’s “high-emissions scenario” comes to pass — an assumption based on the fact that annual emissions are still rising and the cuts pledged thus far are too minimal to restrict the rise in global temperature to 2C above pre-industrial norms — large parts of several major cities are likely to be at risk of inundation, assuming that coastal defences cannot be strengthened enough to prevent it.