Lakhs of residents in Odisha’s coastal districts are going to be at a risk due to the rising sea level.

A study by the New Jersey-based science organisation Climate Central says West Bengal and coastal Odisha may be particularly vulnerable to floods by the year 2050. Odisha’s six districts -- Ganjam, Puri, Jagatsinghpur, Kendrapada, Bhadrak and Baleswar -- would be affected by chronic floods, it warns.

The rising seawater levels are likely to place certain metropolises of the country like Mumbai in the flood-risk zone, thereby affecting 36 million people by 2050. The affected population would be about 31 million more than what was earlier understood.

The research findings are based on a new digital elevation model called CoastalDEM which shows that many of the world’s coastlines are far lower than what has been generally thought and the increasing sea levels may affect hundreds of millions of more people in the decades to come than previously contemplated. The findings are published in the journal ‘Nature Communications’.

The risk is particularly posed for coastal Asia having profound economic and political consequences within the lifetimes of people alive today. The rising sea levels are a result of heat-trapping pollution arising out of human activities.

Six countries, China, Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand, together, account for roughly 75 per cent of the 300 million people on land facing the risk by 2050.

The global sea levels are projected to increase by about 2 feet and 7 feet, and maybe more. By 2100, the land now resided by 200 million people is likely to be below the high tide line permanently. Remedial measures like construction of levees and other defences or habitats’ relocation to higher ground may reduce the threats.

The study says the estimates of future economic losses from the rising sea level depend on the amount of climate pollution and projected subsequent rise and other factors like future population growth, innovation and migration.