Maddy,
The link that linlyons has provided is the best way to see how the world would look as the sea rises.
If there was a rise of 500 feet then 20 countries would be completely underwater, all of them are island nations with the exception of Qatar, Vatican City and Gambia.
There would be large parts of several countries that would be lost including the Baltic States (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia). The largest losses of land would occur in West Africa and Siberia.
If all the ice in the world were to melt then sea-levels would rise by 80.32 metres (263 feet), but for this to happen the world would need to warm up. This warming would also cause thermal expansion of the oceans.
If temperatures rose by 5°C then the oceans would rise a further 44.4m (146 feet), if they warmed by 10°C they would rise by a further 99.5m (326 feet).
This type of temperature change and ice-melt only ever occurs on time scales of millions of years.
If somehow the temperatures were to rise by 8°C or 9°C then this would be enough to melt most of the ice in the world, after about 6,000 years the oceans would have warmed significantly and expanded; these two factors combined would give you an approx 150m (500ft) sea-level rise.
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COMMENT: TO JIM
Good point about the Caspian and Salton Seas, you’d have thought they’d have realised these are unaffected by sea-level rise. It would take a massive 30 to 50m rise in sea-levels before the Black Sea started to overflow into the Caspian basin, and that’s not something that can happen for a very, very long time.
I opened Linlyons and couldn't help but notice that the Caspian Sea which is landlocked rose with sea level and then I went to the Salton Sea also laughably it also rose with sea level rise. You would think something like geology.com could get that right. I know for a fact that the ocean and Salton Sea aren't connected but I digress. It is an interesting illustration nonetheless but it clearly has bugs that need to be fixed. They don't go any more than 60m because that is the max possible and only after everything melted which would take considerably more warming than the recent warming and thousands of years.
Watch the movie waterworld with Kevin Costner, then you'd know. As of 4;00 pm Pacific Time Operation Saltwater Oceans has started. Object is to lower all the oceans to 1977 ocean levels, It'll take about 10 years and 4 continents plus my freshwater solution, Triple Output solution, Tree solution will be shared throughout our planet so everyone has freshwater and fish will be a plenty throughout earth, plus many other items like helping all economies at one time. Mike
If all the glaciers everywhere, including Antarctica melted, there would be about 200 feet of sea level rise. Here's a good simulation that goes to about 200'
http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/
500' would be considerably more serious.
On the other hand, Denver isn't called the mile high city for nothing.
There is only enough ice to raise sea level by about 230 feet
Since there is not that much water, frozen or otherwise, on the planet, this would assume a significant increase in the mass of the earth. Increasing the mass would depress the seafloor mitigating some of the sea level rise and pushing the upland areas where thrust plate boundaries exist. It would also slow the rotation of the planet and increase the gravitational attraction to the carefully balanced orbit of the moon. All of these would be very bad things for us trying to live on the planet.
b
I realize this will probably never happen. Hypothetically, if it did, how much of each country would there be left? What would the earth be like?
