One day it may be the only league table that matters – a ranking of UK universities by their height above sea level. This one from the archives caused some controversy when it first appeared and is no doubt even less relevant today.

Inspired by an original idea and initial outline by @plashingvole here is your climate change league table. Originally published some years ago on Wonkhe we’ve reviewed all the data just to make sure it is still up to date.

We present then a ranking of selected UK universities by their height above sea level. What this tells us is that many institutions are sitting pretty on high ground and will remain standing proud as rising sea levels begin to take their toll.

There are others though, and I’m sure we would we all be keen to see their risk registers, which are looking in a rather precarious position as the waves start to roll in.

So, where are the driest universities of the future?

Rank	Institution	Metres above sea level
1	Keele	186
2	Bath	183
3	Birmingham	140
4	Edinburgh	93
5	Exeter	92
6	Brighton	90
7	Warwick	86
8=	Leeds	82
8=	Durham	82
10	Bristol	77
11	Surrey	66
12=	Oxford	63
12=	Lancaster	63
14	Loughborough	50
15	Nottingham	45
16	Glasgow	38
17	St Andrews	24
18=	UEA	21
18=	LSE	21
20	Cumbria	20
21	York	15
22	Swansea	13
23=	Imperial College	12
23=	Cambridge	12
25	Southampton Solent	8.69
26	Portsmouth	6.71
27	Suffolk	4.32
28	Hull	1.89

All pretty definitive I am sure we can agree. At least that’s what I thought until I saw this from David Corney who really does seem to know what he is talking about. Having said that there does seem to be a fair bit of rounding going on in this later ranking which therefore means it lacks the spurious precision of the original. Which will end up dominating in the big heights above sea level ranking stakes? Who knows but one things for sure, very few care.

Going Global

Meanwhile, in a still nascent international ranking there are several universities which really do operate in a highly rarefied atmosphere:

La Paz University 3,857m
Tibet University, Lhasa 3,658m
Addis Ababa Institute of Technology 2,473m

No danger of getting wet feet there.

However, there are two universities in the Netherlands which are in a much riskier position. The University of Amsterdam is only 78cm above sea level. Scary.

And, in an even more precarious situation, we have Delft University which is, in fact, 48cm *below* sea level. There are a number of other areas around the world below sea level, from the Cambridgeshire Fens to Baku, and some Pacific and Indian Ocean islands which are very close to going below the waterline but I’ve yet to find any universities others than Delft which are actually below sea level.

Some food for thought for future job applications or institutional partnerships there.