The World's Largest Coalition of Nontheists and Nontheist Communities!

Oceans could rise 1.6 metres by 2100: study

Oceans could rise 1.6 metres by 2100: study

Warming in the Arctic occurring at twice the global average is on track to lift sea levels by up to 1.6 metres (5.3 feet) by 2100, a far steeper jump than predicted a few years ago, a consortium of scientists reported Tuesday.

Melting ice and snow has accounted for 40 percent of recent increases in ocean levels and are likely to play an even larger role in future, according to the Oslo-based Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Project (AMAP).

"Global sea level is projected to rise 0.9 to 1.6 metres (3.0 to 5.3 feet) by 2100, and the loss from Arctic glaciers, ice caps and the Greenland Ice Sheet will make a substantial contribution to this," AMAP said in a report.

Even the low end of this range would have devastating consequences for coastal cities and densely-populated, low-lying deltas in Bangladesh, Vietnam, China and many other countries, scientists have warned.

Higher seas would literally cover some small island nations, ruin vast expanses of land used to grow food, and boost the intensity of deadly hurricanes and other extreme weather events.

Read the rest on RawStory.com.

Tags: anthropogenic climate change, arctic, fresh water, ice, oceans

0 members like this

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ruth Anthony-Gardner on March 20, 2012 at 2:21pm

Global Sea Level Likely to Rise as Much as 70 Feet for Future Gener...

Even if humankind manages to limit global warming to 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F),..., future generations will have to deal with sea levels 12 to 22 meters (40 to 70 feet) higher than at present, according to research published in the journal Geology.

...this research highlights the sensitivity of Earth's great ice sheets to temperature change, suggesting that even a modest rise in temperature results in a large sea-level rise. "The natural state of the Earth with present carbon dioxide levels is one with sea levels about 20 meters higher than at present,"...

"Such a rise of the modern oceans would swamp the world's coasts and affect as much as 70 percent of the world's population."

"The current trajectory for the 21st century global rise of sea level is 2 to 3 feet (0.8 to1 meter) due to warming of the oceans, partial melting of mountain glaciers, and partial melting of Greenland and Antarctica."... [emphasis mine]

So while it won't happen overnight, this surge in ocean depth will happen.

Permalink Reply by Ruth Anthony-Gardner on October 2, 2012 at 12:01pm

New research states no hope in preventing sea level rise

The predicted sea level rise that Dallas reported 18 months ago now sounds rosy.

More precise predictions of sea level changes published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, the Institute of Physics journal, on October 1, 2012, are the first to predict sea levels rise due to climate change that included all potential sources of added fresh water to the world's oceans.

Even if the entire world adopted the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) emissions scenario that appears to be most accepted across the globe, sea levels will rise 22 feet by the year 3000.

The researchers from Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Manchester Metropolitan University and the Université catholique de Louvain are the first climate scientists to admit the inevitability of sea level rise at an ever accelerating rate to due the intransigence of most countries in adopting any form of emissions containment that might make a difference and the impossibility of even the most austere emissions measure to reverse an inevitable result. [emphasis mine]

Permalink Reply by Ruth Anthony-Gardner on October 3, 2012 at 2:49pm

Here's the chart from that research, showing the sea level rise to which we are already committed, if we emitted zero CO2 from today on. To this baseline add on top the results of all of the current and future emissions of CO2 and manmade greenhouse gases, plus methane outgassing from melting permafrost, undersea methane deposits, fracking, swamps, dam discharges, etc to get actual future sea level rise.

Source