Global melting of ice worse than thought
Sea levels expected to rise more than scientists at first believed
FRIDAY APRIL 28 2017
AREPORT by a leading research body monitoring the Arctic has found that previous projections of global sea level rise for the end of the century could be too low, thanks in part to the pace of ice loss of Arctic glaciers and the vast ice sheet of Greenland.
It’s just the latest in a string of cases in which scientists have published numbers that suggest a grimmer picture than the one presented in 2013 by an influential UN body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The new “Snow, Water, Ice and Permafrost in the Arctic” report presents minimum estimates for global sea level rise by the end of the century, but not a maximum. This reflects the fact that scientists keep uncovering new insights that force them to increase their sea level estimates further, said William Colgan, a glaciologist with the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, who contributed to the sea level rise section. “Because of emerging processes, especially related to the Greenland ice sheet and the Antarctic ice sheet, it now looks like the uncertainties are all biased positive,” Colgan said.
The assessment found that under a relatively moderate global-warming scenario – one that slightly exceeds the temperature targets contained in the Paris climate agreement – seas could be expected to rise “at least” 50 cm by the year 2100. Under a more extreme, “business as usual” warming scenario, meanwhile, the minimum rise would be 74cm.
The new findings were published this week as part of a broader overview report by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme, a working group of the intergovernmental Arctic Council, which unites eight Arctic nations, including the US, and six organisations representing the indigenous peoples of the Arctic.
It is the work of 90 scientists and 28 peer reviewers and is expected to be presented in Fairbanks, Alaska, next month at the next summit of Arctic political leaders.
The report bluntly contrasts its sea level findings with a previous 2013 report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which had put the “likely” low-end sea level rise number for these two scenarios at 32cm and 45cm for the period between 2081 and 2100. That global body – whose high end sea level rise number for the year 2100 was just shy of 1m – has often seen its assertions on sea level rise faulted by scientists for being too conservative.
“These estimates are almost double the minimum estimates made by the IPCC in 2013,” said the new Arctic Council report, which is dubbed a “Summary for Policymakers” because the technical report underpinning it has not yet been released.
Meanwhile, the melting glaciers of the Alaskan, Canadian and Russian Arctic are all steadily raising seas as well and could also see their contributions grow.
The report therefore estimates that 19cm to 25cm of sea level rise in this century will come from the Arctic alone, and that must be combined with the sea level rise contributed by Antarctica.
Because of the difference between the worst case and more moderate sea level rise scenarios, the report concludes that the Paris climate agreement could substantially reduce the global sea level rise seen by 2100, even though seas will still rise considerably under any scenario. – Washington Post