Melting could make global sea level rise by up to 22 meters
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20 Mar 2012
- Published on Tuesday, 20 March 2012 19:25
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Future generations will see global sea levels rise 12 to 22 meters higher than today's levels even if global warming is limited to 2 degrees Celsius as recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, according to researchers from Rutgers University.
The researchers – led by Kenneth G. Miller, professor of earth and planetary sciences in the School of Arts and Sciences – studied rock and soil cores in Virginia, Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific and New Zealand and came up with the conclusion.
They looked at the late Pliocene epoch 2.7 million to 3.2 million years ago, the last time the carbon dioxide level was at its current level, and atmospheric temperatures were 2 degrees Celsius higher than they are now.
They found that, under those conditions, the difference in water volume released was equivalent to what one would get if the entire Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets plus some of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet melted.
"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," said H. Richard Lane, program director of the National Science Foundation's Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the work.
The researchers pointed out that this melting of the ice sheets, though, would take from centuries to a few thousand years.
"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."
The research highlights the sensitivity of the earth's great ice sheets to temperature change, suggesting that even a modest rise in temperature results in a large sea-level rise. – EcoSeed Staff
