Study sees sea levels rising by 2 meters
Print Edition
Global sea levels could rise by 2 meters and displace tens of millions of people by the end of the century, according to new projections that double the United Nations鈥 benchmark estimates.
The vast ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica contain enough frozen water to lift the world鈥檚 oceans dozens of meters. The expansion of water as oceans warm also contributes to rising in sea levels.
But predicting the rates at which they will melt as the planet heats is notoriously tricky.
The UN鈥檚 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in its 2013 Fifth Assessment Report that under current emissions trajectories 鈥 a business-as-usual scenario known as RCP8.5 鈥 sea levels would likely rise by up to 1 meter by 2100.
That prediction has since been viewed as conservative, as the levels of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise year on year and satellites showing accelerated rates of melt-off from massive ice sheets atop Antarctica and Greenland.
A group of the world鈥檚 top ice scientists this week released an expert judgement on the situation, drawing on their own experience and observations.
While there was still a significant margin of error, they found it 鈥減lausible鈥 that under the business-as-usual emissions scenario, sea-level rises could exceed 2 meters by 2100.
The authors said the area of land lost to the ocean could be equivalent to that of France, Germany, Spain and Britain combined and would displace more than 180 million people.
鈥淎 sea-level rise of this magnitude would clearly have profound consequences for humanity,鈥 they said.
The Paris climate deal, struck between nations in 2015, aims to limit global temperature rises to well below 2 degrees Celsius and encourages countries to work toward a 1.5-degree cap.
In October the IPCC released a landmark climate report that called for a drastic and immediate drawdown in coal, oil and gas consumption in order to arrest the rapid rise in the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. That report, however, did not include revised estimates of sea-level rise.
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