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If humans Continue emitting greenhouse gases At current speeds, world sea levels could rise by 15 inches (38 centimeters) by 2100, scientists have found in a new study.
Greenhouse gases emitted by human activities, such as carbon dioxide, contribute significantly. Climate change And global warming, studies continue to show. As things heat up, the ice in Greenland and Antarctica will melt. A new study by an international team of more than 60 ice, ocean and meteorologists is assessing how much these melting glaciers contribute to global sea levels.
“One of the biggest uncertainties about how much sea level will rise in the future is how much ice will contribute,” said Sophie Noviki, project leader and ice scientist, now at Buffalo University and formerly NASA’s Goddard spacecraft based in Maryland. Said in a statement. “How much ice contributes depends on what the weather really does.”
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The results of this study show that if human greenhouse gas emissions continue at current speeds, the melting glaciers of Greenland and Antarctica will contribute 15 inches (28 centimeters) to world sea levels. This new study is part of the NASA Goddard-led Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison Project (ISMIP6).
The ISMIP 6 team explored how sea levels will rise between 2015 and 2100, and explored how sea levels will change in a variety of carbon-emitting scenarios.
They found that as more emissions expanded (as we see now) over this period, Greenland’s melting ice would contribute about 3.5 inches (9 cm) to global sea level rise. With low emissions, that number is estimated to be about 1.3 (3 cm).
It is even more difficult to predict ice loss in Antarctica because, as ice sheets continue to erode in the western part of the continent, eastern Antarctica may actually gain mass as temperatures rise due to increased snowfall. Due to this, the team found a large amount of ice sheet loss here.
The team determined that ice loss in Antarctica could raise sea levels by 12 (30 cm), leading to a 7.1-inch (18 cm) sea level rise in Western Antarctica by 2100.
It should be clear, however, that this increase in global sea levels is only a forecast for 2015 to 2100 years, so they are not the cause of the significant ice loss that has already occurred between pre-industrial and modern day.
“The Amundsen Sea area in western Antarctica and the Wilkes Land in eastern Antarctica are very sensitive to warming sea temperatures and changing currents, and they will continue to lose large amounts of ice,” said Helen Cerosi, ice scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Who led the Antarctic ice model in the IP6 project, said in the same statement.
“With these new results, we can focus our efforts in the right direction and learn what needs to be done to continue to improve projects,” Serosi said.
These results are consistent Estimates made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), its 2019 special report on the oceans and cryosphere shows that melting glaciers will contribute to one-third of global sea level rise.
According to the 2019 IPCC Report, the melting of ice in Greenland will contribute to 3.1 to 10.6 inches (8 to 27 cm) of global sea level rise between 2000 and 2100. For Antarctica, the report estimates that melting ice sheets will add 1.2 to 11 inches (3 to 28 cm).
The results of this new work will help to inform the next IPCC report, the sixth overall information is scheduled for release in 2022, according to the same report.
“The strength of ISMIP6 is that it brings together most of the ice sheet modeling groups around the world and then integrates with other communities of marine and atmospheric models to better understand what happens to ice,” said Haiko Coelser, now based in Norway. A scientist at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands at the Norwegian Research Center said in a similar report.
“It led to six-year workshops and telecommunications conferences with scientists around the world working on ice sheet, atmosphere and marine modeling to create a community where our sea level rise forecasts can ultimately be improved,” said Noviki, who led Greenland. Snow Sheet ISMIP6 Project. “The reason this works is because the polar community is so small that we are all very interested in getting this problem right at sea level in the future. We need to know these numbers.”
This was work Released September 17th In the special issue of Cryosphere magazine.
Email Chelsea Cohd at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter pSpacedotcom and Facebook
