The melting of the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica is following the UN’s ‘worst case scenario’ for sea level rise and could add more than 40 centimeters to global oceans by 2100.
About a year ago, water and climate expert, president of climate and water security at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, Bob Sandford flew over Greenland at a time that he claimed was historically, both scientifically and climatically: the island recorded the highest amount of ice melt, about 11.3 billion tons, in a single day since the record began in the 1950s.
“It’s an understatement to say that what I saw really left me quite devastated,” Sandford said.
Bad news for everyone
Now, according to a recent study, led by Thomas Slater, a climate researcher at the Center for Polar Modeling and Observation at the University of Leeds, rapidly melting ice sheets in Greenland, along with ice sheets that are melt in Antarctica are mainly responsible for the rise in sea levels around the world. And the speed of the melt coincides with the worst climate warming scenario from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
In the work, published in the journal Nature Climate Change , the scientists found that the melting of Antarctica has raised global sea levels by 7.2 millimeters since the ice sheets were first monitored by satellite in the 1990s. 1990, while Greenland contributed another 10.6 millimeters. In addition to these giant glaciers, there are also many smaller glaciers around the world that are also melting and fueling sea level rise, threatening millions of people around the world with severe flooding every year.
In total, the world’s oceans are growing at a rate of 4 millimeters each year. If melting continues to increase at this rate, the ice sheets could raise sea levels by another 17 centimeters by the end of the century, exposing another 16 million people to flooding and coastal destruction.
The Arctic is warming 3 to 5 times faster than the world average
According to Sandford, the situation is accelerating so much that the scale of the record loss of ice melt in August 2019 had not been projected to happen until around 2070.
There are several reasons why projections appear to have underestimated sea level rise, experts say. For one thing, existing models do not take into account clouds and cloud formation, which help to modulate surface melt. In addition, many are ignorant of short-term weather events, which are also likely to change in the face of longer-term climate change.
What are the implications of this new data?
” It’s enough to double the frequency of storm surge flooding in many of the world’s largest coastal cities ,” said Anna Hogg, study co-author and climate researcher at the University of Leeds School of Soil and Environment.
If we are already at the worst-case scenario for sea level rise, it means that our guide to avoiding a climate crisis needs an overhaul. And urgent.
” The thaw is outpacing the climate models we use to guide us , and we are in danger of not being prepared for the risks posed by rising sea levels,” they conclude.
Referencia: Nature Climate Change
