Seas may rise 6 metres even if govts curb warming

“That is a fundamental question that we are trying to get at by looking at the past records”. Scientists are still struggling to find a clear answer to it.

The Science review is part of the larger Past Global Changes, or PAGES, worldwide science team.

The planet’s other major cache of land ice is Greenland.

“We’re going to reach temperatures we had in the past periods in the next couple decades”. The study has also pointed that the current trending of global warming continues, similar incident will occur across the globe.

“Studies have shown that both the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets contributed significantly to this sea level rise above modern levels”, said the researchers.

At the present time the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheet are only pushing sea levels up millimeters or so every year, but the worry is the amount of ice they contain. Losing them would send ice tumbling to the sea and, after it melted, lapping up against the shorelines around the world.

Thousands of these superglacial lakes form on the the Greenland Ice Sheet during the summer.

So which past periods are a good guide to the present in this respect?

So what did these eras look like? Tokyo and Singapore also have been singled out as extremely vulnerable to sea level rise. Using observations from the geologic record, supported by computer modeling, they found that during past periods with average temperatures 1 to 3 °C (1.8 to 5.4 °F) warmer than preindustrial levels, sea level peaked at least 20 feet higher than today.

Andrea Dutton surveying the position of modern sea level at Anse Source d’Argent, La Digue, Seychelles. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were around or below 300 parts per million. And those results don’t bode well for the world’s coastlines as they showed that sea levels were up to 42 feet higher than the present.

So what should one make of these, er, comparables to humanity’s current home?

He added that maybe it would take many centuries to a few millennia to witness the full impact of melting ice sheets. “What is not as certain is the time frame, which is less well-constrained. We used to think it was centuries”, she said. Global average temperatures have already risen nearly 1.8°F (1ºC) since the 1880s.

Scientists argue that current Carbon dioxide levels match those 3 million years ago, so we should expect a 20-foot sea level rise.

Much like Rahmstorf, Dutton agreed that we’re not committed to 6 meters yet. “Accurate estimates of past sea-level variability provide a context for such projections”, said Horton.

“Scenarios of future rise are dependent upon understanding the response of sea level to climate changes”. But is it a problem that we can even remedy?