HOW MUCH WILL THE SEA LEVEL RISE?

Posted on August 18, 2009 by Jeffrey Newman

Much study has been done lately on the planet’s ice including the immense ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica. The speed of melting and draining of the world’s ice reserves will determine the speed and amount of sea level rise. In its 2007 report the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecast a sea level rise of 19-59 centimeters by 2100 excluding the possibility of rapid dynamical changes in the ice flow.

Since then, a growing consensus of scientists have said that the IPCC estimates were wildly optimistic. Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany says that the sea level increase is more likely to be 10 meters. Eric Rignot of the University of California in Irvine sites new results that have been published since the 2007 report which shows that this is a very conservative estimate. Rignot studies ice sheets using satellite radar surveys and has found that the ice loss is increasing fast. Greenland is losing its ice more quickly than Antarctica but both are losing ice very quickly.

The models are inexact, which is more of a problem than previously thought. Scientists are searching for new ways to measure and model the progress of the melting. They are concerned about the most recent findings indicating a danger of collapse of gigantic masses of the ice—say the size of France. A section this large would be vulnerable and would melt more quickly. According to a 2005 report, a 1-meter rise in sea level would affect 13 million people in five European countries. The entire Atlantic seaboard of North America including New York, Boston and Washington D.C. would be more vulnerable to hurricanes.