“This result is important because the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)†— the UN science advisory body — “makes a very conservative projection of total sea level rise by the end of the century,†at 60 to 90 centimeters (24 to 35 inches), said Peter Wadhams, a professor of ocean physics at the University of Oxford who did not take part in the research.
That estimate, he added, assumes that the rate at which ocean levels rise will remain constant.
“Yet there is convincing evidence — including accelerating losses of mass from Greenland and Antarctica — that the rate is actually increasing, and increasing exponentially.â€
Greenland alone contains enough frozen water to lift oceans by about seven meters (23 feet), though experts disagree on the global warming threshold for irreversible melting, and how long that would take once set in motion.
“Most scientists now expect total rise to be well over a meter by the end of the century,†Wadhams said.
The new study, published in Nature Climate Change, reconciles for the first time two distinct measurements of sea level rise.
The first looked one-by-one at three contributions: ocean expansion due to warming, changes in the amount of water stored on land, and loss of land-based ice from glaciers and ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.
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