“Coastal communities that are adapting to and preparing for future sea level rise are largely adapting to the amount of sea level rise that has already occurred,” she said.
The United States’ ability to prepare for sea level rise is also profoundly threatened by the cuts to federal science agencies and staffing, Dutton said.
“The ice sheets won’t care what different political parties ‘believe’ about climate change,” she said.
“We switched on some new technology 30 years ago, and we discovered that the ice sheets are responding with a large amplitude and rather rapidly,” he said.
In some low-lying tropical regions around the equator, sea level is rising three times as fast as the global average.
According to a new study released this week, scientists warned that sea levels in some parts of the world may rise by as much as 8 to 12 inches every decade during the lifetime of today’s youngest generations, surpassing the capacity of many coastal communities to adapt.
According to research conducted by an international team of experts in sea level and polar ice, the Paris Climate Agreement’s target of 2 to 7° Fahrenheit (1 to 15° Celsius) above pre-industrial temperatures is insufficient to stop the worst-case melting of Earth’s polar ice sheets.
According to Chris Stokes, a geographer and glacier expert at Durham University and a co-author of the new paper, a more realistic goal for preserving a safe climate, at least in the long run, might be closer to 1-8° Fahrenheit.
According to him, “there have been a few highly publicized papers recently, including a synthesis in Nature looking at safe planetary boundaries.”. They argued that a goal of 1° Celsius is preferable. Additionally, a few other studies have been published that argue for a longer-term objective or a more stringent temperature limit. And the evidence seems to be mounting in favor of that. “.”.
He said that the argument is not new, pointing out that studies on climate change conducted before the first report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1990 had already emphasized the serious dangers of warming by more than 1° C.
We’re warming, according to those studies. The last thing we want is to go over 1°. We really don’t want our carbon dioxide levels to go above 350 parts per million,” he stated. because we are aware of the potential outcomes by examining previous warm periods and basic ice sheet mass balance calculations. We are now observing the issue thirty or forty years later. “”.
At a time when Earth’s average global temperature has surpassed the Paris Agreement target of 1 to 5 degrees Celsius of warming over pre-industrial levels almost every month for the past two years, scientists are calling for a more ambitious long-term climate goal. The concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased by 50% from pre-industrial levels to 430 parts per million.
The Paris Agreement has a review mechanism for the target, but failing to meet those goals doesn’t lessen its significance, according to Stokes. It’s crucial to determine how much the global temperature would need to drop over time to return to a safe range, even if it exceeds the 1 to 5° mark.
The new study combined measurements of the amount of ice being lost under the current level of warming, projections of the amount of ice that would be lost at different warming levels over the next few centuries, and evidence from previous warm periods that were similar to the present to examine how melting polar ice masses drive sea level rise.
Co-author Andrea Dutton, a geoscientist and sea level specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, stated that adaptation efforts by many coastal communities in the United States would probably be overtaken by sea level rise of several inches per decade.
“Coastal communities are adjusting to the amount of sea level rise that has already occurred and preparing for future sea level rise,” she said. According to the research, the rate of sea level rise will double in the coming decades, and in the best-case scenario, they are bracing for it at the current pace of a few millimeters annually, she added.
During the mid-Pliocene warm period, which occurred just over 3 million years ago, when the average global sea level rose 35 to 70 feet higher than it is today, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were last comparable to what they are today.
However, compared to previous periods in the geological record, the current rate of warming is significantly faster. Although the exact response of the ice sheets to warming at that rate is unknown, almost all recent research conducted in the last few decades has demonstrated that changes in the Arctic are occurring more quickly than anticipated.
The reductions in federal science agencies and staffing also pose a serious threat to the United States’ capacity to prepare for sea level rise, Dutton said.
She said in an email that the current reductions in scientific research, the withdrawal of funds already promised to communities through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the termination of the National Climate Assessment, which was required by Congress, and modifications to federal regulations on air pollution “collectively threaten our ability to project future sea level rise, to prepare our communities, and to mitigate climate change and stem the rate at which sea-level is rising.”.
Coastal communities are collaborating closely with many researchers, but these partnerships will fail as federal grants continue to be reduced, she said.
She asserted that the ice sheets will not give a damn about what various political parties “think” about climate change. Whether they like it or not, they are merely powerless against the effects of global warming. “.”.
Co-author Jonathan Bamber, a physicist at the University of Bristol who specializes in researching the interactions between Earth’s frozen regions and the rest of the climate system, stated that the mass of ice lost from the polar ice sheets has quadrupled since the 1990s and that they are currently losing about 370 billion metric tons of ice annually.
He claimed that after turning on some new technology thirty years ago, they found that the ice sheets were reacting quickly and with a significant amplitude. The extent of the ice sheet’s changes is far more extensive than models ever predicted, he said. It was somewhat of a surprise to the entire community. “”.
He said that only roughly half of the melting that has been seen over the last three decades was predicted by the majority of climate models. This implies that 350 parts per million of atmospheric carbon dioxide, or roughly 1° Celsius of warming, is the “safe operating zone for humanity.”.
“I believe we’ve been aware for a while that we’re dangerously altering the climate system,” he stated. One of our paper’s main goals is to show that the ice sheets, one component of the climate system, are currently exhibiting some extremely unsettling signals. “”.
A mere 3 feet of sea level rise would submerge 500 square miles of land in Belize City, which is home to roughly 65,000 people, making it one of the most vulnerable locations that is far from any melting ice sheets.
Sea levels in certain low-lying tropical areas near the equator are increasing three times faster than the global average. Because of the expanding water caused by warming and the ice sheets’ diminished gravitational pull as they melt, more water is able to move from the poles toward the equator.
“It rises higher than average at low latitudes,” Bamber stated. This is bad news for the Nile Delta, Bangladesh, India, and Vietnam. “”.
Regarding the new study, Ambassador Carlos Fuller, a longtime climate negotiator for Belize, stated that international policymakers must be more cognizant of the consequences of a 1 to 5° C temperature increase.
According to him, Belize’s largest city will be submerged at just one meter of sea level rise, even though the country has already moved its capital inland.
Findings like these only highlight the necessity of staying within the 1 to 5° Paris Agreement limit, or as close as feasible, Fuller stated, “so we can return to lower temperatures and protect our coastal cities.”.
Although ice sheets are the subject of the new study, Stokes of Durham University points out that new research indicates other Earth system components are already at or very close to irreversible tipping points on a timescale that is pertinent to human civilizations. Ocean acidification and modifications to freshwater systems are included in this.
According to him, “I believe someone used the analogy that it’s like you’re wandering around in a dark room.”. Although you are aware that a monster exists there, you are unsure of when you will run into it. That’s somewhat how these tipping points work. We’re not entirely sure where they are. We are aware that if we continue to warm, we will hit them, and we may have even crossed them. “”.
