“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.
Researchers cautioned in a new study released this week that sea levels in some regions 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 adjust.
According to research conducted by a global 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.
The new paper’s co-author, Chris Stokes, a geographer and glacier expert from Durham University, suggested that a more realistic goal for preserving a safe climate, at least in the long run, might be closer to 1-8° Fahrenheit.
“Recently, there have been a few highly publicized papers, such as a synthesis in Nature that examined safe planetary boundaries,” he stated. They argued that aiming for 1° Celsius is preferable. A few other papers have also surfaced that argue for a longer-term objective or a more stringent temperature limit. And I believe that the evidence is growing in support of that. “”.
He stated 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.
According to those studies, we are warming. It is imperative that we avoid exceeding 1°. The carbon dioxide level should not be higher than 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. And, you know, we are now observing the issue thirty or forty years later. “.”.
Just as 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.
By combining data from similar warm periods in the past, measurements of the amount of ice being lost under the current level of warming, and predictions of the amount of ice that would be lost at various warming levels over the coming centuries, the new study concentrated on how melting polar ice masses drive sea level rise.
According to co-author Andrea Dutton, a geoscientist and sea level specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, adaptation efforts by many coastal communities in the US would probably be overwhelmed 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. “At the current rate of a few millimeters per year, they are preparing for sea level rise at the best-case scenario,” she continued, adding that the research indicates that rate will double within decades.
Just over 3 million years ago, during the mid-Pliocene warm period, when the average global sea level rose 35 to 70 feet higher than it is today, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were last comparable to what they are today.
But compared to other periods in the geological record, the current rate of warming is much faster. It’s unclear how the ice sheets will react to warming at that rate, but almost all recent research over the last few decades has demonstrated that changes in the Arctic are occurring more quickly than anticipated.
The cuts to 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.”.
“A lot of researchers are collaborating closely with coastal communities, but these partnerships will fail as federal grants continue to be cut,” she said.
“What various political parties ‘believe’ about climate change won’t matter to the ice sheets,” she stated. Whether they like it or not, they are merely powerless against the effects of warming temperatures. “”.
The polar ice sheets are currently losing about 370 billion metric tons of ice annually, quadrupling in mass since the 1990s, according to co-author Jonathan Bamber, a physicist at the University of Bristol who specializes in the study of the interactions between Earth’s frozen regions and the rest of the climate system.
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. He pointed out that the magnitude of the ice sheet’s changes is far larger than models had ever predicted. The entire community was somewhat taken aback by that. “.”.
According to him, the majority of climate models from the previous three decades only predicted roughly half of the melting that has been seen in that time. Accordingly, the “safe operating zone for humanity is about 350 ppm” of atmospheric carbon dioxide, or roughly 1° C of warming.
“I think we’ve known for a long time that we’re causing very dangerous interference with the climate system,” he said. Our paper’s main goal is to show that the ice sheets, one component of the climate system, are currently exhibiting some extremely unsettling signals. “.”.
Some of the most vulnerable locations are located far from any ice sheets that are melting, such as Belize City, which has a population of roughly 65,000 and would be submerged by 500 square miles of land in just 3 feet of sea level rise.
Sea level is increasing three times faster than the global average in certain low-lying tropical areas near the equator. 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 more than the average at low latitudes,” Bamber stated. It’s bad news for the Nile Delta, Bangladesh, India, and Vietnam. “.”.
Ambassador Carlos Fuller, a longtime climate negotiator for Belize, said the new study should raise awareness among international policymakers about the consequences of a 1 to 5° C temperature increase.
The largest city in Belize will be submerged at just one meter of sea level rise, he said, although the country’s capital has already moved inland.
“Results like these only highlight the necessity of staying within the 1 to 5° Paris Agreement limit, or as close as feasible, so we can return to lower temperatures and safeguard our coastal cities,” Fuller stated.
Even though the new study focuses on ice sheets, Stokes of Durham University points out that new research indicates other parts of the Earth system are already at or very close to irreversible tipping points on a timescale that is relevant to human civilizations. Ocean acidification and freshwater system alterations are included in this.
“I believe that someone compared it to stumbling around in a pitch-black room,” he remarked. You are aware that a monster exists there, but you are unsure of when you will run into it. With these tips, it’s somewhat similar. 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. “”.
