Scientists revised the 2013 conclusion and came to the conclusion that the level of the World Ocean will rise more significantly than previously thought.
An international team of researchers from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and the United States conducted a survey among climate experts, based on which they drew conclusions about the current rate of glacier melting. According to them, the level of the World Ocean by 2100 may rise by 178 centimeters. The work was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Climatologists are watching closely how anthropogenic-induced climate change is affecting glacier melt. For example, a recent large-scale study, which lasted from 1979 to 2017, clearly demonstrated that Antarctica is losing six times more mass today than 40 years ago. At the same time, researchers from the University of California, Irvine and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have collected data on Greenland's glaciers over the past 46 years and determined that glacier melting there has accelerated almost six times since the 80s.
In 2013, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its fifth report, highlighting the rate of temperature rise and related challenges. The authors of this study interviewed climate experts about the current state of the climate and asked them to explain their answers. At the same time, they held workshops to criticize and test the findings during the discussion.
The scientists compared the results obtained with the data of the fifth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The latter stated that in a worst-case scenario, temperatures would rise by 2 ° C by 2100, causing sea levels to rise from 26 to 81 centimeters. Now the forecast has worsened. The maximum temperature rise has risen to 5 ° C, and the level of the World Ocean will rise to a height of 51 to 178 centimeters. In this case, 1.8 million square kilometers will submerge under the water - an area that can accommodate Germany, France, Spain and Great Britain combined. Cities such as Shanghai, New York and London will be under the threat of flooding. An estimated 187 million people will be left homeless. Fertile regions such as the Nile Delta will be affected.
“We brought together eight of the 22 most competent experts on Antarctica and Greenland and combined their views on the future. Ice sheets are losing ice on an ever-increasing scale and we cannot rule out high sea-level rise, but it is worth noting that they are unlikely if we continue to follow the policies we are implementing to avoid such consequences,”said co-author Tamsin Edwards (Tamsin Edwards).
Earlier, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) conducted an ambitious study in which it analyzed how the anthropogenic factor affected our planet over the past half century. They demonstrated that human nature is being destroyed at an unprecedented rate.
Alexey Evglevsky
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