This map depicts areas that would be inundated with a sea level rise of 1 meter. (Credit: CReSIS/Haskell Indian Nations University)
A new study published in the journal Climate Dynamics suggests global warming could cause sea level to rise up to three times higher in the next 100 years than predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change.
As part of the study, the researchers determined a relationship between global temperature and sea level dating back 2000 years, according to Aslak Grinsted, a geophysicist with the Centre for Ice and Climate at the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute. Using that relationship, they next predicted what might happen with three degrees C of warming. The answer: Sea level would rise from .9 to 1.3 meters by the year 2100. That amount of sea level rise could make adaptation challenging.
One possible area of uncertainty that journalists should probe: How robust are the temperature estimates used in the calculations? Determining temperatures going back 2,000 years is an inherently uncertain exercise, since actual thermometer records don’t extend that far back. The same question might be asked of the sea level records. So how precise might the relationship calculated by the scientists be? I haven’t interviewed them, so I don’t know. But it would be something that any journalist doing this story should ask.
For more information on the story, click here for an article on Eurekalert.org.
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Note that there are several other recent papers drawing the same basic conclusion (and all based on different methodologies). One was from INSTAAR folks IIRC. IMHO the consensus has pretty well settled at about a meter minimim for 2100. (Disclaimer: I’m not a scientist but have been following the field closely for about five years.)
Re your tweet about Santer, there’s some history to consider. Santer (and lots of other people) see something rather different than you may when they look at McIntyre.
Steve, the link you provided goes to a table of contents, and I can’t find a story mentioning Santer or McIntyre.
OK, this should work. The material I refer to is discussed in the latter part of the interview, although the whole thing is worth a read.
See also this.