Abrupt Sea Level Rise Looms as Increasingly Realistic Threat

Ninety-nine percent of the planet's freshwater ice is locked up in the Antarctic and Greenland ice caps.  Now, a growing number of studies are raising the possibility that as those ice sheets melt, sea levels could rise by six feet this century, and far higher in the next, flooding many of the world's populated coastal areas.

Last month in Greenland, more than a tenth of the ice sheet’s surface was melting in the unseasonably warm spring sun, smashing 2010’s record for a thaw so early in the year.  In the Antarctic, warm water licking at the base of the continent’s western ice sheet is, in effect, dissolving the cork that holds back the flow of glaciers into the sea; ice is now seeping like wine from a toppled bottle. 

The planet’s polar ice is melting fast, and recent satellite data, models, and fieldwork have left scientists sobered by the speed of the sea level rise we should expect over the coming decades. Although researchers have long projected that the planet’s biggest ice sheets and glaciers will wilt in the face of rising temperatures, estimates of the rate of that change keep going up.  When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) put out its last report in 2013, the consensus was for under a meter (3.3 feet) of sea level rise by 2100.  In just the last few years, at least one modeling study suggests we might need to double that. 

Eric Rignot at the University of California, Irvine says that study underscores the possible speed of ice sheet melt and collapse.  “Once these processes start to kick in,” he says, “they’re very fast.” 

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