Short-Lived Greenhouse Gases Cause Centuries of Sea-Level Rise

Through warming effects, methane and other gases impact rising seas long after leaving the atmosphere

Even if there comes a day when the world completely stops emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, coastal regions and island nations will continue to experience rising sea levels for centuries afterward, according to a new study by researchers at MIT and Simon Fraser University.

In a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers report that warming from short-lived compounds -- greenhouse gases such as methane, chlorofluorocarbons, or hydrofluorocarbons, that linger in the atmosphere for just a year to a few decades -- can cause sea levels to rise for hundreds of years after the pollutants have been cleared from the atmosphere.

"If you think of countries like Tuvalu, which are barely above sea level, the question that is looming is how much we can emit before they are doomed.  Are they already slated to go under, even if we stopped emitting everything tomorrow?" says co-author Susan Solomon, the Ellen Swallow Richards Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Science at MIT.  "It's all the more reason why it's important to understand how long climate changes will last, and how much more sea-level rise is already locked in.

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