{"id":182809,"date":"2025-06-14T03:54:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-14T03:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/182809\/"},"modified":"2025-06-14T03:54:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-14T03:54:10","slug":"new-climate-study-highlights-dire-sea-level-warnings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/182809\/","title":{"rendered":"New Climate Study Highlights Dire Sea Level Warnings"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new set of detailed clues gleaned from ancient fossil reefs on the Seychelle Islands shows an increasing likelihood that human-caused warming will raise the global average sea level at least 3 feet by 2100, at the high end of the projections<\/a> by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Due to regional variations, sea level would rise twice that much<\/a> in some tropical areas, causing misery for millions of people living in low-lying coastal zones, including islands like the Maldives, in the Indian Ocean, which would be completely swamped by 6 feet of sea level rise.<\/p>\n

University of Wisconsin-Madison climate scientist Andrea Dutton<\/a>, one of the authors of the paper<\/a> published today in Science Advances, said experts in this field know that there\u2019s a much higher possibility that sea level will exceed projections, rather than fall short. Nearly every study published in the last 20 years suggests that large tracts of ice in Antarctica and Greenland will melt at the current level of warming, she added.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe used to think those ice sheets were too big to be influenced by small amounts of warming,\u201d she said \u201cBut everything we\u2019re learning from the paleoclimate record, and with modern observations, is telling us, oh no, we\u2019re waking up what we thought were sleeping giants. This is not good news for us as we head into the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The fossilized reefs that Dutton and the other scientists studied lived about 120,000 years ago and were shallow-water species growing near the surface of the ocean in similar combinations to today. The global average temperature was similar to now, but sea levels were 16 feet to 33 feet higher.<\/p>\n

By determining the ages of two dozen fossil corals from various elevations on the islands and analyzing the sediments around the fossils, the team was able to precisely confirm the timing of peak global sea level to between 122,000 and 123,000 years ago. They also found that sea level rose sharply in three distinct pulses in the 6,000 years leading up to the peak.<\/p>\n

Dutton said identifying those swings was crucial, especially in connection with atmospheric data from bubbles trapped in ice cores about the same time, because they point to times when the polar ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica were changing rapidly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During the Last Interglacial\u2014the warmest time between the last two ice ages\u2014the climate changes were driven by Earth\u2019s orbital changes, with different effects on the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. The swings in sea level rise \u201csuggest the polar ice sheets were growing and shrinking out of phase with each other as a result of temperature changes in the two hemispheres that were also not aligned,\u201d Dutton said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

As human activity warms our planet, the ocean absorbs over 90 percent of the excess heat. This increases water volume and melts ice sheets and glaciers, contributing to sea level rise. This video, published in January 2020, shows how much the global sea level has been rising each year (the rate has increased to 4.5 mm per\u00a0year as of 2024). Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech<\/p>\n

Despite the differences between the polar regions, global sea level was \u201cat least several meters higher than present during this past warm period,\u201d she said. \u201cIf temperature rises simultaneously in both hemispheres as it is today, then we can expect future sea level rise to be even greater than it was back then.\u201d<\/p>\n

The evidence they uncovered from the fossil reef also suggests that the varying hemispheric responses also had the effect of masking the true extent of Antarctica\u2019s contribution, via melting ice, to sea level rise during the Last Interglacial. And that, Dutton said, means we could be underestimating how much of Antarctica\u2019s ice will melt from the heating that humans have already caused in the last 100 years.<\/p>\n

No In-Between<\/strong><\/p>\n

Several other recent international research efforts with U.S. participation have included similar warnings, including a May study<\/a> showing that the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above the pre-industrial level isn\u2019t ambitious enough<\/a> to save polar ice sheets and stave off sea level rise of three feet or more by the end of this century.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Those findings were affirmed in early June, when the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research<\/a> (PIK) announced a study<\/a> showing that human-caused warming has already brought the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to the brink of collapse, which would devastate many coastal areas with more than 12 feet of sea level rise over the course of several hundred years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That research showed that, for the last 80,000 years, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet basically has had a temperature-driven on and off switch\u2014either it\u2019s there or it\u2019s not, said\u00a0 lead author David Chandler, with the Norwegian Research Center NORCE<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce a tipping has been triggered it is self-sustaining and seems very unlikely to be stopped before contributing to about four meters of sea-level rise. And this would be practically irreversible,\u201d Chandler said.<\/p>\n

Co-author Torsten Albrecht<\/a>, a senior ice dynamics researcher at PIK, said there is mounting proxy climate evidence, from marine fossils and other sources, that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet did indeed collapse during perhaps several of the interglacial periods during the past 800,000 years, but that it\u2019s still inconclusive.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But all the evidence has to be considered together, like a 2020 study that modeled a very steady warming rate that enabled researchers to separate human-caused warming from natural variations. In that smoothed line, the tipping points became clear.<\/p>\n

There are no steady states in reality, but using that approach helps understand the system, and then, he said, \u201cYou can really find the\u00a0 threshold where a little bit extra warming tips the system into a different state, and this happens very clearly in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ice sheet can persist within a certain temperature range, but, he said, \u201cIf you add a little bit more of warming, the whole process of self-amplification kicks in, and you end up with a collapsed state.\u201d<\/p>\n

The speed of change caused by human activities like burning fossil fuels is astounding, added co-author Julius Garbe, also a climate researcher at PIK.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt takes tens of thousands of years for an ice sheet to grow, but just decades to destabilize it by burning fossil fuels,\u201d he said. \u201cNow we only have a narrow window to act.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tAbout This Story<\/p>\n

Perhaps you noticed: This story, like all the news we publish, is free to read. That\u2019s because Inside Climate News is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. We do not charge a subscription fee, lock our news behind a paywall, or clutter our website with ads. We make our news on climate and the environment freely available to you and anyone who wants it.<\/p>\n

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Two of us launched ICN in 2007. Six years later we earned a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, and now we run the oldest and largest dedicated climate newsroom in the nation. We tell the story in all its complexity. We hold polluters accountable. We expose environmental injustice. We debunk misinformation. We scrutinize solutions and inspire action.<\/p>\n

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Thank you,<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tBob Berwyn\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tReporter, Austria<\/p>\n

Bob Berwyn an Austria-based reporter who has covered climate science and international climate policy for more than a decade. Previously, he reported on the environment, endangered species and public lands for several Colorado newspapers, and also worked as editor and assistant editor at community newspapers in the Colorado Rockies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new set of detailed clues gleaned from ancient fossil reefs on the Seychelle Islands shows an increasing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182810,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3843],"tags":[728,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-182809","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114679700805083980","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}