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Scientists from the University of Leeds and the Danish Meteorological Institute, in a recent study, said that since the 1990s, the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, whose melting rates are increasing rapidly, have raised global sea levels. in 1.8 cm. Furthermore, these levels coincide with the worst climate warming scenarios of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The researchers said that if rates continue to rise at this rate, the sea level is expected to rise another 17 centimeters and that may expose roughly 16 million people to coastal flooding by the end of the century.
The main cause of global warming
As part of the study, ice sheets were first monitored by satellite in the 1990s, raising global sea level by 7.2mm. Lead study author and climate researcher at the Center for Polar Modeling and Observation at the University of Leeds, Dr Tom Slater said that “although we anticipated that ice sheets would lose increasing amounts of ice in response to warming the oceans and atmosphere, the rate at which they are melting has accelerated faster than we could have imagined ”. He added that “the thaw is outpacing the climate models that we use to guide us and we run the risk of not being prepared for the risks posed by rising sea levels.”
Read: Scientists Calculate Earth’s Ice Age Temperature By Studying Glacial Cooling: Research
Dr Anna Hogg, study co-author and climate researcher at the Leeds School of Earth and the Environment, said: “If ice sheet losses continue to follow our worst-case climate warming scenarios, we should expect a further increase. from sea level 17 cm from the ice. sheets only. That’s enough to double the frequency of storm surge flooding in many of the world’s largest coastal cities. ” The study, which has been published in a study in the journal Nature Climate Change, compares the results of satellite surveys of the ice sheet mass balance intercomparison exercise with calculations from climate models.
Read: Earth has lost 28 trillion tons of ice due to global warming since 1994: study
According to the study, global sea levels have risen due to a mechanism called thermal expansion. With this mechanism, the volume of seawater expands when heated. However, in the last 5 years, the melting of mountain ice sheets and glaciers has outpaced global warming. This has become the main cause of rising sea levels. Co-author and climate researcher at the Danish Meteorological Institute, Dr Ruth Mottram, said that “it’s not just Antarctica and Greenland that are causing the water to rise. In recent years, thousands of smaller glaciers have started to melt or completely disappear, as we saw with the Ok glacier in Iceland, which was declared “dead” in 2014. This means that the melting of the ice has now become the main contributor to sea level rise ”.
Read: Meteorite discovered in Antarctica offers scientists a glimpse into the solar system, the mystery of life
Also read: Greenland’s ice sheet melted at a record rate in 2019 due to increased emissions: study
(Image credits: Unsplash)
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