The world''s
sea levels could
rise twice as high this century
as UN
climate scientists have previously predicted, according to a study. The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change proposes a maximum sea level rise of
81cm (32in) this century. But in the journal Nature climate scientists,
researchers say the true maximum could be about twice that: 163cm (64in). They
looked at what happened more than 100,000 years
ago - the last time Earth was
this warm. The results join other studies showing that current sea level
projections may be very conservative. Sea level rise is a key effect of climate
scientists. There are two major contributory effects: expansion of sea water as
the oceans warm, and the melting of ice over land. In the latest study,
researchers came up with their estimates by looking at the so-called
interglacial period, some 124,000 to 119,000 years ago, when Earth''s climate
was warmer than it is now due to a different configuration of the planet''s
orbit around the Sun. That was the last time sea levels reached up to 6m (20ft)
above where they are now, fulled by the melting of ice sheets that covered
Greenland and Antarctica.
More abstracts about the Rising seas to beat predictions