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‘A better path’ toward projecting, planning for rising seas on a warmer Earth

By Guest PostApril 30, 2013Environment21st century, Antarctica, basins, behavior, christopher little, climate change, climate change policy, coastal planning, computer algorithms, continental ice sheets, geosciences, greenland, ice sheet dynamics, ipcc, massive ice sheets, methodology, michael oppenheimer, monte carlo simulations, nathan urban, Nature, polar ice sheets, princeton university, projection, risk tolerance, sea level, sea level change, sparse data, upper bounds

More useful projections of sea level are possible despite substantial uncertainty about the future behavior of massive ice sheets, according to Princeton University researchers.

In two recent papers in the journals Nature Climate Change and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the researchers present a probabilistic assessment of the Antarctic contribution to 21st-century sea-level change. Their methodology folds observed changes and models of different complexity into unified projections that can be updated with new information. This approach provides a consistent means to integrate the potential contribution of both continental ice sheets — Greenland and Antarctica — into sea-level rise projections. (more…)

International Study Provides More Solid Measure of Shrinking in Polar Ice Sheets

By Guest PostNovember 30, 2012Environmentcontinental ice sheets, glaciers in greenland, ice sheet, ice sheet loss, polar ice sheets, sea-level rise, west antarctic

The planet’s two largest ice sheets have been losing ice faster during the past decade, causing widespread confusion and concern. A new international study provides a firmer read on the state of continental ice sheets and how much they are contributing to sea-level rise. (more…)

Warming Ocean Layers Will Undermine Polar Ice Sheets

By Guest PostJuly 6, 2011Environmentantarctic ice sheets, atmospheric warming, climate models, future ocean warming, global warming, greenhouse gases, greenland, jianjun yin, joellen l. Russell, nature geosciences, overpeck, polar ice sheets, the university of arizona, undermine polar, underwater, warming air, warming ocean layers, warming of the ocean's subsurface layers, warming seawater

*The UA-led research, based on climate models, shows that melting of the ice sheets will occur in this century and next.

Warming of the ocean’s subsurface layers will melt underwater portions of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets faster than previously thought, according to new University of Arizona-led research. Such melting would increase the sea level more than already projected.

The research, based on 19 state-of-the-art climate models, proposes a new mechanism by which global warming will accelerate the melting of the great ice sheets during this century and the next. (more…)

Tag Archives: polar ice sheets

‘A better path’ toward projecting, planning for rising seas on a warmer Earth

International Study Provides More Solid Measure of Shrinking in Polar Ice Sheets

Warming Ocean Layers Will Undermine Polar Ice Sheets

*The UA-led research, based on climate models, shows that melting of the ice sheets will occur in this century and next.