How much sea level rise? | Climate change and rising sea levels | The West Antarctic Ice Sheet | How much sea level rise from Antarctica? | Comments |

How much sea level rise?

How much will global sea levels rise in our lifetime, or in the lifetime of our children? We need to know the answer to this question if we are to mitigate effectively against sea level rise, particularly when it’s associated with storm surges, hurricanes and extreme weather events, which test our already strained flood defence schemes. However, uncertainty in the response of polar ice sheets to climate change limits our ability to project sea level rise into the future.

Climate change and rising sea levels

During the Twentieth Century, the Earth warmed by 0.6 ± 0.2°C. Since 1900 AD, a long-term cooling trend that began around 5000 years ago and culminated in the Little Ice Age in the 1750s (with its ice fairs on the frozen River Thames) has been reversed. Global sea level is now rising at a rate of 3.1 mm per year, which will lead to a total rise of 18-59 cm by 2100 AD. Most of this rise is caused by thermal expansion of the ocean and the melting of small ice caps and glaciers. However, the large polar ice sheets have the potential to contribute to sea level rise above and beyond this modest rate. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet alone could raise global sea levels by 3.3 m if it all melted. But how likely is this to happen, and how quickly?

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet

An unstable marine ice sheet

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is currently warming particularly rapidly, and this warming is associated with increased ocean temperatures and changes to atmospheric circulation, which drives increased upwelling of deep, relatively warm oceanic water onto the continental shelf.

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is drained by fast-flowing, marine-terminating ice streams and it is surrounded by floating ice shelves. Much of the rock on which the ice sheet rests is below current sea level, and the bedrock slopes downwards towards the centre of the ice sheet. Because of this, the ice sheet is unstable, because as water gets deeper, more icebergs are calved, increasing ice discharge.

Ice streams in West Antarctica are also melted rapidly at their base by those warming ocean waters, leading to melting, recession into deeper water and more melting again. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet may therefore be inherently susceptible to ever faster glacier recession, and could pass tipping points that mean rapid sea level rise irrevocably occurs. Pine Island Glacier, one of the fastest ice streams in the world, is already thinning and receding, making it susceptible to rapid recession in ever deeper water.

Thinning and retreating ice shelves

Ice shelves around the West Antarctic Ice Sheet are thinning as they are melted from below by upwelling warm ocean currents. Ice shelves have been known to disintegrate rapidly over the course of just one summer.

Ice shelves ‘buttress’ or hold back glaciers on the interior of the continent. Rapid removal of bounding ice shelves, such as those around Pine Island Glacier, could therefore result in increased thinning and recession of grounded glaciers, initiating a positive-feedback loop that could be catastrophic.

Increased snowfall

It doesn’t end there. Although there may be more snow over the Antarctic Ice Sheet under a warmer climate, this too could lead to changes in glacier dynamics. Increased snow will steepen surface gradients near the edge of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Glaciers will flow faster, discharging more icebergs into the ocean, negating any impact the increased snowfall would have in mitigating sea level rise.

Increased meltwater from melting ice shelves also produces a layer of cold, fresh water on the ocean’s surface, which easily freezes, increasing winter sea ice extent. Sea surface temperatures are directly related to snowfall, so cooler sea surface temperatures and more sea ice may actually decrease snowfall over Antarctica.

How much sea level rise from Antarctica?

Because of these factors, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could rapidly and catastrophically melt, resulting in as much as 3.3 m of sea level rise within 500 years.

Rates such as these are common in the geological record, but these dynamic behaviours are too difficult for even our most complex computer models to solve.

A new paper in the journal Nature Climate Change by Bamber and Aspinall has attempted to untangle this thorny problem. They pooled different assessments by numerous experts in order to reach a consensus on likely sea level rise by AD 2100.

Bamber and Aspinall used a mid-range carbon emissions scenario, with an increase of 3.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures. They found that the average rate of sea level rise from just the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets agreed upon by these experts was 5.4 mm per year by 2100 AD.

Combined with melting glaciers and ice caps and thermal expansion of the ocean, Bamber and Aspinall gave a range of 33-132 cm, with 62 cm the average estimate, for sea level rise by 2100. It’s still uncertain, but it’s the best estimate we have for now.