Krung Thep to be underwater
- From: "Sandy Cruden" <sandycruden@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 23 Mar 2006 18:51:53 -0800
www.news.com.au
Melting ice 'spurs oceans' rise'
From: Reuters From correspondents in Washington
March 24, 2006
MIAMI would be a memory, Bangkok a soggy shadow of its former self and
the Maldive Islands would vanish if melting polar ice keeps fuelling a
faster-than-expected rise in sea levels, scientists reported today.
In an issue of the journal Science focusing on global warming, climate
scientist Jonathan Overpeck of the University of Arizona reported that
if global trends continue, Earth could ultimately experience sea levels
six meters higher than they are now.
By the end of this century, Earth would be at least 2.3C warmer than
now, or about as hot as it was nearly 130,000 years ago.
Back then, significant portions of the Greenland and Antarctic ice
sheets melted, pushing the global sea levels to about six meters higher
than current levels.
A similarly dramatic, and in some cases catastrophic, rise in ocean
levels could happen by the year 2500, Mr Overpeck said in a telephone
interview, but he noted it could come sooner.
"We know when the sea level was that high in the past, and we know how
much warming is necessary to get that amount of sea level rise from
both Greenland and Antarctica," Mr Overpeck said.
The Earth will get that hot sometime early in the second half of this
century, he said, and once it does, the big ice sheets will start
melting "in a more dramatic manner" than they currently are.
A conservative estimate would call for sea level rises of one metre per
century, he said.
He cautioned, however, that this estimate assumes the Earth will get
only as hot as it did 130,000 years ago when the ice sheets melted.
"If we decide to keep on the track we're on now and just keep on
warming, because of greenhouse gas pollution, then we could easily cook
those ice sheets more rapidly," Mr Overpeck said.
The earlier ice melt was concentrated in the Northern Hemisphere in the
summer months, and was due largely to changes in Earth's orbit, he
said.
"The climate warming we're in now is global and it's year-round and
it's due to human influences on the climate system," he said. "That
will be more damaging to the ice sheets than the that warming we had
130,000 years ago."
The ice sheets are already melting, accelerated by relatively warm
water that eats away at them, said NASA glacier expert Bob
Bindschadler.
"It's not really a debate any more about whether sea level is rising or
not. I think the debate has shifted to, how rapidly is sea level
rising," Mr Bindschadler said in a telephone briefing.
Mr Overpeck's website - http://www.geo.arizona.edu/dgesl/ - offers
dynamic maps of the projected results of the rise in sea levels.
.
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