From Rutgers University
Global sea level likely to rise as much as 70 feet for future generations
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — Even if humankind manages to limit global warming to 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F), as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommends, future generations will have to deal with sea levels 12 to 22 meters (40 to 70 feet) higher than at present, according to research published in the journal Geology.
The researchers, led by Kenneth G. Miller, professor of earth and planetary sciences in the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University, reached their conclusion by studying rock and soil cores in Virginia, Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific and New Zealand. They looked at the late Pliocene epoch, 2.7 million to 3.2 million years ago, the last time the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere was at its current level, and atmospheric temperatures were 2 degrees C higher than they are now.
“The difference in water volume released is the equivalent of melting the entire Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets, as well as some of the marine margin of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet,” said H. Richard Lane, program director of the National Science Foundation’s Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the work. “Such a rise of the modern oceans would swamp the world’s coasts and affect as much as 70 percent of the world’s population.”
“You don’t need to sell your beach real estate yet, because melting of these large ice sheets will take from centuries to a few thousand years,” Miller said. “The current trajectory for the 21st century global rise of sea level is 2 to 3 feet (0.8 to1 meter) due to warming of the oceans, partial melting of mountain glaciers, and partial melting of Greenland and Antarctica.”
Miller said, however, that this research highlights the sensitivity of the earth’s great ice sheets to temperature change, suggesting that even a modest rise in temperature results in a large sea-level rise. “The natural state of the earth with present carbon dioxide levels is one with sea levels about 20 meters higher than at present,” he said.
Miller was joined in the research by Rutgers colleagues James G. Wright, associate professor of earth and planetary sciences; James V. Browning, assistant research professor of earth and planetary sciences; Yair Rosenthal, professor of marine science in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences; Sindia Sosdian, research scientist in marine science and a postdoctoral scholar at Cardiff University in Wales; and Andrew Kulpecz, a Rutgers doctoral student when the work was done, now with Chevron Corp. Other co-authors were Michelle Kominz, professor of geophysics and basin dynamics at Western Michigan University; Tim R. Naish, director of the Antarctic Research Center at Victoria University of Wellington, in New Zealand; Benjamin S. Cramer of Theiss Research in Eugene, Ore.; and W. Richard Peltier, professor of physics and director of the Center for Global Change Science at the University of Toronto.
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When checking out the presumed historical sequence of eras and the artist rendered drawings of the continents there were huge inland seas.
So if I understand the threat, mankind will relearn terraced farming, will live on mountains or floating cities (hey if the Incas could do it) and we will fish for bonefish and other finny delights in the warm inland seas.
Sign me up!
I am struck by what these folks can do with 2C of temperature rise. What amazing models they must have.
I wonder how the models manage it?
Perhaps Greenland and Antartica are tectonically shifted to warmer latitudes by the 2C temperature rise?
Why do I have this nagging feeling that almost any temperature changes put into their model will melt Greenland and Antartica.
If indeed the Earth’s climate is 2C warmer in a couple of thousand years, I think our descendants will be extra-ordinarily glad, because it means we saved them from the next glacial phase of the current ice age.
Oh yeah, if temperatures raise and hold there for several thousands of years, some ice will melt and sea levels will raise, that’s what happens at the end of each ice age. That ‘thousands’ is the important part of it, so it’s not like it’ll be here until 2100 or 2500 or such.
Unless we slip to another ice age in the meantime, that is. That could give us a whole different set of problems to solve.
Now if the continents rise by only a millimeter a year because of plate techtonics for a million years that is a ship load of millimeters. The reverse may also be true, these idiots are judging sea level on an unchanging land mass.
It is probably more appropriate to judge the movements of the land masses rather than the ocean, I think they have it bassakwards.
The positive news is that we will be able to move to Antarctica and Greenland, and enjoy the balmy new weather there. I am buying my plot ASAP. I wondered why The Gore and The Hansen/Branson were scoping it out… now I know. They are trying to buy in there first.
AndiC says:
March 20, 2012 at 12:15 am
“You don’t need to sell your beach real estate yet, because melting of these large ice sheets will take from centuries to a few thousand years,” Miller said.
So do we now have to look at what might possibly happen a few thousand years out? Do we assume that homosapiens will still be around?
Surely more immediate threats such as polution, famine, disease, nuclear terrorism shoudl figure far more.
No, because they are dull, boaring. mundane, real threats that don’t affect the whole planet at the same time. The powers that be be can fly off to safe lands.
What’s a cubic kilogram?
But the fact that current sea levels are 20 meters lower than what their opinion of what current CO2 levels show it should be shows that they are wrong. Or are they claiming that the oceans are wrong?
Or are they claiming that the oceans are definitely going to rise for a thousand years, regardless of what we do? In which case I may as well buy a V12 4×4 and enjoy driving it, until such time as I need to convert it into a boat.
In predicting sea level rise of 12-22 meters, I do hope they remembered to factor in the predicted (?) effects of plate tectonics and isostatic rebound over the period of “centuries to a few thousand years.”
What a load of balderdash.
So CO2 is the only driver not a significant one. They are taking IPCC to where no man has gone before.
“Kenneth G. Miller, professor of earth and planetary sciences in the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University”
Methinks the professors chair resides within the School of Arts.
Sea level was up to 400 metres higher than it is today during the Ordovician – and 200 to 300 metres higher at the end of the Cretaceous. There is a decent Wikipedia page on this at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level
Have a look before the revisionists get their hands on it…
Looks like somebody had a nightmare after watching that utterly appalling “Waterworld” movie.
Assuming that the quotation “The current trajectory for the 21st century global rise of sea level is 2 to 3 feet (0.8 to1 meter)” is correct then I feel that there is absolutely nothing to worry about, irrespective of the time frame. Any competent scientist should be able to do simple Imperial to metric conversions correctly. 2 to 3 feet is really 0.61 to 0.915 metres.
I’m not sure why this is viewed as publishable research or why it generates any excitement. “Research” restates the known that sea levels have been higher in the past and could, in some unspecified millennial time period be that high again. Yep, and the inter-glacial could end and the sea level could drop because water is trapped in the newly formed glaciers. If I knew anyone who could be relied on to hold the bets, I’d bet on ice.
Apparently doesn’t take much to get a pub credit these days.
the study actually means “up to 70 feet further inland” but you know its much more scary when they say “seventy feet higher”
If Atlantis was half the size of Australia and rose in the middle of the deeps in the Pacific the sea level wouldn’t rise 70 feet…
Sandy says:
March 20, 2012 at 12:31 am
Scientific value : V
Number of authors : N
V = N^-2
Thanks Willis!! 😀
Actually the correct equation is: V = 1/’N^2
Just thought I’d clear that up.
Not peer reviewed by Zager & Evans, thus invalid.
India and China are obviously not buying it. They have told the EU what they can do with their emissions trading scheme.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/03/19/uk-india-eu-emission-idUKLNE82I02Y20120319
Only 22 meters? Take a look at geologic history, where you will see that the long-term stable air temperature for the Earth was in the order of 25 C, about 10 C warmer than it is now, and that sea level was about 100 meters above its present level. I commend to your attention the history of the Florida Platform, and the pattern of shoreline change on that Platform.
Hard data show us that at the depth of the Pleistocene sea level was more than 100 meters below present, and in the Eocene it was some 100 meters above present. But in the Eocene the Earth began to cool, and ice appeared at the poles and in mountain glaciers for the first time in 200 million years.
All shorelines change with time, some faster than others due to the effects of orogeny. Shorelines, like ice caps and glaciers, are temporary. What is hard to understand is the time involved in these changes, because we human beings are terrifically anthropocentric, and judge rates of change in terms of our own brief lives. Anthropocentricism is a real curse, as evidenced by the current confusion about climate change.
George, CPG
So from this, I assume that the sea level will rise faster than humans can migrate. Or am I missing something?
In a few thousand years, I hope that humans have colonized the moon, Mars and are well on their way to other stars. Otherwise, all that science fiction I read was simply a waste of time… 🙂
Oh wouldn’t it be wonderful.
I could more the yacht at the foot of my bottom padock. All I have to do is live that long.
prjindigo, thanks for that I was wondering how it could possibly rise 70 feet vertically all over the globe. One, there isn’t enough ice to do that and two just a small rise means the oceans would spread out and become larger on a horizontal plane thus halting/limiting the vertical rise. Yes up to 70 feet further inland makes a lot more sense. How do they get away with this sensationalist propaganda?
Did Co2 rise follow temperature rise? Is this not what the Vostok ice cores tell us? The people who lived through the Holocene Climate Optimum must have been drenched. Anyway, after the ‘hottest decade’ on the record the rate of sea level rise seems to be flattening. What is up? Or down. 😉