This article addresses the most current research on sea level rise, as well as adaptation measures being taken around the world. Of special interest, brilliant adaptation measures are taking place in the face of higher seas.
"Sea level has been fairly stable for 6,000 years, which is most of human civilization" but its risen eight (8) inches or twenty (20) centimeters in the last century, and the rate is tripling right now." (Source: John Englander, Expert on Sea Level Rise, Talks with US Harbors About Changing Coastal Waters, July 5, 2022).
According to knowledgeable sources, regardless of mitigation efforts, sea levels are destined to rise by approximately one foot by 2050. Thereafter, fairly high probabilities indicate up to 5 feet-to-10 feet by the end of the century, which is considerably more than "up to 3 feet in a high-GHG emissions scenario" forecast by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The oceans have absorbed 93% of the planet's heat, and there's no off switch to stop warming ocean waters from melting the world's two largest ice structures Greenland and Antarctica. What if the oceans did not absorb 93% of the planet's heat? According to scientists' calculations in the multi-award-winning documentary Chasing Coral (2017) if oceans stopped absorbing heat, land temps would average 122Â degreesF.
During the 1990s Greenland and Antarctica combined lost 81 billion tons of ice mass per year on average. A decade later, during the decade of the 2010s, the ice mass loss increased 6-fold to 475 billion tons per year on average. (Source: Greenland, Antarctica Melting Six Times Faster Than in the 1990s, NASA, March 16, 2020)
NASA's findings, published online in the journal Nature from an international team of 89 polar scientists from 50 organizations, are the most comprehensive assessment to date of the changing ice sheets. It is startling information that seems to predestine higher sea levels. The question of the decade, therefore: How to stop the runaway-freight-train loss of ice by Greenland and Antarctica? Is it even possible to control a warming ocean as the root cause?
Speaking of which, on August 30, 2022 the Journal of Geophysical Research published the following paper by A. T. Bradley, et al: The Influence of Pine Island Ice Shelf Calving on Basal Melting. (Basal melting occurs from heat delivered by the ocean beneath ice shelves.)
Synopsis of the Bradley paper: "Pine Island Ice Shelf in West Antarctica, which holds back enough ice to raise sea levels by 0.5 meters (1.5 feet), could be more vulnerable to complete disintegration than previously thought. A new study led by British Antarctic Survey (BAS) scientists shows two processes whose recent enhancement already threatens the stability of the shelf can interact to increase the likelihood of collapse." (Source: British Antarctic Survey, Scientists Expose Vulnerabilities of Critical Antarctic Ice Shelf, Phys.org, September 21, 2022)
Pine Island ice shelf, which serves to buttress Pine Island Glacier, is but one of a few hundred ice shelves surrounding Antarctica that hold back the potential of rapid flow of glacial ice to the sea. A collapsing ice shelf is equivalent to taking the goalie out of a hockey game; the net is wide open for rapid flow of the glacier to the sea. As it happens, an ice shelf collapse increases the rate of glacial flow by up to eight (8) times.
It goes without saying that collapsing ice sheets that buttress glacial ice flow are not a welcomed event for the world's 136 port cities, each with more than one million inhabitants.
Scientists are still shaking in their boots over the shocking disintegration/collapse of Conger Ice Shelf six months ago. It's the first-ever ice shelf collapse on East Antarctica, which is the coldest and driest location on the planet. On March 14-16 Conger ice shelf suddenly disappeared from satellite photos. It had been there for over a thousand years. All it took was an unusual warm spell and more than a thousand years of solid ice collapsed within only a few days! It's little wonder scientists are still shaken. East Antarctica has always been considered invincible" until the recent past.
US Harbors of Rockland, ME recently interviewed John Englander, an oceanographer and a Research Fellow at the Institute of Marine Sciences at UC Santa Cruz and one of the world's foremost speakers on sea level rise. (Source: John Englander, Expert on Sea Level Rise, Talks with US Harbors About Changing Coastal Waters, July 5, 2022).
According to Englander: "By midcentury, it's going to be at least a foot higher and by the end of the century, perhaps 5-to-10 feet higher. We need to wake up to a new reality about sea level because sea level determines the shoreline" We need to start now re-designing harbors for the future" Adaptation to higher sea levels is the future."
Of major concern, "The rate of global sea level rise has tripled in 30 years. It's gone from an average of a millimeter and a half up to five millimeters in 30 years" if we only melt 5% of global glacial ice, it's 10 feet of sea level rise."
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