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West Antarctic Ice Melt Poses Unique Threat to U.S.

           

Sea level rise contributions from ice melt in different areas, including Greenland (a), West Antarctica (b), East Antarctica (c) and median of global glaciers (d). Values are ratios of regional sea level change to global mean sea level change. Adapted from Kopp et al. 2015.

axios.com - by Andrew Freedman - June 14, 2018

News of Antarctica's accelerating ice melt garnered worldwide headlines yesterday, as scientists revealed that 3 trillion tons of ice has been lost to the sea since 1992 — mostly from the thawing West Antarctic Ice Sheet and Antarctic Peninsula.

Why it matters: The location of the ice melt is important for determining the future of coastal communities, according to climate scientists. And, due to West Antarctica melting, it turns out that the U.S. coastline will be hit extra hard . . .

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Antarctic ice loss has tripled in a decade. If that continues, we are in serious trouble.

           

Scientists warns time is running out to save the Antarctic and its unique ecosystem, with potentially dire consequences for the world. Photograph: Daniel Beltrá/Greenpeace

CLICK HERE - IMBIE - ANALYSIS - Mass balance of the Antarctic Ice Sheet from 1992 to 2017

washingtonpost.com - by Chris Mooney - June 13, 2018

Antarctica’s ice sheet is melting at a rapidly increasing rate, now pouring more than 200 billion tons of ice into the ocean annually and raising sea levels a half-millimeter every year, a team of 80 scientists reported Wednesday.

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Seas to Rise About a Meter Even if Climate Goals Are Met - Study

           

FILE PHOTO: Uninhabitable apartments, in danger of collapsing into the Pacific Ocean, line Esplanade Ave. in Pacifica, California January 26, 2016. REUTERS/Noah Berger/File Photo

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Committed sea-level rise under the Paris Agreement and the legacy of delayed mitigation action

reuters.com - Alister Doyle - February 20, 2018

Sea levels will rise between 0.7 and 1.2 meters (27-47 inches) in the next two centuries even if governments end the fossil fuel era as promised under the Paris climate agreement, scientists said on Tuesday.

Early action to cut greenhouse gas emissions would limit the long-term rise, driven by a thaw of ice from Greenland to Antarctica that will re-draw global coastlines, a German-led team wrote in the journal Nature Communications . . .

 . . . By 2300, the report projected that sea levels would gain by 0.7-1.2 meters, even if almost 200 nations fully meet goals under the 2015 Paris Agreement, which include cutting greenhouse gas emissions to net zero in the second half of this century . . . 

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Satellite Observations Show Sea Levels Rising, and Climate Change Is Accelerating It

           

Changes in sea level observed between 1992 and 2014. Orange/red colors represent higher sea levels, while blue colors show where sea levels are lower.

CLICK HERE - STUDY - PNAS - Climate-change–driven accelerated sea-level rise detected in the altimeter era

cnn.com - by Brandon Miller - February 13, 2018

Sea level rise is happening now, and the rate at which it is rising is increasing every year, according to a study released Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers, led by University of Colorado-Boulder professor of aerospace engineering sciences Steve Nerem, used satellite data dating to 1993 to observe the levels of the world's oceans.

Using satellite data rather than tide-gauge data that is normally used to measure sea levels allows for more precise estimates of global sea level, since it provides measurements of the open ocean.

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Sea Levels to Rise 1.3m Unless Coal Power Ends by 2050, Report Says

           

The extra contribution to sea level rise from Antarctica will not kick in if warming is kept at less than 1.9C above preindustrial levels, the researchers found. Photograph: IceBridge/Nasa

University of Melbourne paper combines latest understanding on Antarctica and current emissions projection scenarios

CLICK HERE - Linking sea level rise and socioeconomic indicators under the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways

theguardian.com - by Michael Slezak - October 26, 2017

Coastal cities around the world could be devastated by 1.3m of sea level rise this century unless coal-generated electricity is virtually eliminated by 2050, according to a new paper that combines the latest understanding of Antarctica’s contribution to sea level rise and the latest emissions projection scenarios.

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Alaskan Towns at Risk from Rising Seas Sound Alarm as Trump Pulls Federal Help

           

Residents of Shishmaref voted to relocate to the mainland, but in common with other Alaskan towns, there is no clear source of funding to do this. Photograph: Andrew Burton/Getty Images

Communities in danger of falling into the sea say assistance from Washington has dried up: ‘It feels like a complete abdication of responsibility on climate change’

theguardian.com - by Oliver Milman - August 10, 2017

The US government’s withdrawal from dealing with, or even acknowledging, climate change may have provoked widespread opprobrium, but for Alaskan communities at risk of toppling into the sea, the risks are rather more personal.

The Trump administration has moved to dismantle climate adaptation programs including the Denali Commission, an Anchorage-based agency that is crafting a plan to safeguard or relocate dozens of towns at risk from rising sea levels, storms and the winnowing away of sea ice.

Federal assistance for these towns has been ponderous but could now grind to a halt, with even those working on the issue seemingly targeted by the administration.

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Wildfires Hit Greenland After Record Temperatures

           

This satellite photograph depicts the wildfire raging in Greenland, as seen from space last week. - NASA Earth Observatory

phys.org - August 14, 2017

Police in Greenland warned people to stay away from western areas of the island as wildfires scorched swathes of scrubland . . . 

 . . . Denmark's meteorological service BMI said the island registered its hottest-ever temperature of 24.8 degrees (77 Fahrenheit) on August 10.

Last year was Greenland's hottest on record.

The Danish territory has lost about 4,000 gigatons of ice since 1995, British researchers said in June, making ice melt on the huge island the biggest single contributor to rising sea levels.

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PHOTOS: A 'Massive' Wildfire Is Now Blazing In Greenland
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/08/542305822/photos-a-massive-wildfire-is-now-blazing-in-greenland

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Climate Report: Hottest Year, Highest Greenhouse Gas Marks, Record Sea Levels

CLICK HERE - American Meteorological Society - State of the Climate in 2016 - Special Supplement to the - Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society - Vol. 98, No. 8, August 2017 - (298 page .PDF report)

cnn.com - by Steve Almasy - August 10, 2017

The records highlighted in the "State of the Climate in 2016" report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sound ominous.

• Global land surface temperatures last year were highest in 137 years of record keeping.

• Sea surface temperatures were also at their highest.

• Sea levels were at record highs in the 24 years that satellite record keeping has been used.

• Greenhouse gas marks rose faster than any year and carbon dioxide readings were above a 400 parts per million average for the year for the first time.

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Satellite Snafu Masked True Sea Level Rise for Decades

           

Credit: Joe Raedle  Getty Images 

Revised tallies confirm that the rate of sea level rise is accelerating as Earth warms and ice sheets thaw

scientificamerican.com - by Jeff Tollefson - July 19, 2017

The numbers didn’t add up. Even as Earth grew warmer and glaciers and ice sheets thawed, decades of satellite data seemed to show that the rate of sea-level rise was holding steady—or even declining.

Now, after puzzling over this discrepancy for years, scientists have identified its source: a problem with the calibration of a sensor on the first of several satellites launched to measure the height of the sea surface using radar. Adjusting the data to remove that error suggests that sea levels are indeed rising at faster rates each year.

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CLICK HERE - University of Colorado - CU Sea Level Research Group

CLICK HERE - New estimate of the current rate of sea level rise from a sea level budget approach

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Rising Seas to Force Billions from Home

           

weather.com - by Pam Wright - June 28, 2017

CLICK HERE - VIDEO HIGHLIGHTS

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Impediments to inland resettlement under conditions of accelerated sea level rise

An estimated 2 billion people will be displaced from their homes by 2100 due to climate-driven rising seas, a new study says.

Roughly one-fifth of the world's population may become climate change refugees, according to Cornell University. The majority of those will be people who live on coastlines around the world, including about 2 million in Florida alone.

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ALSO SEE RELATED ARTICLE HERE - Cornell University - Rising seas could result in 2 billion refugees by 2100

 

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