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Rising Sea Levels Could Submerge Substantial Parts of 1,700 U.S. Cities

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Sat, 2013-08-03 19:56 — Kathy Gilbeaux

      

This may soon be what a day in the park looks like. Reuters/Jitendra Prakash

theatlanticcities.com - by Roberto A. Ferdman - July 30, 2013

Sea levels, as we know, are incredibly sensitive to rises in global temperatures. A study released earlier this month revealed that the increase of a mere degree celsius could lead global sea levels to rise by as much as two meters. But according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the implications are especially grim for the US. At the current rate of carbon emissions, over 1,700 cities, including New York, Boston and Miami, will be “locked in” by greenhouse gas emissions by this century’s end.

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STUDY - Each degree of global warming might ultimately raise global sea levels by more than 2 meters

STUDY - PNAS - The multimillennial sea-level commitment of global warming (Abstract)

STUDY - PNAS - The multimillennial sea-level commitment of global warming (6 page .PDF file)

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Cities
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Groups this Group Post belongs to: 
Climate Change Working Group
Epoch B
Risks
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Sustainability - Global

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Sat, 2013-08-03 21:36 — Kathy Gilbeaux

climatecentral.org - by Ben Strauss - July 29, 2013

Measurements tell us that global average sea level is currently rising by about 1 inch per decade. But in an invisible shadow process, our long-term sea level rise commitment or "lock-in" — the sea level rise we don’t see now, but which carbon emissions and warming have locked in for later years — is growing 10 times faster, and this growth rate is accelerating.

An international team of scientists led by Anders Levermann recently published a study that found for every degree Fahrenheit of global warming due to carbon pollution, global average sea level will rise by about 4.2 feet in the long run. When multiplied by the current rate of carbon emissions, and the best estimate of global temperature sensitivity to pollution, this translates to a long-term sea level rise commitment that is now growing at about 1 foot per decade.

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