Latest news with #seaLevelRise
Daily Mail
3 days ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
West Antarctic Ice Sheet is on the verge of COLLAPSING - sparking 13 feet of irreversible global sea level rise, scientists warn
Containing around 750,000 cubic miles of ice – enough to fill Wembley stadium nearly 3 billion times – the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is a rich reservoir of precious frozen freshwater. Now, scientists warn that the vast natural feature is on the brink of a disastrous 'irreversible' collapse. The collapse would cause a devastating sea-level rise globally over the next few hundred years of 13 feet (4 metres), the experts say. And it could be triggered with ocean warming only slightly above the rate that we're seeing in the present day. 'As little as 0.25°C deep ocean warming above present-day can trigger the start of a collapse,' said study author David Chandler at Norwegian Research Centre (NORCE). 'With our present-day climate, the transition to the collapsed state will be slow, maybe 1,000 years, but it will likely be much faster if there is additional global warming.' In a future scenario of sea level rises, cities and towns are flooded more easily, meaning people would have to flee their homes and move further inland. Other small island nations might be gradually plunged underwater entirely, forcing inhabitants to emigrate. Ice sheets are masses of glacial ice extending more than 19,000 square miles (50,000 square kilometers). There are two ice sheets on Earth – the Greenland Ice Sheet and the Antarctic Ice Sheet – and together they contain about 99 per cent of the freshwater on Earth. As the name suggests, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is the western segment of the latter – and is more strongly affected by climate change. And unlike its eastern counterpart, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet largely rests on the sea bed. In other words, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is sitting in water – and today this water is getting warmer and warmer due to global warming. 'Both East and West Antarctica have really thick ice – well over 3km (2 miles), even 4.9km (3 miles) at its thickest,' Chandler told MailOnline. 'West Antarctica is important for two reasons; first, if even a small fraction of all that ice melts it will cause devastating sea-level rise. 'Second, the ice sheet itself influences climate, so if you melt some of it, that could cause climate changes even as far away as Europe.' What is an ice sheet? An ice sheet is a a layer of ice covering an extensive tract of land - more than 20,000 square miles (50,000 square kilometers). The two ice sheets on Earth today cover most of Greenland and Antarctica. During the last ice age, ice sheets also covered much of North America and Scandinavia. Together, the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets contain more than 99 per cent of the freshwater ice on Earth. Source: National Snow and Ice Data Center The research team – also including experts from academic institutions in the UK and Germany – ran model simulations through the glacial cycles over the last 800,000 years. During this period, the Earth's climate has switched several times between cold periods known as 'glacials' and warmer periods called 'interglacials'. Some of these past interglacials were likely warmer than our present-day climate and give a picture of how the vast Antarctic Ice Sheet could respond to future warming. During interglacials, warm ocean water would have melted and thinned out the floating ice shelves that surround and protect West Antarctic Ice Sheet, leaving it vulnerable. 'In the past 800,000 years, the Antarctic Ice Sheet has had two stable states that it has repeatedly tipped between,' said Chandler. 'One, with the West Antarctic Ice Sheet in place, is the state we are currently in. The other state is where the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has collapsed.' Because the heat needed to melt ice in Antarctica is supplied mostly by the ocean, the concern now is that warming waters from climate change will tip the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to the collapsed state again. Ice loss from this 'vast freshwater reservoir' could threaten coastal communities and the global economy if the ice volume decreases by just a few per cent. Once the ice sheet has tipped to the collapsed state, reversal back to the stable present-day state would need several thousands of years of relatively cool temperatures (at or below pre-industrial conditions). 'Once tipping has been triggered it is self-sustaining and seems very unlikely to be stopped before contributing to about four meters of sea-level rise – and this would be practically irreversible,' Chandler said. In 2023, experts at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) said the West Antarctic Ice Sheet will continue to increase its rate of melting over the rest of the century, no matter how much we reduce fossil fuel use. Even if greenhouse gas emissions are controlled to achieve the best possible scenario, melting of the ice sheet will continue to accelerate this century, at a speed three times faster than during the 20th century, the BAS team found. If it melts completely, the ice sheet will release enough water to raise sea levels worldwide by 17ft (5.3 metres). However, scientists say that it is 'only' likely to make them rise by 3.2ft (one metre) by the end of the century. Antarctica's ice sheets contain 70% of world's fresh water - and sea levels would rise by 180ft if it melts Antarctica holds a huge amount of water. The three ice sheets that cover the continent contain around 70 per cent of our planet's fresh water - and these are all to warming air and oceans. If all the ice sheets were to melt due to global warming, Antarctica would raise global sea levels by at least 183ft (56m). Given their size, even small losses in the ice sheets could have global consequences. In addition to rising sea levels, meltwater would slow down the world's ocean circulation, while changing wind belts may affect the climate in the southern hemisphere. In February 2018, Nasa revealed El Niño events cause the Antarctic ice shelf to melt by up to ten inches (25 centimetres) every year. El Niño and La Niña are separate events that alter the water temperature of the Pacific ocean. The ocean periodically oscillates between warmer than average during El Niños and cooler than average during La Niñas. Using Nasa satellite imaging, researchers found that the oceanic phenomena cause Antarctic ice shelves to melt while also increasing snowfall. In March 2018, it was revealed that more of a giant France-sized glacier in Antarctica is floating on the ocean than previously thought.
ABC News
4 days ago
- Business
- ABC News
Can the age-old solution of seawalls protect the Pacific against climate change?
On the program today Pacific Islands are turning to the age-old solution of seawalls as a source of hope to curb sea level rising. Vanuatu's Supreme Court delivers a landmark ruling in favour of the Vanuatu Teachers Union. The dollar figure for the Pacific kava market is revealed at the Pacific Week of Agriculture and Forestry in Tonga. A litigation fund is signed to pay $60 million in damages over a 2019 oil spill in the Solomon Islands. A long-running project brings closure to families of the Bougainville civil war. And Samoan boxer Jai Opetaia eyes off all the major belts in his weight division.
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Sea level rise will cause ‘catastrophic inland migration', scientists warn
Sea level rise will become unmanageable at just 1.5C of global heating and lead to 'catastrophic inland migration', the scientists behind a new study have warned. This scenario may unfold even if the average level of heating over the last decade of 1.2C continues into the future. The loss of ice from the giant Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets has quadrupled since the 1990s due to the climate crisis and is now the principal driver of sea level rise. The international target to keep global temperature rise below 1.5C is already almost out of reach. But the new analysis found that even if fossil fuel emissions were rapidly slashed to meet it, sea levels would be rising by 1cm a year by the end of the century, faster than the speed at which nations could build coastal defences. The world is on track for 2.5C-2.9C of global heating, which would almost certainly be beyond tipping points for the collapse of the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets. The melting of those ice sheets would lead to a 'really dire' 12 metres of sea level rise. Today, about 230 million people live within 1 metre above current sea level, and 1 billion live within 10 metres above sea level. Even just 20cm of sea level rise by 2050 would lead to global flood damages of at least $1tn a year for the world's 136 largest coastal cities and huge impacts on people's lives and livelihoods. However, the scientists emphasised that every fraction of a degree of global heating avoided by climate action still matters, because it slows sea level rise and gives more time to prepare, reducing human suffering. Related: The century of climate migration: why we need to plan for the great upheaval Sea level rise is the biggest long-term impact of the climate crisis, and research in recent years has shown it is occurring far faster than previously estimated. The 1.5C limit was seen as a way to avoid the worst consequences of global heating, but the new research shows this is not the case for sea level rise. The researchers said the 'safe limit' temperature for ice sheets was hard to estimate but was likely to be 1C or lower. Sea level rise of at least 1-2 metres was now inevitable, the scientists said. In the UK, just 1 metre of sea level rise would see large parts of the Fens and Humberside below sea level. 'What we mean by safe limit is one which allows some level of adaptation, rather than catastrophic inland migration and forced migration, and the safe limit is roughly 1cm a year of sea level rise,' said Prof Jonathan Bamber of the University of Bristol in the UK. 'If you get to that, then it becomes extremely challenging for any kind of adaptation, and you're going to see massive land migration on scales that we've never witnessed in modern civilisation.' Developing countries such as Bangladesh would fare far worse than rich ones with experience of holding back the waves, such as the Netherlands, he said. Durham University's Prof Chris Stokes, lead author of the study, said: 'We're starting to see some of the worst-case scenarios play out almost in front of us. At current warming of 1.2C, sea level rise is accelerating at rates that, if they continue, would become almost unmanageable before the end of this century, [which is] within the lifetime of our young people.' The average global temperature rise hit 1.5C for the first time in 2024. But the international target is measured as the average over 20 years, so is not considered to have been broken yet. Related: Greenland losing 30m tonnes of ice an hour, study reveals The new study, published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, combined data from studies of warm periods up to 3m years ago; observations of ice melting and sea level rise in recent decades; and climate models. It concluded: 'Continued mass loss from ice sheets poses an existential threat to the world's coastal populations.' Prof Andrea Dutton of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who was part of the study team, said: 'Evidence recovered from past warm periods suggests that several metres of sea level rise – or more – can be expected when global mean temperature reaches 1.5C or higher.' At the end of the last ice age, about 15,000 years ago, the sea level was rising at 10 times the rate today, driven by self-reinforcing feedbacks that may have been triggered by only a small increase in temperature. The last time CO2 levels in the atmosphere were as high as today, about 3m years ago, sea level rise was 10-20 metres higher. Even if humanity can bring the planet back to its preindustrial temperature by removing CO2 from the atmosphere, it will still take hundreds to thousands of years for the ice sheets to recover, the researchers said. That means land lost to sea level rise will remain lost for a long time, perhaps until the Earth enters the next ice age. Belize moved its capital inland in 1970 after a devastating hurricane, but its largest city is still on the coast and will be inundated with only 1 metre of sea level rise, Carlos Fuller, Belize's longtime climate negotiator, said: 'Findings such as these only sharpen the need to remain within the 1.5C Paris agreement limit, or as close as possible, so we can return to lower temperatures and protect our coastal cities.'
South China Morning Post
30-05-2025
- Science
- South China Morning Post
Write to Win (Round 4): What do you think schools will be like in 50 years?
Read the responses to this week's Write to Win prompt, and choose the answer you like most on this form. Hong Kong: I think in 50 years, artificial intelligence (AI) will play a huge role in the education system. As AI teachers and learning assistants have become more common today, I envision in 50 years, AI systems will provide personalised and adaptive learning for students with different learning styles, catering to neurodivergent students as well. Furthermore, I can see AI grading our assessments and homework, freeing up teachers' schedules and allowing them to spend more time with students and emotionally connect with them. Lastly, I also believe that schools will include more life-related education, such as woodwork, cooking and finance management, helping to refine and develop skills that will stick with students for the rest of their lives. London: Hong Kong's sea level is likely to rise in 50 years due to glaciers melting. It would be unsurprising if the total area of the sea surface exceeds the total area of the land surface. Therefore, underwater schools could help conserve land area. These types of schools immersed in water could provide a quiet and calm learning environment for students. Acrylic underwater windows installed on ceilings would allow natural light to enter, saving electricity and providing students with stunning scenery to relieve stress. Additionally, underwater schools might give students a deeper understanding of nature, teaching them the importance of protecting marine life. Write to Win (Round 3): What isn't a subject in school that you think should be? Sydney: Schools will be powered by advanced artificial intelligence that adapts to each student's learning style. Classrooms may exist in virtual or augmented reality, turning history, science and art into immersive experiences. Traditional exams will be replaced by real-world projects and digital portfolios. Students will learn empathy, climate awareness and financial literacy. Learning will be curiosity-driven, collaborative and personalised – connecting students worldwide and preparing us for an innovative and inclusive future. Berlin: Schools will be unrecognisable in comparison to what they are today. Buildings will be large and pretty, with a technological appearance, and there will be a magical back garden with a dozen types of flowers and a stream that runs through the blooms. Traditional classrooms will be replaced by rooms filled with technology, where blackboards are substituted by huge screens. Artificial intelligence is our teacher, transforming into famous scientists, mathematicians, philosophers and writers from history as well as professors from countries far away. There are no longer any tests or examinations because a machine will be able to read students' minds and see how much knowledge they have and remember. Write to Win (Round 2): Describe your dream bedroom Seoul: I think due to the development of artificial intelligence and technology, soon, instead of human teachers, robots will teach us. We might not even have school buildings. Instead, we will have to buy virtual reality goggles and attend school in that realm. The design and facilities of schools will also be much more advanced. Everyone will use tablets to take notes and exams. Maybe there will be a teleporter to transport our books from home to school, if we physically attend school. In tuck shops, there will be ice cream, ramen and other yummy treats. Students will get to order meals online, which is a lot more convenient. Wouldn't that be cool?
CNN
28-05-2025
- Business
- CNN
The forecast for the next five years: More deadly heat, more extreme weather
Global temperatures are forecast to reach record or near-record levels during the next five years, setting the stage for more deadly extreme weather, according to an annual report from two of the world's top meteorological agencies. There is now a 70% chance that global warming over the next five years will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius, Wednesday's report from the World Meteorological Organization and UK Met Office found. More than 1.5 degrees of global warming increases the risks of more severe impacts, including triggering tipping points in the climate system. Melting sea ice and glaciers could soon reach a point of no return, with dramatic implications for sea level rise, scientists have warned. There is an 80% chance that at least one year in the next five will be the warmest on record, the report suggests. It also for the first time raises the possibility, albeit remote, that one of those years will have an average temperature that is at least 2 degrees warmer than the era before humans began burning large amounts of planet-heating fossil fuels. It's an outcome with a 1% probability, forecasters said, but that 'non-zero' chance is significant, and mirrors how the odds of a 1.5-degree year have climbed during the past decade. 'We have just experienced the ten warmest years on record. Unfortunately, this WMO report provides no sign of respite over the coming years, and this means that there will be a growing negative impact on our economies, our daily lives, our ecosystems and our planet,' World Meteorological Organization Deputy Secretary-General Ko Barrett said in a statement. Global warming of 1.5 degrees would take the world one step further toward breaching the stretch goal of the Paris climate agreement, which many nations — particularly low-lying small island states — view as essential to their survival. The agreement calls for limiting warming to well below the 2-degree level over the long-term, though a single year at that mark would not break the pact's goal. Warming in the Arctic is expected to continue to dramatically outpace the rest of the world, with warming of more than 3.5 times the global average during the polar winter, Wednesday's report states. Along with melting ice sheets and rising sea levels, each fraction of a degree of warming translates to more frequent and intense extreme weather events such as heat waves and heavy rainfall. Last year was the hottest on record and marked the first calendar year to breach the Paris agreement's 1.5-degree limit. The past five years have featured worsening extremes around the world, from unprecedented heat waves to deadly inland flooding from rapidly intensifying hurricanes like Helene last year. The WMO and Met Office report includes findings from more than 200 projections from computer models run by 15 scientific institutes around the world. This group's past five-year forecasts have proven to be highly accurate on a global scale, the report noted, with less accuracy for predictions on more regional levels. CNN's Laura Paddison contributed to this report.
