As Greenland's ice melts, new research predicts even more severe sea-level rise.
The study came to a more dire conclusion than previous assessments, in part because it utilized a different approach to calculate ice loss.
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According to a new study published on Monday, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet might eventually raise global sea levels by at least 10 inches even if humans immediately quit burning the fossil fuels that are warming the world to dangerous levels.
The study, published in Nature Climate Change, focuses on what researchers call "committed" sea-level rise, a metric that accounts for past warming.
That approach contrasts with most previous research, which was based on computer modeling and expected significantly lower ice losses from the Greenland ice sheet. The most recent assessment from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for example, predicts a two to five-inch rise in sea level by 2100.
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The 10-inch increase anticipated in the current study, which does not provide a timescale, may be much higher if temperatures continue to rise, as they almost likely will, according to Jason Box, the paper's lead author, and a glaciologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.
(CNN) Greenland's widespread ice loss has locked in nearly a foot of future global sea level rise – and new research says there is no way to stop it, even if the world stopped emitting planet-warming gases today.
The study, published Monday in the journal Nature Climatic Change, discovered that no matter what climate warming scenarios are used, the overall ice loss from Greenland's ice sheet will result in at least 10 inches of sea level rise. That is roughly the amount that global seas have risen in the last century due to Greenland, Antarctica, and thermal expansion (when ocean water expands as it warms).
According to the main author Jason Box, a scientist with the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, sea level rise from melted ice will occur "independent of any probable future climate scenario this century." "Technically, this water is already beneath the bridge."
While the authors did not provide a timetable, they believe that sea levels will rise between now and the end of the century.
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