Download Seas could rise up to 1.6 meters by 2100: study

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/03/us-climate-arctic-idUSTRE7422YQ20110503
Seas could rise up to 1.6 meters by 2100: study
Tue, May 3 2011
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
OSLO | Tue May 3, 2011 12:04pm EDT
OSLO (Reuters) - Quickening climate change in the Arctic including a thaw of
Greenland's ice could raise world sea levels by up to 1.6 meters by 2100, an international
report showed on Tuesday.
Such a rise -- above most past scientific estimates -- would add to threats to coasts from
Bangladesh to Florida, low-lying Pacific islands and cities from London to Shanghai. It
would also, for instance, raise costs of building tsunami barriers in Japan.
"The past six years (until 2010) have been the warmest period ever recorded in the
Arctic," according to the Oslo-based Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme
(AMAP), which is backed by the eight-nation Arctic Council.
"In the future, global sea level is projected to rise by 0.9 meters (2ft 11in) to 1.6 meters
(5ft 3in) by 2100 and the loss of ice from Arctic glaciers, ice caps and the Greenland ice
sheet will make a substantial contribution," it said. The rises were projected from 1990
levels.
"Arctic glaciers, ice caps and the Greenland ice sheet contributed over 40 percent of the
global sea level rise of around 3 mm per year observed between 2003 and 2008," it said.
Foreign ministers from Arctic Council nations -- the United States, Russia, Canada,
Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway and Iceland -- are due to meet in Greenland on May
12. Warming in the Arctic is happening at about twice the world average.
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WORRYING
The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in its last
major report in 2007 that world sea levels were likely to rise by between 18 and 59 cm by
2100. Those numbers did not include a possible acceleration of a thaw in Polar Regions.
"It is worrying that the most recent science points to much higher sea level rise than we
have been expecting until now," European Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard told
Reuters.
"The study is yet another reminder of how pressing it has become to tackle climate
change, although this urgency is not always evident neither in the public debate nor from
the pace in the international negotiations," she said.
U.N. talks on a global pact to combat climate change are making sluggish progress. The
United Nations says national promises to limit greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from
burning fossil fuels, are insufficient to avoid dangerous changes.
The AMAP study, drawing on work by hundreds of experts, said there were signs that
warming was accelerating. It said the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice free in summers
within 30 to 40 years, earlier than projected by the IPCC.
As reflective ice and snow shrink, they expose ever bigger areas of darker water or soil.
Those dark regions soak up ever more heat from the sun, in turn stoking a melt of the
remaining ice and snow.
"There is evidence that two components of the Arctic cryosphere -- snow and sea ice -are interacting with the climate system to accelerate warming," it said.
The AMAP report was due for release on Wednesday but AMAP officials released it a
day early after advance media leaks.
(Additional reporting by Pete Harrison in Brussels; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
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