Monday 14 December 2015

Europe Under Water


It seems churlish to disparage the deal cut in Paris at COP21 even if one feels that it doesn't go far enough, that governments can't be trusted to meet targets they've agreed, that too much faith is being put in Geo-engineering, carbon sequestration and nuclear power, that... there's plenty of critique out there. It's fair to sat that it's much better than it could have been, which is not to say that it's enough.

Here's James Hansen et al from the controversial paper 'Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations that 2 C global warming is highly dangerous' in  the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
 [Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss., 15, 20059-20179, 2015
www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/15/20059/2015/
doi:10.5194/acpd-15-20059-2015]:


'Humanity faces near certainty of eventual sea level rise of at least Eemian proportions, 5–9 m, if fossil fuel emissions continue on a business-as-usual course, e.g., IPCC scenario A1B that has CO2 700 ppm in 2100 (Fig. S21). It is unlikely that coastal cities or low-lying areas such as Bangladesh, European lowlands, and large portions of the United States eastern coast and northeast China plains (Fig. S22) could be protected against such large sea level rise.

Rapid large sea level rise may begin sooner than generally assumed. Amplifying feedbacks, including slowdown of SMOC and cooling of the near-Antarctic ocean surface with increasing sea ice, may spur nonlinear growth of Antarctic ice sheet mass loss. Deep submarine valleys in West Antarctica and the Wilkes Basin of East Antarctica, each with access to ice amounting to several meters of sea level, provide gateways to the ocean. If the Southern Ocean forcing (subsurface warming) of the Antarctic ice sheets  continues  to  grow,  it  likely  will  become  impossible  to  avoid  sea  level  rise  of several meters, with the largest uncertainty being how rapidly it will occur.'




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