Extreme Sea Level Rise Goes Mainstream

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Take 100 of the world’s leading climate scientists. Have them work 20 state-of-the-art climate models. Include in those models the complex behavior of the Antarctic ozone hole and the most recent data on Antarctic ice loss. What do you get?

A prediction that sea ice around Antarctica could shrink 33 percent by 2100, causing a global sea level rise of 4.6 feet.

That’s a loss of one million square miles of ice, nearly equal to the size of India.

The predictions by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research are the first comprehensive review of Antarctic climate change over the long haul known as deep time.

Their analysis reveals that the ozone hole actually cooled Antarctica in the past 30 years by generating extreme winds that allowed sea ice to grow 10 percent.

(Which makes recent good news on the ozone hole recovery a distinctly mixed bag. Floods, or skin cancers/dying phytoplankton? Choose your plague.)

When the ozone hole heals by the end of the century or thereabouts, the authors warn, Antarctica will suffer the full brunt of global warming, with temperatures rising as much as 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

In 2007 the IPCC predicted sea level rise of between 8 and 23 inches by century’s end. Two years later, based on what’s melting now, predictions once considered too extreme to be realistic are now looking likely. 

(How much worse will things look two years from now?)

It’s interesting that this story has been all over the front pages of British newspaper websites and nowhere to be found on American. Instead, US news outlets are choosing to report as their big science story of the day a dubious study on the supposed contagiousness of loneliness. (New Scientist reminds us of a few other things supposedly contagious through social networks: acne, headaches, your height.)

If you’re wondering what a 4.6-foot sea level rise looks like, try this interactive Google flood map.
 

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate