What, Again? Sea Level Will Continue Rising for Centuries

Summary: This series of three posts tabulates important findings from the six Assessment Reports (ARs) that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released since 1990.  The first post, “What, Again? Greenhouse Gases Accumulate in the Atmosphere, presents past greenhouse gas (GHG) emission rates and future emission scenarios in the ARs, and presents principles in the ARs to keep accumulated GHG levels to as low a level as possible.

The second post, “What, Again? Global Warming Continues Unabated” summarizes the effects of higher GHGs on past and future projected global temperatures, and reiterates the need conveyed in the ARs to constrain GHG emissions by decarbonizing the energy economy. 

This third post reviews specifically the effects of warming on our water environment: melting ice domains and rising seas, and extremes of precipitation or droughts. The six ARs warn humanity to bring future GHG emissions to near zero; but sea level rise (SLR) is distinguished because melting of ice has passed a threshold of irreversibility: SLR will continue for centuries or longer.

Some may feel this series repeats refrains, looping like broken records; such people may suffer from “climate fatigue”.  Humanity, however, has not responded to the worsening climate documented in the AR series. The critical, dire climate projections summarized in these posts provide powerful incentives finally to take meaningful action at this time.

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The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the first of the three parts of its Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) in August 2021.  ARs have been issued at intervals of 6-7 years since 1990. They document the history of the annual rate of global emissions of the principal GHGs, arising from human activity, and of the total amount of GHGs accumulated in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution began.  Using climate models and a range of scenarios of GHG emission rates from relaxed to stringent they present projections for each scenario of future climate characteristics and effects to the end of this century.  They also discuss general goals (but not specific actions) for limiting future emission rates.

The results and projections presented in ARs 1-6 are broadly consistent with each other across the AR series, but have greater specificity and stronger assessments of likelihood as the series progresses.  All the ARs have stated the need to limit further accumulation of GHGs in the atmosphere in order to minimize the effects of global warming on Earth’s climate.  The faster that emission rates are reduced toward zero, the lower will be the total accumulation of GHGs in the atmosphere.  The cartoon below of two cars traveling down the GHG highway captures this message.

Two cars travelled down the GHG Highway.  Each applied brakes at the same point. On the red trip the brakes were applied gently (a metaphor for moderate GHG mitigation measures), so the car travelled far down the highway before stopping, leading to more GHG emissions accumulating in the atmosphere. (Stopping is a metaphor for ceasing to emit any more GHGs.) On the green trip the brakes were applied hard (a metaphor for intensive, aggressive mitigation measures), so the car traveled only a short distance down the highway before stopping, leading to less accumulated GHG emissions.

 

The topics selected for this post, tabulated below in the Details section, are Past Sea Level Rise (SLR) and precipitation (column 2), Projected Sea Level Rise and precipitation (column 3), and Recommended Actions (column 4).  Column 2 in the table documents the greater severity (and the greater detail of the data) of melting of glaciers and ice sheets feeding SLR, as well as extreme precipitation events in the later ARs, across the 30 years that the ARs have been issued. Column 3 details projections for future SLR, which are projected to continue for centuries or millennia regardless of mitigation measures that may be applied in the future.  SLR has two contributions (first mentioned in column 3 of the table for the AR2 entry), the expansion of water of the oceans as its temperature rises, and addition of new water to the oceans as glaciers and ice sheets continue to melt. 

The second factor, melting of ice, has reached the stage of being irreversible because the Earth has warmed sufficiently.  A model for melting glaciers or ice sheets is presented in the graphic below:

The melting point of ice is 0°C.  At or below this temperature an ice cube in your refrigerator is stable, and does not melt.  Even a little above this melting point, say at 1°C, the ice cube begins to melt slowly and forms a small puddle as shown.  At 2°C the model shows even more melting, yielding a smaller ice cube and a larger puddle.  Now suppose the refrigerator cools back down to less than 0°C.  The water in the puddles is not magically restored to the remaining mass of the ice cube, but freezes in place.

 

Extending the above model and its description to nature, the melted water flows away and ultimately drains into the ocean.  The glacier or ice sheet will be restored only if the year-round average temperature is less than 0°C and there is new precipitation as ice or snow.  But enough GHGs have already entered Earth’s atmosphere to warm the air over glaciers and ice sheets, tilting the balance toward net melting, assessed year-round.  This is why climate projections in column 3 of the table below foresee continued SLR for hundreds or thousands of years even if a way is ultimately found to remove accumulated GHGs from the atmosphere. For melting ice sheets and glaciers the “tipping point” has already been reached, and is irreversible on time scales of interest to humans.

The Recommended Actions summarized in column 4 of the table emphasize the need for significant lowering of the rate of emissions of GHGs, coupled with adaptation measures to address aspects of warming that cannot be remedied by mitigation.  This need was presented already in AR1 (1990), saying that immediate 60% reductions in emission rates …would stabilize atmospheric GHGs at the then current level.  In one way or another analogous remedies were presented in the succeeding ARs.  By AR6 (2021) the table’s summary urges substantial emissions reductions over the next few decades to reduce longer term climate risks.  Even so the AR warns with high confidence that warming by 2100 will lead to a high risk of severe, widespread and irreversible impacts, including flooding, droughts and continued SLR.

Whereas the need to reduce emissions was expressed as early as AR1 and extends up to the present in AR6, the strength of climate science underpinning those conclusions has increased dramatically over time.  The capabilities of gathering data and using more powerful computers to analyze them, and to develop more refined, detailed climate models have all increased dramatically.  (Incidentally the Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded October 5, 2021, recognized the development of early climate models.  These have served as the foundation for today’s highly refined models.)

Recent ARs reflect this enhancement in data gathering and climate modeling.  For example  the current first part of AR6 was compiled by 234 climate scientists chosen from the nations of the IPCC.  They reviewed over 14,000 research articles published since AR5.  Drafts of the chapters in AR6 were reviewed by other scientists as well as by national governments and revised accordingly.  We can feel assured that the final text represents scientific and political consensus views.

Conclusion

Column 4, “Recommended Actions” in the table shown in the Details section summarizes the increasing urgency of acting to reduce annual emission rates to near zero as the AR series progresses.

Indeed, actual extreme weather and climate events have become the subjects of frequent current headlines, documenting actual heat waves and droughts, famine, uncontrolled wildfires, intense precipitation events and flooding, and melting of glaciers and ice sheets leading to sea level rise, effects that were only predicted in the early ARs.  Also, by AR6 the science of attribution of extreme climate events has progressed dramatically, and permits ascribing the severity, if not the actual occurrence or not, of events to the effects of human-induced global warming.

Early action such as recommended in earlier ARs could have been taken at moderate levels of effort and expense (“Gentle Braking” in the first graphic above) to avert future, if not yet apparent, climate hazards.  But policymakers around the globe did not seize these opportunities to anywhere near the needed extent.  By 2021 such extreme events are now current, requiring immediate action.  Necessarily these current actions must be far more aggressive, pervasive and costly (“Hard Braking” in the graphic) in order to deal with a warming Earth approaching criticality.  They also require fundamental and comprehensive changes in social and cultural approaches to adapt to the consequences of warming.

Unequivocally we must encourage our political, corporate and civic leaders to embark on bold, comprehensive actions without further delay.

Details

This writer collated the entries in the following table from either the Summary for Policymakers, a “Headline” document or a press release, all issued by the IPCC in conjunction with each AR.  The entries are necessarily selective rather than comprehensive, and have been edited for brevity.

EVALUATIONS OF SEA LEVEL RISE AND PRECIPITATION IN IPCC ASSESSMENT REPORTS

© 2021 Henry Auer

The Earth Continues Warming: The Fourth National Climate Assessment Draft Report

Summary

A draft of the Fourth National Climate Assessment reports that the global average temperature for the 30-year period from 1986 to 2016 rose by 1.2°F (0.7°C). It is extremely likely that activities by humans have been the principal cause of this warming. Extreme temperature and rainfall events have increased over this time, as have forest wildfires.
 

Arctic land-based ice has been lost to melting, and the extent and thickness of sea ice has decreased.  The mean sea level has risen about 7-8 in (about 26-21 cm) since 1900.  Ocean waters have taken up 93% of the excess heat of the Earth system due to global warming since the 1950s.
 

Global greenhouse gas emissions are projected to continue and consequently global temperatures will continue increasing and related trends will continue.  Limits to the intended increase require that humanity reduce annual emissions to zero by 2100. 
 

The draft states “Choices made today will determine the magnitude of climate change risks beyond the next few decades.”

The Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA) is due in 2018 (See Background at the end of this post).  However the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), which oversees preparation of the NCA, has prepared a Final Draft of a Climate Science Special Report (CSSR; see Note 1 at the end of the post) that has become publicly available as a freestanding document on which the actual NCA will be based.
 

This post is based on the CSSR Executive Summary (ES).  Confidence levels and likelihoods given here in italics are taken directly from the ES.  They are carefully defined in the CSSR.  Phrases in quotes are taken verbatim from the CSSR text.

The Historical Record

The global average temperature has risen above the average for the six decades 1901-1960 by 1.2°F (0.7°C) for the recent period from 1986 to 2016 (very high confidence). The map below shows temperature increases gridded across the globe.

Color-coded global map grid of historical changes in the average temperature for the period 1986-2016 relative to the average from the six-decade reference period 1901-1960, in °F. No data are available at the poles, indicated by gray.
Source: CSSR; https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/climate/document-Draft-of-the-Climate-Science-Special-Report.html.

 

The map shows that since the reference decades the entire surface of the planet, both land and sea, has increased in regional average temperature.  The greatest increase has occurred in Canada (especially in the northern and Arctic regions), Alaska, Siberia, northeastern China and eastern Brazil. Indeed, the Arctic is warming about twice as fast as the global average.

It is extremely likely that activities by humans have been the “dominant” cause of the warming observed since the middle of the 20^th century.  No alternatives, such as the cyclical changes in solar energy reaching the Earth or variations in natural planetary factors, can explain the observed climate changes (very high confidence).

Extreme climate-related weather events have increased in number and severity.  Since 1980 the cost of such calamities in the U. S. is over US$1 trillion. Extreme events can impact water quality, agriculture, human health, infrastructure, and lead to disaster events.  In the U. S. the number of high temperature records in the past 20 years is much higher than the number of low temperature records (very high confidence).

Heavy precipitation events in most regions of the U. S. have increased in intensity and frequency since 1901, especially in the northeast. (high confidence). 

The occurrence of large forest wildfires has increased in the U. S. West and Alaska since the early 1980s (high confidence). 

The waters of the oceans have absorbed about 93% of the heat accumulating in the Earth system due to global warming since the 1950s (very high confidence).  This affects climate patterns around the world.

In the Arctic, ice sheets overlaying land have been melting for at least the last three decades; in some locations the rate of loss is accelerating (very high confidence).    The rate of melting of ice sheets over Greenland has accelerated in the last few years (high confidence).  As this ice melts the water flows to the ocean, resulting in a net increase of sea level.

Arctic sea ice has been imaged since satellite flights permitted. The sea ice floats on the Arctic Ocean; its area expands and contracts in freeze-thaw seasonal cycles without any net change to global sea levels.  Rather, the extent responds to changes in air and sea temperatures.  The least extent, i.e., the most melting, occurs typically in September.  Striking images showing the loss of September sea ice from 1984 to 2016, both in thickness (color coded white as having been formed at least four years earlier) and in overall surface area, are shown in the images below:

Satellite images of Arctic sea ice extent and thickness in September, for 1984 (top) and 2016 (bottom).  The color bar shows the local age of the ice in years, a proxy for its thickness, from recent (dark gray) to more than 4 years (white).
Source: Adapted from CSSR; https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/climate/document-Draft-of-the-Climate-Science-Special-Report.html.

 

Sea ice thickness has decreased by between 4.3 and 7.5 feet.  September sea ice extent has decreased by 10.7% to 15.9% per decade (very high confidence).  These changes reflect warming of the Arctic region over this time frame.  It is virtually certain that human activity has contributed to Arctic surface temperature increases, sea ice loss, glacier mass loss and snow extent decline seen across the Arctic (very high confidence).

The mean sea level has risen about 7-8 in (about 26-21 cm) since 1900 (very high confidence).  This is attributed “substantially” to human-induced climate change (high confidence).  The rate of sea level rise is greater than any found in the last 2,800 years (medium confidence).

Ocean waters are absorbing more than 25% of the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels.  Carbon dioxide is weakly acidic when dissolved in water, increasing its acidity (very high confidence).  This negatively impacts marine ecosystems in many important ways.

Projected Future Climate Trends

 

Extreme climate-related weather events will continue for many decades.

By the end of the 21^st century if the world generates significant reductions in greenhouse gases the global average temperature increase could be limited to 3.6°F (2.0°C) or less. This would require a pathway of annual GHG emissions reaching near zero by then.  In contrast, minimal constraints on the annual emissions rate could result in a rise of 5.8-11.9°F (3.2-6.6°C) (high confidence).

Even if the annual rate of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were to fall to zero, the high burden of GHGs already accumulated in the atmosphere would persist for a long time.  The CSSR foresees that even in this event the global average temperature would rise further (high confidence), perhaps by an additional 1.1°F (0.6°C) (medium confidence).

But realistic projections all foresee continued GHG emissions into the future.  U. S. temperatures will continue to rise (very high confidence); new records for high temperatures will be frequent (virtually certain).  Temperatures by the end of this century will be much higher than the present (high confidence).
Heavy precipitation events are projected to continue increasing over the 21^st century (high confidence).  In the western U. S., large reductions in mountain snowpack, and more precipitation falling as rain rather than snow, are projected as the climate warms (high confidence). These trends are attributed to human activity (high confidence).  They will likely worsen considerably as the climate warms (very high confidence).  In the absence of reductions in emission rates long-duration hydrological drought, due to decreased retention of soil moisture, becomes more likely by the end of the century (very high confidence).

Further warming is projected to lead to increases in wildfires (medium confidence).

 

If GHG emission rates continue unconstrained, the average sea surface temperature is projected to increase about 4.9°F (about 2.7°C) by 2100 (very high confidence).

The mean sea level will continue increasing, to varying extents depending on future emission rates, by at least 1 ft (30 cm; very high confidence) and as much as 4 ft (130 cm; low confidence) by 2100.  If the Antarctic ice shelf is lost due to high emission rates the upper bound could be as high as 8 ft (260 cm).  It is extremely likely that sea level will continue rising beyond 2100 (high confidence) as ice continues melting.

Further loss in Arctic sea ice will continue throughout the 21^st century, very likely resulting in a virtually ice-free ocean by the 2040s (very high confidence).

Conclusions of the CSSR

 

Limiting the total global average temperature increase to 3.6°F (2.0°C), or less, from a 19^th century baseline will require significant constraints on future GHG emission rates. Even though annual emission rates decreased slightly in 2014 and 2015, they are still too high to meet commitments that nations made upon entering the 2015 Paris Agreement (high confidence).  Indeed, present and projected emission rates would bring the atmospheric level of GHGs to levels so high that they have not occurred for at least the last 50 million years (medium confidence).

New carbon dioxide released “today” is long-lived, persisting in the atmosphere for decades to thousands of years. Therefore it’s important to note that the relationship between total atmospheric CO₂ concentration and the increase in global temperature is a linear one. 

The ES states “Choices made today will determine the magnitude of climate change risks beyond the next few decades.  Stabilizing global mean temperature below 3.6°F (2°C) or lower relative to preindustrial levels requires significant reductions in …CO₂ emissions…before 2040 and likely requires net emissions to become zero….”  If humanity continues emitting GHGs at rates higher than called for here we would reach the 3.6°F limit only two decades from now, with further temperature increases later.

Finally, changes that are unanticipated or difficult or impossible to manage, may arise during the next century.  Examples are complex (or simultaneously occurring) phenomena, and self-reinforcing changes (positive feedbacks).  Such occurrences would accelerate the world’s changes to points beyond the accepted CO₂ temperature limits.

Analysis

Issuance of this NCA is mandated by an act of Congress.  It is important that this Final Draft, the CSSR, continue on its bureaucratic trajectory and be issued on schedule in 2018.  Yet some of the scientists contributing to the Draft hold positions in departments or agencies whose heads have expressed disdain or opposition to the phenomenon of global warming, the Paris Climate Agreement, have acted to reverse federal policies that limit extraction and use of fossil fuels, or have deleted pages concerning global warming from their agency’s websites.  They all work in an administration whose head has declared global warming to be a hoax. These situations potentially place the contributing scientists in conflicting positions.  Their work is commendable and should be supported.  The NCA should be issued without being altered, nor should it be suppressed.

[Update August 17, 2017: The science journal Nature has published a news article that discusses the CSSR and the political considerations facing the U. S. administration as it weighs issuing the Fourth NCA. Climate scientists are concerned about the fate of the Report. Nature notes that the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank that promotes skepticism about global warming, is consulting with the Environmental Protection Agency on this issue.]
 

This NCA is only the latest in a long series of reports detailing the reality of warming and specifying the harms that global warming and climate change cause to our planet.  In particular, it attributes the cause to human activity, including the burning of fossil fuels. 

We must all undertake to reduce emissions of GHGs in our personal lives, and support policies promoting reductions at the state, national and international levels.
 

Background

The U. S. Global Change Research Act of 1990 mandates preparation of assessments of global change every four years to “assist the nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change”.  It assesses the current state of scientific understanding of global change on the natural and human environments. Its tasks, however, do not include formulation of policies to address global warming.

Climate scientists and related specialists drawn from thirteen U. S. government departments and agencies (see Note 2 at the end of this post), as well as a large number of scientists in nongovernmental research facilities, prepared the CSSR and the NCA. They critically assessed peer-reviewed research and similar public sources, including primary datasets and recognized climate modeling frameworks.

 Notes

1.    USGCRP, 2017: Climate Science Special Report: A Sustained Assessment Activity of the U.S. Global Change Research Program [Wuebbles, D.J., D.W. Fahey, K.A. Hibbard, D.J. Dokken, B.C. Stewart, and T.K. Maycock (eds.)]. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, USA, 669 pp.

 

2.    The federal scientists involved in preparing the NCA and the CSSR are drawn from the:  

Department of Agriculture,

Department of Commerce (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration),

Department of Defense,

Department of Energy,

Department of Health and Human Services,

Department of the Interior,

Department of State,

Department of Transportation,

Environmental Protection Agency,

National Aeronautics and Space Administration,

National Science Foundation,

Smithsonian Institution, and

U.S. Agency for International Development.      

© 2017 Henry Auer