Contribution of Antarctica to past and future sea-level rise
Top Cited Papers
- 30 March 2016
- journal article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in Nature
- Vol. 531 (7596), 591-597
- https://doi.org/10.1038/nature17145
Abstract
Polar temperatures over the last several million years have, at times, been slightly warmer than today, yet global mean sea level has been 6-9 metres higher as recently as the Last Interglacial (130,000 to 115,000 years ago) and possibly higher during the Pliocene epoch (about three million years ago). In both cases the Antarctic ice sheet has been implicated as the primary contributor, hinting at its future vulnerability. Here we use a model coupling ice sheet and climate dynamics-including previously underappreciated processes linking atmospheric warming with hydrofracturing of buttressing ice shelves and structural collapse of marine-terminating ice cliffs-that is calibrated against Pliocene and Last Interglacial sea-level estimates and applied to future greenhouse gas emission scenarios. Antarctica has the potential to contribute more than a metre of sea-level rise by 2100 and more than 15 metres by 2500, if emissions continue unabated. In this case atmospheric warming will soon become the dominant driver of ice loss, but prolonged ocean warming will delay its recovery for thousands of years.This publication has 77 references indexed in Scilit:
- Onset of deglacial warming in West Antarctica driven by local orbital forcingNature, 2013
- Ice sheet collapse following a prolonged period of stable sea level during the last interglacialNature Geoscience, 2013
- Dynamic behaviour of the East Antarctic ice sheet during Pliocene warmthNature Geoscience, 2013
- Eemian interglacial reconstructed from a Greenland folded ice coreNature, 2013
- World ocean heat content and thermosteric sea level change (0–2000 m), 1955–2010Geophysical Research Letters, 2012
- Antarctic ice-sheet loss driven by basal melting of ice shelvesNature, 2012
- The RCP greenhouse gas concentrations and their extensions from 1765 to 2300Climatic Change, 2011
- An updated Antarctic melt record through 2009 and its linkages to high‐latitude and tropical climate variabilityGeophysical Research Letters, 2009
- Warm ocean is eroding West Antarctic Ice SheetGeophysical Research Letters, 2004
- Glacier acceleration and thinning after ice shelf collapse in the Larsen B embayment, AntarcticaGeophysical Research Letters, 2004