Phys.org September 21, 2021
Ice loss from the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets was the largest contributor to sea level rise in recent decades. Adapting to the projected sea level rise that will have widespread effects in Australia and around the world due to ice sheet melt are so wide that developing ways for societies to adapt will be incredibly expensive and difficult. An international scientific collaboration known as the Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison Project (ISMIP6) is quantifying how much Antarctic ice sheets will contribute to sea level rise has identified basal melt, the melting of ice shelves from underneath, as the most significant driver of Antarctic ice loss. Despite the uncertainties due to due to major logistical challenges to gathering scientific observations, ISMIP6 has published a series of recent research papers. According to their findings even if the world met the Paris Agreement target of limiting global warming to 1.5℃ this century, land ice melt would cause global sea level rise of about 13cm by 2100, in the most optimistic scenario. It’s crucial that ice sheet models are improved, tested robustly against real-world observations, then integrated into the next generation of international climate models…read more.
The IPCC’s projections for global average sea level change in metres, relative to 1900. Credit: IPCC