Global Warming and Sea-Level Rise
Name : Global Warming and Sea-Level Rise.
Category : Energy & Environment
Files Source: icecap.us
File Added : July 23, 2010
Size : 81,35 KB
Download : 512
This online pdf files created by Madhav Khandekar (Canada) Reprinted from Energy & Environment VOLUME 20 No. 7 2009. This paper talk about introduction new perspective on global warming & sea level rise, a brief historical perspective, recent studies, discussion, and concluding remarks.
Content Summary :
“The topic of Sea Level Rise (SLR) on regional and global scale and its possible linkage to the present and future warming of the earth’s surface is perhaps the most intensely debated issue on climate change at present. A recent Google search shows an astounding 1.8 M listings on global warming & sea level rise issue. Many articles in national & international news papers, popular scientific magazines as well as in scientific journals discuss the possibility of SLR as high as 3 to 7 m as a result of melting of Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets due to warming of the earth’s surface by 3C or more in the next 100 years. In a recent comprehensive paper (Wunsch et al 2007), the lead author Prof (emeritus) Carl Wunsch states: ‘modern sea level rise is a matter of urgent concern from a variety of points of view, but especially because of the possibility of its acceleration and consequent threats to many low-lying parts of the inhabited world’. Recent satellite altimetric data by the TOPEX/Poseidon satellite (Leuliette 2004) suggest that since about 1993, global SLR has been rising at a rate of 2.8 +/? 0.4 mm per year and this has raised the possibility of “accelerated SLR due to significant melting of high-latitude Ice Sheets” The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) in its 1995 climate change documents estimated SLR of about 50 cm by 2100. In the 2001 climate change documents the IPCC revised this estimate to about 37 cm. In the most recent IPCC assessment, Meehl (2007) projects SLR to be between 14 and 43 cm (with a mean value of 29 cm) by 2100 under the A1B (greenhouse gas) emission scenario in which the earth’s mean temperature is projected to rise between 2.3C and 4.1C by 2100. In view of the large disparities between these estimates and between the estimates of the ongoing rate of rise and the projections for the future, it is the purpose of this article to take a closer look at some of the recent studies to determine the best possible value of SLR for the next 50 to 100 years.”………Download for more information!!
