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Africa
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Coastal Erosion and Shoreline Change
Published in Yeqiao Wang, Coastal and Marine Environments, 2020
World eustatic sea level will be 30 cm or 1 ft higher a century from now if the present rise of 3 mm/yr continues unchanged. There is a growing scientific consensus based on improved observational methods that the Greenland ice sheet—which would raise sea level by 7 m (more than 20 ft) if completely melted—is melting at an accelerating rate. It is unlikely that the entire ice sheet will melt within the next century; however, continued acceleration of the ice sheet’s shrinkage could easily raise sea level by 1 to 2 m (3–6 ft) by 2100.[12] This scenario would expose all coastlines to the rate of submergence now seen only in Louisiana and a handful of other places where local relative sea level rise has been dramatically accelerated by humans.
Global Climate Change: Earth System Response
Published in Brian D. Fath, Sven E. Jørgensen, Megan Cole, Managing Air Quality and Energy Systems, 2020
Amanda Staudt, Nathan E. Hultman
Finally, several elements of Earth’s system seem to be vulnerable to rapid destabilization. For example, the West Antarctic ice sheet and the Greenland ice sheet may be more prone to rapid melting than previously thought, and the loss of either of these would result in a large sea-level rise greater than 5 m. Moreover, the stability of the oceanic circulation that brings heat to Northern Europe has also been questioned. Because of feedback processes and the large uncertainty in system sensitivity, these outcomes are not easy to model and are usually not included in the gradual climate change projections quoted above. Nevertheless, they are nontrivial threats and represent active areas of current research.
Ocean Climate Changes
Published in Donat-P. Häder, Kunshan Gao, Aquatic Ecosystems in a Changing Climate, 2018
Increasing temperatures lead to melting of ice and snow cover resulting in sea-level rise (Nicholls and Cazenave 2010) . During the last 500 years the sea -level has undergone substantial changes of up to 400 m (about 450 million years ago). Between 1870 and 2009 the measured increase of the mean sea-level was about 25 cm. Predictions for the future include melting glaciers and ice sheets, thermal expansion of the water and altered water storage on land. The melting Arctic ice does not significantly contribute to sea-level rise since it is floating. But the glaciers in Greenland, South America and the European Alps contribute a significant amount of water to the oceans (Meier et al. 2007). The velocity of ice loss from glaciers south of 72° N has been found to double since the 1990s resulting in a sea-level rise of more than 0.25 mm per year (Rignot and Kanagaratnam 2006). Model calculations predict that melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet will contribute 0.1–0.3 m to the global sea-level rise (Vasskog et al. 2015). Currently, it contributes about 43% to the sea-level rise (Noël et al. 2017). While the rising temperatures affect the Antarctic Peninsula and lead to break-offs of shelf ice, the ice cover on the continent does not show significant melting. In addition to ice melting, the rising temperatures result in an expansion of the surface waters, contributing significantly to sea-level rise. Both factors—melting ice and thermal expansion resulted in a rise of 3 ± 0.7 mm per year in the period between 1883 and 2010 and a continuation of this trend at the current pace will cause a 30 cm higher water level by the end of the current century (Hay et al. 2015). The predictions have a high degree of uncertainty. Depending on the assumed scenario the mean sea-level will rise by 75, 85 or 130 cm by the year 2150 (Fig. 3.5).
Scrambled systems: the (im)mobilities of ‘storm Desmond’
Published in Mobilities, 2018
Global sea-level rise will exceed one metre this century. Yet even a one metre rise in sea-levels will lead to a large increase in the probability of disastrous floods, regularly overwhelming defences even in richer countries (Wadhams 2016, 119). If the Greenland Ice Sheet melted, scientists estimate that sea level would rise about 6 m. If the Antarctic Ice Sheet melted, sea level would rise by about 60 m (Alley et al. 2005). Climate change processes thus create globally shared predicaments with disparate human collectives ultimately ‘in the same boat’ (Chakrabarty 2016) – even though risk is highly unevenly distributed, both between and within communities, and always patterned according to local circumstance.