14 DAY TRIAL // An international team of researchers have just finished compiling data concerning how an increase in global temperatures will affect sea levels, and the conclusions they've reached are startling, to say the least.
Not to beat about the bush, it appears that global sea levels could up about 2.3 meters (7.5 feet) every time our planet gets just one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer.
In a paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this July 15, the scientists stress that, in order for sea levels to increase to such an extent, that one extra degree Celsius would have to stick around for centuries to come.
Otherwise put, sea level rise and the reshaping of coastlines worldwide will not take place overnight. They will nonetheless occur, Science News explains.
The major contributors to this phenomenon will be the melting of the glaciers, the melting of the Greenland and of the Antarctic ice sheets, and the expansion of the ocean under the influence of warmer temperatures.
Paleoclimatologist Peter Clark, now working with the Oregon State University, says that, “Keep in mind that the sea level rise projected by these models of 2.3 meters per degree of warming is over thousands of years.”
“If it warms a degree in the next two years, sea levels won't necessarily rise immediately. The Earth has to warm and hold that increased temperature over time,” he further details on his and his colleagues’ findings.
The researchers who carried out this investigation maintain that, even if drastic measures to curb carbon pollution are implemented with no delay, global temperatures will probably continue to increase in the years to come.
They say that this is because the carbon dioxide that has already made it into our planet's atmosphere will take thousands of years to disappear.
Meanwhile, it will continue influencing global weather patterns.
“However, carbon dioxide has a very long time scale and the amounts we've emitted into the atmosphere will stay up there for thousands of years. Even if we were to reduce emissions, the sea-level commitment of global warming will be significant,” researcher Peter Clark argues.