Sea levels may rise by 9 inches this century, scientists warn

Steve Connor | July 20

The Independent - The melting of mountain glaciers and ice caps as a result of global warming over the next century is likely to cause bigger than expected increases in sea levels.

An assessment of the volume of water running into the oceans from melting ice caps suggests that sea levels could rise by two to three times the amount previously expected from this source. The study used satellite monitoring to assess the contribution to sea levels made by all land-based ice, except for the two continental-sized ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica.

It found that the volume of water melting into the sea each year from glaciers and ice caps was 100 cubic miles (417 cubic km), which is almost equal in size to the amount of water in Lake Erie. However, this volume of meltwater is increasing by a further three cubic miles each year because of an acceleration in the rate at which ice caps and glaciers are melting, said Professor Mark Meier, of the University of Colorado. "One reason for doing this study is the widely held view that the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets will be the principal cause of sea-level rise," Professor Meier said. "But we show that it is the glaciers and ice caps, not the two large ice sheets, that will be the big players in the sea rise for at least the next few generations."

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimated that melting ice caps and glaciers will add about three inches (7.6cm) to sea levels this century. But the latest assessment, published in the journal Science, suggests they are more likely to add between four inches and 9.5 inches to global sea levels.

Raja July 21, 2007 - 11:21am

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( categories: News | Environment )

Two months of rain in just one day

· Met Office: deluge in south is worst in living memory
· Battered north braced for more as front advances

The Guardian, Fred Attewill, Martin Wainwright & Riazat Butt, July 21

Some of the heaviest rainfall in living memory deluged southern Britain yesterday, inundating places with up to one sixth of their entire annual rainfall in less than 24 hours.

Downpours knocked out satellite communications, cut power, forced schools and homes to be evacuated, and badly disrupted roads and railways.

Emergency services were severely stretched, while one wedding party was last night preparing to bed down in a church after they were surrounded by rapidly rising floodwaters.

London saw its luck run out after having avoided the worst of the recent downpours, while north-east England, parts of which are still suffering from June's monsoon conditions, braced itself for more damage as the rain moved north.

The wettest part of the UK was Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, which received 121.2mm of rain from midnight Thursday until 5pm yesterday - three times its average rainfall for July and a sixth of what it would expect for the whole year.

Steve Randall, a forecaster for the Met Office, said: "I've never seen anything like it, and I've been in the Met Office for 34 years. It's an extraordinary amount, more like you would expect in a tropical rainforest."

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Raja July 21, 2007 - 11:23am

9 inches in a century equals 1/10 inch a year

To put things in perspective, 9 inches over the next century works out to just under an inch every ten years, or about 1/10th of an inch every year. Which is certainly not very much, and in fact is less than the normal rise and fall due to tides. You'd have to look very, very closely and pay attention over some decades before you'd even notice that little. It's certainly not enough to make much of a serious impact on the planet. I'm not a global warming denier, not by any means, and have been aware of it for many years now. But these latest figures are no cause for alarm, and in fact are rather reassuring.

jonbrown July 21, 2007 - 1:22pm

Yes...

But according to the article, the 4.5 - 9 inches is only from "ice caps and glaciers" and not from Greenland or Antarctica. Considerably more could be added from these sources. Warming of the oceans will also contribute some. This is on top of the tidal cycles.

The real point of the article is that the IPCC predictions were very conservative.

"End of the century" is potentially within the lifetimes of our grandchildren - so yes - plenty of time to adapt to this aspect. I would counsel them not to buy beachfront property, though.

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Raja July 22, 2007 - 7:59am

Study: Glaciers contributing more to rising seas

Reuters, July 19
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Don't worry too much, for now, about rising seas caused by melting ice in Greenland and Antarctica. The big threat this century could come from small thawing glaciers, researchers reported Thursday.

Even though these glaciers contain only 1 percent of the water tied up in the great ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland, they could account for 60 percent of an anticipated rise in the world's sea level by the year 2100.

Sea-level rise is seen as a key consequence of global warming, and much of the concern has focused on the big ice sheets that contain the vast majority of the world's ice.

Researchers writing in the online journal Science Express estimate melting glaciers, which are located all over the globe including in the tropics, could add between 4 and 10 inches to world sea level this century.

While this may not sound like much, consider that some 100 million people live within 3.3 vertical feet of sea level, said Mark Meier of the University of Colorado-Boulder, a lead author of the study.

"If we had almost a foot (of sea-level rise) just due to the small glaciers, add that to the amount due to the ice sheets, which could be appreciable by 2100, and add to that the ocean warming which will cause it to expand in volume, then we get a rise that we can't ignore," Meier said in a telephone interview.

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Raja July 24, 2007 - 10:55am

Brace yourself for more than a storm in a British teacup

Torrential rain has struck again, this time across the heart of England, with inshore lifeboats launched and chaos on the roads and railways. But the sodden summer of 2007 is no blip on the chart – flooding is predicted to increase tenfold in the years ahead.

The Independent, By David Randall & Geoffrey Lean, July 22

Air-sea rescue helicopters scrambled to save people in land-locked Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, 16 severe flood warnings in force, rising rivers threatening the Thames Valley, rail services suspended in the Midlands, the M50 closed, four A roads paralysed, thousands spending the night in emergency centres ... the summer of 2007 continues. Russia doesn't get this much disruption most winters.

With up to three times the monthly July rain coming in 24 hours in some places, the impact was so bad that rescue operations in Worcestershire needed the assistance of lifeboat crews. And in the Gloucester, Evesham and Tewkesbury areas, more than 100 people were rescued from floodwaters by helicopter.

[...]

The twin torrents sharply substantiate an inconvenient truth – that monsoon-like downpours are becoming ever more common in Britain as global warming takes hold. Newcastle University research has found that rainstorms have become twice as intense since the 1960s, and that the most severe ones happen four times more frequently.

Some parts of Britain, the research shows, now regularly receive almost a foot of rainfall over just 10 days – the sort of drenching experienced in the Indian monsoon. The east of Scotland is worst hit; but the whole of Scotland and north-west England have been having at least one ferocious deluge a year. The Environment Agency says days with heavy rainfall will become three to four times more common over the next decades, increasing flooding tenfold.

Three factors lead to more storms as the world warms up. As it gets hotter, more energy is injected into the climate. There is also a greater contrast between the land and the sea (which heats up more slowly), producing stronger winds and greater instability. And more water evaporates from warmer seas – to come down as heavier rainfall.

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Raja July 22, 2007 - 12:10pm

England under water: scientists confirm global warming link...

England under water: scientists confirm global warming link to increased rain

The Independent, By Michael McCarthy, July 23

It's official: the heavier rainfall in Britain is being caused by climate change, a major new scientific study will reveal this week, as the country reels from summer downpours of unprecedented ferocity.

More intense rainstorms across parts of the northern hemisphere are being generated by man-made global warming, the study has established for the first time an effect which has long been predicted but never before proved.

The study's findings will be all the more dramatic for being disclosed as Britain struggles to recover from the phenomenal drenching of the past few days, during which more than a month's worth of rain fell in a few hours in some places, and floods forced thousands from their homes.

The "major rainfall event" of last Friday fully predicted as such by the Met Office has given the country a quite exceptional battering, with the Thames still rising. In Gloucester water levels had reached 34 feet, just 12 inches below flood defences the same level as during the flood of 1947 although a police spokesman said last night that the River Severn had stopped rising.

[...]

The study is being published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, and its details are under embargo and cannot be reported until then. But its main findings have caused a stir, and are being freely discussed by climate scientists in the Met Office, the Hadley Centre and the Department for Environment For Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

One source familiar with the study's conclusions said: "What this does is establish for the first time that there is a distinct 'human fingerprint' in the changes in precipitation patterns the increases in rainfall observed in the northern hemisphere mid-latitudes, which includes Britain.

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Raja July 23, 2007 - 7:55am

Water supply warning amid floods

· Households face two-week wait for tap water
· Thames and Severn rivers set to rise further
· Emergency services battle to protect power supplies

Guardian Unlimited , James Sturcke, Matthew Weaver & agencies, July 23

More than 350,000 people are facing days without fresh water supplies and a clean-up operation lasting months as devastating floods this weekend left communities cut off across central and southern England.

Last night waters were still rising in several parts of the country as the Severn and Thames threatened to burst their banks in Gloucester and Oxford, bringing more chaos to a region where hundreds of people have been evacuated after downpours which began on Friday and swept the country over the weekend.

Today Hilary Benn, the environment secretary, will make an emergency statement to the Commons and Gordon Brown's first monthly press conference as prime minister is certain to be dominated by criticism about the speed of the response to the latest flooding. He is expected to visit flood affected areas this morning, though Downing Street declined to reveal exactly where he would go. In developments yesterday:...

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Raja July 23, 2007 - 7:59am

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Sea levels may rise by 9 inches this century, scientists warn

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