• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing January 23, 2023
Extreme Warming Ahead Even as Worst-Case Scenarios Grow ‘Obsolete’ January 23, 2023
Notley Scorches Federal Just Transition Bill as Fossil CEO Calls for Oilsands Boom January 23, 2023
IRON OXIDE: New Battery Brings Long-Duration Storage to Grids, 750 Jobs to West Virginia January 23, 2023
BREAKING: GFANZ Banks, Investors Pour Hundreds of Billions into Fossil Fuels January 17, 2023
Next
Prev

Prehistoric alert for future sea level

January 22, 2017
Reading time: 3 minutes
Primary Author: Tim Radford

 

Warning for coastal cities as research shows that it is 120,000 years since the global sea level was substantially higher than it is now.

LONDON, 22 January, 2017 – The prehistoric past may have just delivered an ominous warning for the future. Around 120,000 years ago, global average temperatures were roughly the same as they are now − and the global mean sea level was at least six metres and possibly nine metres higher than at present.

  • Concise headlines. Original content. Timely news and views from a select group of opinion leaders. Special extras.
  • Everything you need, nothing you don’t.
  • The Weekender: The climate news you need.
New!
Subscribe

If that sea level was replicated, it would be enough to drown much of New York, London, Miami, Shanghai, Amsterdam or any other great coastal city.

At the last count, 634 million people were living at sea level or no higher than 10 metres above it, on the coastal plains of Bangladesh, China, Guyana, Egypt, Vietnam, Gambia, Netherlands, the Nile delta and many more areas.

But it is not certain that prehistory will repeat itself: what happened during a warm spell in the last Ice Age is at the moment no more than a guide to what could happen in centuries to come.

Jeremy Hoffman, doctoral geology student at Oregon State University’s College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences in the US, and colleagues report in Science journal that they compiled more than 100 bits of evidence from more than 80 samples of marine sediments.

Sea surface temperatures

They used them to reconstruct what sea surface temperatures would have been during what climate scientists call the Last Interglacial between 129,000 to 116,000 years ago, a warm spell before the snows and glaciers returned.

During this mellow episode, the hippopotamus wallowed in what is now the River Thames, and hyenas prowled the forests where London now stands.

The Oregon scientists then compared their findings with global data from the period 1870 to 1889, and from 1995 to 2014.

When the Last Interglacial began, temperatures were pretty much the same as those of the world late in the 19th century. A few thousand years later, they had climbed by around 0.5°C, to reach a temperature indistinguishable from today’s global average.

“The study suggests that, in the long term,
sea level will rise six metres at least
in response to the warming we are causing”

The research is a test of climate simulation models, and a guide to what might follow today’s global warming, which itself is driven by prodigal human combustion of fossil fuels over the last 200 years.

The Arctic now is warming faster than the rest of the world, and sea levels are creeping up, but the world’s great cities are unlikely to be flooded in the near future.

Other scientists have welcomed the study. Andrew Watson, Royal Society research professor at the University of Exeter in the UK, says: “Sea level responds directly to global temperatures, but slowly, so that the full extent of sea level rise will only be apparent over thousands of years.

“The study suggests that, in the long term, sea level will rise six metres at least in response to the warming we are causing.

“The good news is that, with luck, it will continue to rise slowly, so that we have time to adapt, but the bad news is that eventually all our present coastal city locations will be inundated.”

Melting of glaciers

And Jeffrey Kargel, adjunct professor of hydrology and atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona, US, says: “One clear implication is that there is a lot of melting of glaciers and ice sheets still in store for Earth, even if temperatures could be magically stabilised.

“The retreat and thinning of mountain glaciers support this; it takes time for the ice to catch up with temperatures.

“Compounded by the problem that global temperatures are still zooming upward due to increasing burning of fossil fuels, the implication is pretty clear that Earth will be losing a lot of ice mass, and that sea level will be going up for many centuries to come.

“Our energy sources today are causing global disruption of climate and the effects are likely to be felt globally, continuously worsening for centuries and even thousands of years to come.” – Climate News Network



in Climate News Network

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

U.S. Geological Survey/wikimedia commons
Biodiversity & Habitat

Climate Change Amplifies Risk of ‘Insect Apocalypse’

December 1, 2022
42
Alaa Abd El-Fatah/wikimedia commons
COP Conferences

Rights Abuses, Intrusive Conference App Put Egypt Under Spotlight as COP 27 Host

November 14, 2022
26
Western Arctic National Parklands/wikimedia commons
Arctic & Antarctica

Arctic Wildfires Show Approach of New Climate Feedback Loop

January 2, 2023
27

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

RL0919/wikimedia commons

Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing

January 23, 2023
2.1k
@tongbingxue/Twitter

Extreme Warming Ahead Even as Worst-Case Scenarios Grow ‘Obsolete’

January 23, 2023
268
Rachel Notley/Facebook

Notley Scorches Federal Just Transition Bill as Fossil CEO Calls for Oilsands Boom

January 23, 2023
254
James Vincent Wardhaugh/flickr

Canada Sidelines Ontario’s Ring of Fire, Approves Separate Mining Project

December 4, 2022
379
Weirton, WV by Jon Dawson/flickr

IRON OXIDE: New Battery Brings Long-Duration Storage to Grids, 750 Jobs to West Virginia

January 23, 2023
493
United Nations

Salvage of $20B ‘Floating Time Bomb’ Delayed by Rising Cost of Oil Tankers

January 27, 2023
12

Recent Posts

EcoAnalytics

Albertans Want a Just Transition, Despite Premier’s Grumbling

January 23, 2023
188
Sergio Boscaino/flickr

Dubai Mulls Quitting C40 Cities Over ‘Costly’ Climate Target

January 24, 2023
84
hangela/pixabay

New UK Coal Mine Faces Two Legal Challenges

January 24, 2023
43

Gas Stoves Enter U.S. Climate Culture War, Become ‘Bellwether’ for Industry

January 22, 2023
73
Jeff Hitchcock/flickr.

BREAKING: GFANZ Banks, Investors Pour Hundreds of Billions into Fossil Fuels

January 23, 2023
494

Exxon Had the Right Global Warming Numbers Through Decades of Denial: Study

January 17, 2023
223
Next Post

Time for Cities' Parking Rules to 'Grow Up'

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}