Melting Ice And Rising Seas To Continue

There has been hope that if global warming slows, ice melting at the two poles will stop, or at least slow. This appears less likely than was hoped. 

A paper in the journal Nature titled “Warming of +1.5 °C is too high for polar ice sheets,” shows the Paris Accord targets won’t solve the melting ice problem. The authors write, Here we synthesise multiple lines of evidence to show that +1.5 °C is too high and that even current climate forcing (+1.2 °C), if sustained, is likely to generate several metres of sea-level rise over the coming centuries, causing extensive loss and damage to coastal populations and challenging the implementation of adaptation measures.”

Higher Ocean Levels

This is particularly bad news for people who live along the coasts of the Earth’s oceans. It means that the chance of major flooding in the future is high. There are two categories of flooding: permanent flooding and flooding during storms.

Storm flooding is a large problem that cannot be reversed or solved. The storms that hit the west coast of Florida last year are examples. Permanent flooding is like in cities like Miami. There is already a forecast that the city will be 60% underwater by 2060/

The list of cities with flood problems is extremely long; many are extremely large urban areas.

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