Coal use will have to be “pretty much” gone by mid-century if the planet is to avoid sea-level rise of more than a metre by 2100 as Antarctic ice sheets disintegrate faster than expected, new modelling by an Australian-led team has found.
On business-as-usual projections, sea-level rise by the end of the century could exceed 1.3 metres compared with the 1986-2005 average, or 55 per cent more than predicted in the Fifth Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, according to research published in the Environmental Research Letters journal.
“We have provided a preview of what is probably going to be said by the IPCC in the [Sixth Assessment Report],” due for release in 2021, said Alexander Nauels, lead author of the report, and a researcher at Melbourne University’s Australian-German Climate & Energy Centre.
“There are really high risks attached to these new findings from more Antarctic contributions,” he said.
Recent research indicates Antarctica is more prone than previously thought to ice sheet melting, particularly for land-based ice exposed to warming oceans from beneath.
Meh, dig another hole, buy another house (a bit inland).
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal.
He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.
