How Much Sea Level Rise Would be Avoided by Aggressive CO2 Reductions?

From: Yona Maro

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“One of the more reasonable discussion points to emerge from efforts to link Hurricane Sandy to the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions focuses on the role that future sea level rise will have on making storm impacts worse. Logically, it would seem that if we can “halt the rise of the seas” then this would reduce future impacts from extreme events like Sandy.

“The science of sea level rise, however, tells us that our ability to halt he rise of the seas is extremely limited, even under an (unrealistically) aggressive scenario of emissions reduction. Several years ago, in a GRL paper titled “How much climate change can be avoided by mitigation?” Warren Washington and colleagues asked how much impact aggressive mitigation would have on the climate system. Specifically, they looked at a set of climate model runs assuming stabilization of carbon dioxide at 450 ppm.

“Here is what they concluded for sea level rise: ‘[A]bout 8 cm of the sea level rise that would otherwise occur without mitigation would be averted. However, by the end of the century the sea level rise continues to increase and does not stabilize in both scenarios due to climate change commitment involving the thermal inertia of the oceans ”

“Eight cm is about three inches. Three inches. Then sea level rise continues for centuries.”

Roger Pielke Jr.’s Blog. 31 OCTOBER 2012

http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2012/10/how-much-sea-level-rise-would-be.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FvabBE+%28Roger+Pielke+Jr.%27s+Blog

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