Accelerated Sea-Level Rise from West Antarctica

Accelerated sea-level rise from West Antarctica.

Recent aircraft and satellite laser altimeter surveys of the Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica show that local glaciers are discharging about 250 cubic kilometers of ice per year to the ocean, almost 60% more than is accumulated within their catchment basins. This discharge is sufficient to raise sea level by more than 0.2 millimeters per year. Glacier thinning rates near the coast during ...

Understanding Sea Level Rise from Antarctica and Greenland

Predicting the contribution that the Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets will have to future global sea level in response to climate change is a long standing question that has garnered much recent attention. Despite such attention, though, most state-of-the-art ice sheet simulations and subsequent ice mass loss predictions are based partly on glaciological theory that has limited observati...

Delaying future sea-level rise by storing water in Antarctica

Even if greenhouse gas emissions were stopped today, sea level would continue to rise for centuries, with the long-term sea-level commitment of a 2 C warmer world significantly exceeding 2 m. In view of the potential implications for coastal populations and ecosystems worldwide, we investigate, from an ice-dynamic perspective, the possibility of delaying sea-level rise by pumping ocean water on...

Erratum: Is the detection of accelerated sea level rise imminent?

Global mean sea level rise estimated from satellite altimetry provides a strong constraint on climate variability and change and is expected to accelerate as the rates of both ocean warming and cryospheric mass loss increase over time. In stark contrast to this expectation however, current altimeter products show the rate of sea level rise to have decreased from the first to second decades of t...

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet and Sea Level Rise