scholarly journals The land-ice contribution to 21st century dynamic sea-level rise

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Howard ◽  
J. Ridley ◽  
A. K. Pardaens ◽  
R. T. W. L. Hurkmans ◽  
A. J. Payne ◽  
...  

Abstract. Climate change has the potential to locally influence mean sea level through a number of processes including (but not limited to) thermal expansion of the oceans and enhanced land ice melt. These lead to departures from the global mean sea level change, due to spatial variations in the change of water density and transport, which are termed dynamic sea level changes. In this study we present regional patterns of sea-level change projected by a global coupled atmosphere–ocean climate model forced by projected ice-melt fluxes from three sources: the Antarctic ice sheet, the Greenland ice sheet and small glaciers and ice caps. The largest ice melt flux we consider is equivalent to almost 0.7 m of global sea level rise over the 21st century. Since the ice melt is not constant, the evolution of the dynamic sea level changes is analysed. We find that the dynamic sea level change associated with the ice melt is small, with the largest changes, occurring in the North Atlantic, contributing of order 3 cm above the global mean rise. Furthermore, the dynamic sea level change associated with the ice melt is similar regardless of whether the simulated ice fluxes are applied to a simulation with fixed or changing atmospheric CO2.

Ocean Science ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 485-500 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Howard ◽  
J. Ridley ◽  
A. K. Pardaens ◽  
R. T. W. L. Hurkmans ◽  
A. J. Payne ◽  
...  

Abstract. Climate change has the potential to influence global mean sea level through a number of processes including (but not limited to) thermal expansion of the oceans and enhanced land ice melt. In addition to their contribution to global mean sea level change, these two processes (among others) lead to local departures from the global mean sea level change, through a number of mechanisms including the effect on spatial variations in the change of water density and transport, usually termed dynamic sea level changes. In this study, we focus on the component of dynamic sea level change that might be given by additional freshwater inflow to the ocean under scenarios of 21st-century land-based ice melt. We present regional patterns of dynamic sea level change given by a global-coupled atmosphere–ocean climate model forced by spatially and temporally varying projected ice-melt fluxes from three sources: the Antarctic ice sheet, the Greenland Ice Sheet and small glaciers and ice caps. The largest ice melt flux we consider is equivalent to almost 0.7 m of global mean sea level rise over the 21st century. The temporal evolution of the dynamic sea level changes, in the presence of considerable variations in the ice melt flux, is also analysed. We find that the dynamic sea level change associated with the ice melt is small, with the largest changes occurring in the North Atlantic amounting to 3 cm above the global mean rise. Furthermore, the dynamic sea level change associated with the ice melt is similar regardless of whether the simulated ice fluxes are applied to a simulation with fixed CO2 or under a business-as-usual greenhouse gas warming scenario of increasing CO2.


2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (21) ◽  
pp. 8539-8563 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aimée B. A. Slangen ◽  
Benoit Meyssignac ◽  
Cecile Agosta ◽  
Nicolas Champollion ◽  
John A. Church ◽  
...  

Sea level change is one of the major consequences of climate change and is projected to affect coastal communities around the world. Here, global mean sea level (GMSL) change estimated by 12 climate models from phase 5 of the World Climate Research Programme’s Climate Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) is compared to observational estimates for the period 1900–2015. Observed and simulated individual contributions to GMSL change (thermal expansion, glacier mass change, ice sheet mass change, landwater storage change) are analyzed and compared to observed GMSL change over the period 1900–2007 using tide gauge reconstructions, and over the period 1993–2015 using satellite altimetry estimates. The model-simulated contributions explain 50% ± 30% (uncertainties 1.65 σ unless indicated otherwise) of the mean observed change from 1901–20 to 1988–2007. Based on attributable biases between observations and models, a number of corrections are proposed, which result in an improved explanation of 75% ± 38% of the observed change. For the satellite era (from 1993–97 to 2011–15) an improved budget closure of 102% ± 33% is found (105% ± 35% when including the proposed bias corrections). Simulated decadal trends increase over the twentieth century, both in the thermal expansion and the combined mass contributions (glaciers, ice sheets, and landwater storage). The mass components explain the majority of sea level rise over the twentieth century, but the thermal expansion has increasingly contributed to sea level rise, starting from 1910 onward and in 2015 accounting for 46% of the total simulated sea level change.


Author(s):  
Thomas S. Bianchi

As I briefly mentioned in Chapter 3, the global mean sea level, as deduced from the accumulation of paleo-sea level, tide gauge, and satellite-altimeter data, rose by 0.19 m (range, 0.17–0.21 m) between 1901 and 2010 (see Figure 3.3). Global mean sea level represents the longer-term global changes in sea level, without the short-term variability, and is also commonly called eustatic sea-level change. On an annual basis, global mean sea-level change translates to around 1.5 to 2 mm. During the last century, global sea level rose by 10 to 25 cm. Projections of sea-level rise for the period from 2000 to 2081 indicate that global mean sea-level rise will likely be as high as 0.52 to 0.98 m, or 8 to 16 mm/ yr, depending on the greenhouse gas emission scenarios used in the models. Mean sea-level rise is primarily controlled by ocean thermal expansion. But there is also transfer of water from land to ocean via melting of land ice, primarily in Greenland and Antarctica. Model predictions indicate that thermal expansion will increase with global warming because the contribution from glaciers will decrease as their volume is lost over time. (Take a look at Figure 5.1 if you have doubts about glaciers melting.) And remember our discussion in Chapter 2 about the role of the oceans in absorbing carbon dioxide (CO2) and the resultant ocean acidification in recent years. The global ocean also absorbs about 90% of all the net energy increase from global warming as well, which is why the ocean temperature is increasing, which in turn results in thermal expansion and sea-level rise. To make things even more complicated, the expansion of water will vary with latitude because expansion of seawater is greater with increasing temperature. In any event, sea level is expected to rise by 1 to 3 m per degree of warming over the next few millennia.


2018 ◽  
Vol 97 (3) ◽  
pp. 79-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bert L.A. Vermeersen ◽  
Aimée B.A. Slangen ◽  
Theo Gerkema ◽  
Fedor Baart ◽  
Kim M. Cohen ◽  
...  

AbstractRising sea levels due to climate change can have severe consequences for coastal populations and ecosystems all around the world. Understanding and projecting sea-level rise is especially important for low-lying countries such as the Netherlands. It is of specific interest for vulnerable ecological and morphodynamic regions, such as the Wadden Sea UNESCO World Heritage region.Here we provide an overview of sea-level projections for the 21st century for the Wadden Sea region and a condensed review of the scientific data, understanding and uncertainties underpinning the projections. The sea-level projections are formulated in the framework of the geological history of the Wadden Sea region and are based on the regional sea-level projections published in the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR5). These IPCC AR5 projections are compared against updates derived from more recent literature and evaluated for the Wadden Sea region. The projections are further put into perspective by including interannual variability based on long-term tide-gauge records from observing stations at Den Helder and Delfzijl.We consider three climate scenarios, following the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), as defined in IPCC AR5: the RCP2.6 scenario assumes that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions decline after 2020; the RCP4.5 scenario assumes that GHG emissions peak at 2040 and decline thereafter; and the RCP8.5 scenario represents a continued rise of GHG emissions throughout the 21st century. For RCP8.5, we also evaluate several scenarios from recent literature where the mass loss in Antarctica accelerates at rates exceeding those presented in IPCC AR5.For the Dutch Wadden Sea, the IPCC AR5-based projected sea-level rise is 0.07±0.06m for the RCP4.5 scenario for the period 2018–30 (uncertainties representing 5–95%), with the RCP2.6 and RCP8.5 scenarios projecting 0.01m less and more, respectively. The projected rates of sea-level change in 2030 range between 2.6mma−1for the 5th percentile of the RCP2.6 scenario to 9.1mma−1for the 95th percentile of the RCP8.5 scenario. For the period 2018–50, the differences between the scenarios increase, with projected changes of 0.16±0.12m for RCP2.6, 0.19±0.11m for RCP4.5 and 0.23±0.12m for RCP8.5. The accompanying rates of change range between 2.3 and 12.4mma−1in 2050. The differences between the scenarios amplify for the 2018–2100 period, with projected total changes of 0.41±0.25m for RCP2.6, 0.52±0.27m for RCP4.5 and 0.76±0.36m for RCP8.5. The projections for the RCP8.5 scenario are larger than the high-end projections presented in the 2008 Delta Commission Report (0.74m for 1990–2100) when the differences in time period are considered. The sea-level change rates range from 2.2 to 18.3mma−1for the year 2100.We also assess the effect of accelerated ice mass loss on the sea-level projections under the RCP8.5 scenario, as recent literature suggests that there may be a larger contribution from Antarctica than presented in IPCC AR5 (potentially exceeding 1m in 2100). Changes in episodic extreme events, such as storm surges, and periodic (tidal) contributions on (sub-)daily timescales, have not been included in these sea-level projections. However, the potential impacts of these processes on sea-level change rates have been assessed in the report.


2018 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 31-40
Author(s):  
Hadikusumah

Study on mean sea level (MSL) rise has been done on tide data at some locations in the Western Indonesia. To account the effect of climate change, air temperature analyses from some weather stations are also performed. The results showed that air temperature has changed between 0.0 to 0.44°C per ten years. The sea level analysis showed that mean sea level at Western Indonesia rise between 3.10 to 9.27 mm per year. Based on the results, the prediction on mean sea level change in the years of 2000, 2030, 2050 and 2100 for Cirebon location are 17 cm, 39 cm, 55 cm, and 92 cm, respectively.


Science ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 275 (5303) ◽  
pp. 1049i-1053 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. S. Nerem

1999 ◽  
Vol 26 (19) ◽  
pp. 3005-3008 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. S. Nerem ◽  
D. P. Chambers ◽  
E. W. Leuliette ◽  
G. T. Mitchum ◽  
B. S. Giese

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1205-1216 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Gaslikova ◽  
A. Schwerzmann ◽  
C. C. Raible ◽  
T. F. Stocker

Abstract. The influence of climate change on storm surges including increased mean sea level change and the associated insurable losses are assessed for the North Sea basin. In doing so, the newly developed approach couples a dynamical storm surge model with a loss model. The key element of the approach is the generation of a probabilistic storm surge event set. Together with parametrizations of the inland propagation and the coastal protection failure probability this enables the estimation of annual expected losses. The sensitivity to the parametrizations is rather weak except when the assumption of high level of increased mean sea level change is made. Applying this approach to future scenarios shows a substantial increase of insurable losses with respect to the present day. Superimposing different mean sea level changes shows a nonlinear behavior at the country level, as the future storm surge changes are higher for Germany and Denmark. Thus, the study exhibits the necessity to assess the socio-economic impacts of coastal floods by combining the expected sea level rise with storm surge projections.


Author(s):  
D. Zhou ◽  
W. Sun ◽  
Y. Fu ◽  
X. Zhou

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> The ground vertical movement of the tide gauges around the Bohai sea was firstly analyzed by using the observation data from 2009 to 2017 of the nine co-located GNSS stations. It was found that the change rate of ground vertical motion of four stations was in the same order of magnitude as the sea level change. In particular, the land subsidence rate of BTGU station reaches 11.47&amp;thinsp;mm/yr, which should be paid special attention to in the analysis of sea level change. Then combined with long-term tide gauges and the satellite altimetry results, the sea level changes in the Bohai sea and adjacent waters from 1993 to 2012 were analyzed. The relative and absolute sea level rise rates of the sea area are 3.81&amp;thinsp;mm/yr and 3.61&amp;thinsp;mm/yr, respectively, both are higher than the global average rate of change. At the same time, it is found that the vertical land motion of tide gauge stations is the main factor causing regional differences in relative sea level changes.</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 1176
Author(s):  
Yongcun Cheng ◽  
Qing Xu ◽  
Le Gao ◽  
Xiaofeng Li ◽  
Bin Zou ◽  
...  

Sea State Bias (SSB) contributes to global mean sea level variability and it needs cm-level range adjustment due to the instrumental drift over time. To investigate its variations and correct the global and regional sea level trend precisely, we calculate the temporal and spatial variability of the SSB correction in TOPEX, Jason-1, Jason-2 and Jason-3 missions, separately, as well as in the combined missions over the period 1993–2017. The long-term trend in global mean operational 2D non-parametric SSB correction is about −0.03 ± 0.03 mm/yr, which accounts for 1% of current global mean sea level change rate during 1993–2016. This correction contributes to sea level change rates of −1.27 ± 0.21 mm/yr and −0.26 ± 0.13 mm/yr in TOPEX-A and Jason-2 missions, respectively. The global mean SSB varies up to 7–10 mm during the very strong ENSO events in 1997–1998 and 2015–2016. Furthermore, the TOPEX SSB trend, which is consistent with recently reported sea level trend drift during 1993–1998, may leak into the determined global sea level trend in the period. Moreover, the Jason-1/2 zonal SSB variability is highly correlated with the significant wave height (SWH). On zonal average, SSB correction causes about 1% uncertainty in mean sea level trend. At high SWH regions, the uncertainties grow to 2–4% near the 50°N and 60°S bands. This should be considered in the study of regional sea level variability.


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