Levka on Nostr: #ClimateCrisis "How Soon Will the Seas Rise? The uniquely vulnerable West Antarctic ...
#ClimateCrisis
"How Soon Will the Seas Rise?
The uniquely vulnerable West Antarctic Ice Sheet holds enough water to raise global sea levels by 5 meters. But when that will happen — and how fast — is anything but settled.
In May 2014, NASA announced (opens a new tab) at a press conference that a portion of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet appeared to have reached a point of irreversible retreat. Glaciers flowing toward the sea at the periphery of the 2-kilometer-thick sheet of ice were losing ice faster than snowfall could replenish them, causing their edges to recede inland. With that, the question was no longer whether the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would disappear, but when. When those glaciers go, sea levels will rise by more than a meter, inundating land currently inhabited by 230 million people (opens a new tab). And that would be just the first act before the collapse of the entire ice sheet, which could raise seas 5 meters (opens a new tab) and redraw the world’s coastlines.
At the time, scientists assumed that the loss of those glaciers would unfold over centuries. But in 2016, a bombshell study in Nature (opens a new tab) concluded that crumbling ice cliffs could trigger a runaway process of retreat, dramatically hastening the timeline. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) took notice, establishing a sobering new worst-case scenario: By 2100, meltwater from Antarctica, Greenland and mountain glaciers combined with the thermal expansion of seawater could raise global sea levels by over 2 meters (opens a new tab). And that would only be the beginning. If greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated, seas would rise a staggering 15 meters (opens a new tab) by 2300."
https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-soon-will-the-seas-rise-20251020/Published at
2025-10-27 19:43:06 CETEvent JSON
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"content": "#ClimateCrisis\n\n\"How Soon Will the Seas Rise?\n\nThe uniquely vulnerable West Antarctic Ice Sheet holds enough water to raise global sea levels by 5 meters. But when that will happen — and how fast — is anything but settled. \n\nIn May 2014, NASA announced (opens a new tab) at a press conference that a portion of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet appeared to have reached a point of irreversible retreat. Glaciers flowing toward the sea at the periphery of the 2-kilometer-thick sheet of ice were losing ice faster than snowfall could replenish them, causing their edges to recede inland. With that, the question was no longer whether the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would disappear, but when. When those glaciers go, sea levels will rise by more than a meter, inundating land currently inhabited by 230 million people (opens a new tab). And that would be just the first act before the collapse of the entire ice sheet, which could raise seas 5 meters (opens a new tab) and redraw the world’s coastlines.\n\nAt the time, scientists assumed that the loss of those glaciers would unfold over centuries. But in 2016, a bombshell study in Nature (opens a new tab) concluded that crumbling ice cliffs could trigger a runaway process of retreat, dramatically hastening the timeline. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) took notice, establishing a sobering new worst-case scenario: By 2100, meltwater from Antarctica, Greenland and mountain glaciers combined with the thermal expansion of seawater could raise global sea levels by over 2 meters (opens a new tab). And that would only be the beginning. If greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated, seas would rise a staggering 15 meters (opens a new tab) by 2300.\" \n\nhttps://www.quantamagazine.org/how-soon-will-the-seas-rise-20251020/",
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