54 resultados para sea-level changes


Relevância:

100.00% 100.00%

Publicador:

Resumo:

During the last century, global climate has been warming, and projections indicate that such a warming is likely to continue over coming decades. Most of the extra heat is stored in the ocean, resulting in thermal expansion of seawater and global mean sea level rise. Previous studies have shown that after CO2 emissions cease or CO2 concentration is stabilized, global mean surface air temperature stabilizes or decreases slowly, but sea level continues to rise. Using idealized CO2 scenario simulations with a hierarchy of models including an AOGCM and a step-response model, the authors show how the evolution of thermal expansion can be interpreted in terms of the climate energy balance and the vertical profile of ocean warming. Whereas surface temperature depends on cumulative CO2 emissions, sea level rise due to thermal expansion depends on the time profile of emissions. Sea level rise is smaller for later emissions, implying that targets to limit sea level rise would need to refer to the rate of emissions, not only to the time integral. Thermal expansion is in principle reversible, but to halt or reverse it quickly requires the radiative forcing to be reduced substantially, which is possible on centennial time scales only by geoengineering. If it could be done, the results indicate that heat would leave the ocean more readily than it entered, but even if thermal expansion were returned to zero, the geographical pattern of sea level would be altered. Therefore, despite any aggressive CO2 mitigation, regional sea level change is inevitable.

Relevância:

100.00% 100.00%

Publicador:

Relevância:

100.00% 100.00%

Publicador:

Resumo:

We apply a new parameterisation of the Greenland ice sheet (GrIS) feedback between surface mass balance (SMB: the sum of surface accumulation and surface ablation) and surface elevation in the MAR regional climate model (Edwards et al., 2014) to projections of future climate change using five ice sheet models (ISMs). The MAR (Modèle Atmosphérique Régional: Fettweis, 2007) climate projections are for 2000–2199, forced by the ECHAM5 and HadCM3 global climate models (GCMs) under the SRES A1B emissions scenario. The additional sea level contribution due to the SMB– elevation feedback averaged over five ISM projections for ECHAM5 and three for HadCM3 is 4.3% (best estimate; 95% credibility interval 1.8–6.9 %) at 2100, and 9.6% (best estimate; 95% credibility interval 3.6–16.0 %) at 2200. In all results the elevation feedback is significantly positive, amplifying the GrIS sea level contribution relative to the MAR projections in which the ice sheet topography is fixed: the lower bounds of our 95% credibility intervals (CIs) for sea level contributions are larger than the “no feedback” case for all ISMs and GCMs. Our method is novel in sea level projections because we propagate three types of modelling uncertainty – GCM and ISM structural uncertainties, and elevation feedback parameterisation uncertainty – along the causal chain, from SRES scenario to sea level, within a coherent experimental design and statistical framework. The relative contributions to uncertainty depend on the timescale of interest. At 2100, the GCM uncertainty is largest, but by 2200 both the ISM and parameterisation uncertainties are larger. We also perform a perturbed parameter ensemble with one ISM to estimate the shape of the projected sea level probability distribution; our results indicate that the probability density is slightly skewed towards higher sea level contributions.

Relevância:

100.00% 100.00%

Publicador:

Resumo:

Confidence in projections of global-mean sea level rise (GMSLR) depends on an ability to account for GMSLR during the twentieth century. There are contributions from ocean thermal expansion, mass loss from glaciers and ice sheets, groundwater extraction, and reservoir impoundment. Progress has been made toward solving the “enigma” of twentieth-century GMSLR, which is that the observed GMSLR has previously been found to exceed the sum of estimated contributions, especially for the earlier decades. The authors propose the following: thermal expansion simulated by climate models may previously have been underestimated because of their not including volcanic forcing in their control state; the rate of glacier mass loss was larger than previously estimated and was not smaller in the first half than in the second half of the century; the Greenland ice sheet could have made a positive contribution throughout the century; and groundwater depletion and reservoir impoundment, which are of opposite sign, may have been approximately equal in magnitude. It is possible to reconstruct the time series of GMSLR from the quantified contributions, apart from a constant residual term, which is small enough to be explained as a long-term contribution from the Antarctic ice sheet. The reconstructions account for the observation that the rate of GMSLR was not much larger during the last 50 years than during the twentieth century as a whole, despite the increasing anthropogenic forcing. Semiempirical methods for projecting GMSLR depend on the existence of a relationship between global climate change and the rate of GMSLR, but the implication of the authors' closure of the budget is that such a relationship is weak or absent during the twentieth century.

Relevância:

100.00% 100.00%

Publicador:

Resumo:

The seasonal sea level variations observed from tide gauges over 1900-2013 and gridded satellite altimeter product AVISO over 1993-2013 in the northwest Pacific have been explored. The seasonal cycle is able to explain 60-90% of monthly sea level variance in the marginal seas, while it explains less than 20% of variance in the eddy-rich regions. The maximum annual and semi-annual sea level cycles (30cm and 6cm) are observed in the north of the East China Sea and the west of the South China Sea respectively. AVISO was found to underestimate the annual amplitude by 25% compared to tide gauge estimates along the coasts of China and Russia. The forcing for the seasonal sea level cycle was identified. The atmospheric pressure and the steric height produce 8-12cm of the annual cycle in the middle continental shelf and in the Kuroshio Current regions separately. The removal of the two attributors from total sea level permits to identify the sea level residuals that still show significant seasonality in the marginal seas. Both nearby wind stress and surface currents can explain well the long-term variability of the seasonal sea level cycle in the marginal seas and the tropics because of their influence on the sea level residuals. Interestingly, the surface currents are a better descriptor in the areas where the ocean currents are known to be strong. Here, they explain 50-90% of inter-annual variability due to the strong links between the steric height and the large-scale ocean currents.

Relevância:

100.00% 100.00%

Publicador:

Resumo:

Sea-level rise (SLR) from global warming may have severe consequences for coastal cities, particularly when combined with predicted increases in the strength of tidal surges. Predicting the regional impact of SLR flooding is strongly dependent on the modelling approach and accuracy of topographic data. Here, the areas under risk of sea water flooding for London boroughs were quantified based on the projected SLR scenarios reported in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) fifth assessment report (AR5) and UK climatic projections 2009 (UKCP09) using a tidally-adjusted bathtub modelling approach. Medium- to very high-resolution digital elevation models (DEMs) are used to evaluate inundation extents as well as uncertainties. Depending on the SLR scenario and DEMs used, it is estimated that 3%–8% of the area of Greater London could be inundated by 2100. The boroughs with the largest areas at risk of flooding are Newham, Southwark, and Greenwich. The differences in inundation areas estimated from a digital terrain model and a digital surface model are much greater than the root mean square error differences observed between the two data types, which may be attributed to processing levels. Flood models from SRTM data underestimate the inundation extent, so their results may not be reliable for constructing flood risk maps. This analysis provides a broad-scale estimate of the potential consequences of SLR and uncertainties in the DEM-based bathtub type flood inundation modelling for London boroughs.