Our greenhouse gas emissions today could lead to tens of metres of sea level rise that persist for hundreds of thousands of years. The paper aims to tackle the “misleading impression in the public arena” that human-caused climate change is merely a 21st century problem. Our carbon emissions over just a few centuries will remain in the atmosphere for “tens to hundreds of thousands of years,” the paper says. This means our impact on temperatures and sea levels will be around for more than just a few human generations. Using computer models of the climate, ice sheets and the carbon cycle, the researchers projected changes in temperature and sea levels for the next 10,000 years. The results are stark. Under four different scenarios of global carbon emissions, the projections suggest a rise in the Earth’s average temperature of between 2C and 7.5C above pre-industrial levels, which would eventually see global sea levels rise by 25-52m.
Carbon Brief 8th Feb 2016 read more »
Guardian 8th Feb 2016 read more »