Burning Fossil Fuels May Cause Massive Sea Level Rises that Submerge Cities

We may be in for massive sea level rises if we continue to burn fossil fuels. Scientists have found that the planet's remaining fossil fuel resources would be sufficient to melt nearly all of Antarctica if burned, leading to a 160 to 200 foot rise in sea level.

"Our findings show that if we do not want to melt Antarctica, we can't keep taking fossil fuel carbon out of the ground and just dumping it into the atmosphere as CO2 like we've been doing," said Ken Caldeira, one of the researchers, in a news release. "Most previous studies of Antarctic have focused on loss of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Our study demonstrates that burning coal, oil, and gas also risks loss of the much larger East Antarctic Ice Sheet."

Although Antarctica has already begun to lose ice, a complex array of factors will determine the ice sheet's future, including greenhouse gas-caused atmospheric warming, additional oceanic warming perpetrated by the atmospheric warming, and the possible counteracting effects of additional snowfall.

In order to nail down exactly what may occur, the researchers used modeling to study the ice sheet's evolution of the next 10,000 years. This is because carbon persists in the atmosphere millennia after it is released.

So what did they find? It turns out that the West Antarctic ice sheet becomes unstable if carbon emissions continue at current levels for 60 to 80 years. This only represents 6 to 8 percent of the 10,000 billion tons of carbon that could be released if we used all accessible fossil fuels.

Greater warming that the 2-degree Celsius target could mean that the East and West ice sheets could be reshaped irreparably. In fact, every additional tenth of a degree may increase the risk of total and irreversible Antarctic ice loss.

The researchers also found that average rates of sea level rise over the next 1,000 years could be more than 1 inch per year. This could lead to about 100 feet of sea level rise, which could cover coastal cities.

"If we don't stop dumping our waste CO2 into the sky, land that is now home to more than a billion people will one day be underwater," said Caldeira.

The findings are published in the journal Science Advances.

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