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Future sea level rise constrained by observations and long-term commitment

Description

Anthropogenic sea level rise poses challenges to coastal areas worldwide, and robust projections are needed to assess mitigation options and guide adaptation measures. The paper presents an approach that combines information about the equilibrium sea level response to global warming and last century’s observed contribution from the individual components to constrain projections for this century. This “constrained extrapolation” overcomes limitations of earlier global semiempirical estimates because long-term changes in the partitioning of total sea level rise are accounted for. While applying semiempirical methodology, our method yields sea level projections that overlap with the process-based estimates of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The method can thus lead to a better understanding of the gap between process-based and global semi-empirical approaches.

Reference information

Source:
Mengel, M., A. Levermann, K. Frieler, A. Robinson, B. Marzeion, & R. Winkelmann. (2016). Future sea level rise constrained by observations and long-term commitment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(10), 2597-2602

Published in Climate-ADAPT Feb 21 2019   -   Last Modified in Climate-ADAPT Dec 12 2023

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