Stokes and his colleagues have published a study indicating that by the end of the century, sea levels could rise by as much as a centimeter per year due to the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. This would happen even in the case where humanity manages to limit global warming to 1.5°C. Such a development would mean sea level rise of several meters over the coming centuries.
As a result, people living in coastal areas would need to be relocated, and buildings and other infrastructure built along the coasts would end up submerged. According to the study, a massive transformation lies ahead globally.
This study caught my attention, of course, for the reasons I briefly mentioned above. But also because Chinese researchers Wang, Shen and others have observed that between 2021 and 2023, the melting of the Antarctic seems to have turned into a net gain in ice mass.
This suggests that the results of different researchers are in some degree of contradiction. That, of course, is not unusual—let alone unique—in the scientific world, but it does offer an interesting topic to follow in the coming years.
It could be, of course, that the future projections made by Stokes and his colleagues based on a synthesis approach contain errors—or alternatively, that the increase in Antarctic ice mass observed by Wang and Shen is merely a temporary anomaly within the broader process of ice loss.
Time will tell—if not for us, then for future generations—whether we are facing a catastrophe for the world’s coastal cities or whether the effects of greenhouse gas emissions turn out to be less severe than current research suggests.
For those reflecting on the matter, a reasonable suggestion would be to monitor the changes in Antarctic temperatures over time. For example, according to data from the Vostok Station, located in the interior of the continent and operational since 1958, the warmest years there have been 2007 and 1980. The average temperature in 2007 was -52.60°C, and in 1980 it was -53.02°C.
At those temperatures, ice is unlikely to melt at Vostok—but things are different along the coast. For instance, at Casey Station, which has been operational since 1957, the highest annual average temperature on record was measured in 1980, at -6.55°C. That’s not warm enough to melt ice either, but during the summer months—December and January—average temperatures at Casey rose above freezing.
There may be a research about this topic. When the ice melts, the land mass previously weighed by the ice will begin to rise, like in Finland after the latest ice age. So what would be the net effect?
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