Sea level may rise 10 cm in 2100

Icebergs floating in Baffin Bay near pituitary, Greenland, on July 15, 2022, captured from the ground during a NASA mission with scientists from the University of Texas to measure the melting of Arctic sea ice. New observations from ICESAT-2 show that sea ice in the Arctic has become significantly thinner in three years.

A massive ice sheet in Greenland is about to raise sea levels globally by nearly a foot by the end of this century, in a melting event caused by man-made climate change, according to a study published on Monday.

The findings in the journal Nature Climate Change show that 3.3% of Greenland’s glaciers could melt, equivalent to 110 trillion tons of ice. Due to ice loss, sea levels could rise about 10 centimeters between now and 2100.

Scientists warn that even if the world immediately stops emitting greenhouse gases that warm the planet, its collapse is inevitable. The study predicts that sea levels will rise by at least 10 centimeters, more than double the rate of sea level rise that researchers had previously predicted based on the melting of the Greenland ice sheet.

It is the second largest ice sheet in the world behind the Antarctic ice sheet and covers 80% of the island. Previous research has suggested that if all the ice sheets melt completely, global sea levels could rise to 23 feet.

Scientists in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Norway, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United States conducted the study using satellite measurements of Greenland’s ice loss and the shape of the ice sheet between 2000 and 2019.