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If the international community does not meet the climate change goals promised, the world's largest ice sheet will melt faster, and the sea level could rise close to 0.5m by 2100, a study has found.
A multinational research team from Australia, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States conducted simulations by dividing the effects of different greenhouse gas emissions and temperatures on the Eastern Ice Sheet (EAIS) in Antarctica by year 2100, 2300, and 2500. 10) (local time), published in the international scientific journal Nature.
The study was conducted in a way that predicts changes due to future temperature rise based on data that analyzed how the EAIS was affected in the past when temperatures were high, and changes in the currently observed ice sheet.
The EAIS is currently the largest ice sheet on the planet, and if it all melted, it could raise the sea level up to 52m.
Because there is a risk of flooding all coastal cities in the world, it is sometimes called a 'sleeping giant' that should not be touched.
The research team evaluated the risk level of the rate of ice sheet melting based on the goals of the Paris Agreement, which were promised by more than 190 countries at the 2015 Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Climate Change.
In the Paris Agreement, the Parties set the goal of limiting the increase in global surface temperature to less than 2 degrees Celsius based on industrialization, and committed efforts to limit it to below 1.5 degrees Celsius.
If the promise of keeping the rise below 2 degrees Celsius is not met and global greenhouse gas emissions continue to remain high, the EAIS could melt and sea level could rise close to 0.5m by 2100.
After that, the researchers predicted that if the greenhouse gas emissions were high, the EAIS could melt more and the global sea level could rise by 1 to 3 meters by 2300 and to 2 to 5 meters by 2500.
On the other hand, if emissions are drastically reduced, sea level rise due to EAIS thawing is estimated to be only 2 cm by 2100.
The previous period when the carbon dioxide concentration was higher than the present was 3 million years ago, and the temperature at that time was 2~4 degrees higher than now, and eventually the sea level rose by 10~25m.
East Antarctica, which also has an overwhelming amount of ice in Antarctica, has been considered less threatened than West Antarctica, which has recently been melting rapidly.
The West Antarctic ice sheet is largely below sea level, while the East Antarctic ice sheet is largely above sea level and therefore melts more slowly because it is affected by the atmosphere rather than the relatively warm waters.
However, with the recent increase in global warming, this perception is also changing.
"East Antarctica was generally thought to be less vulnerable than Western Antarctica or Arctic Greenland," said Chris Stokes, a professor of geography at Durham University, the paper's lead author. started,” he explained.
"It is very important that we do not wake this 'sleeping giant'," he said.
"The window of opportunity to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, limit global temperature rise and preserve EAIS is closing," said co-author of the paper, Professor Nerily Abram.