Climate change - sea levels will rise even if the global temperature increase is only 1.5°C

                          Daytona, Florida, United States                  Shutterstock

With all the focus and debate on the target of limiting the temperature increase on the planet to 1.5°C pre-industrial levels, a very real concern is often overlooked. That concern is the impact of the temperature increase that has already happened. The reality is that even if the target of limiting the  increase to 1.5°C was achieved, ocean levels will still rise and at a rate much faster than previously predicted. Scientists at Durham University in the UK have reviewed three lines of evidence on the current situation: satellite observations of ice loss and sea level rise over the past three decades; studies of warm periods in the past; and computer models of ice sheets.

The conclusion was startling. The Greenland and West Antarctica ice sheets are already melting, decades earlier forecast in the last report of the Intergovernmental Panel and Climate Change (IPCC). The melting of the ice sheets is also accelerating. As the scientists at Durham concluded, every fraction of a degree of temperature increase really matters for ice sheets. To merely slow down but not stop the ice sheets melting, the global temrperature increase would need to be reduced to 1°C above the pre-industrial baseline.

In 2024, the average temperature increase world-wide was 1.51°C which makes a mockery of the desired target as it has already been surpassed. The world is on course with current trends to reach a 2.9°C increase in temperature by the end of the century.

The research article can be found at this link: Ice loss at 1.5C