Climate scientists are looking for other ways to predict sea level rise. A simplified method, which seems as accurate as any, is treating the Earth as one big black box. The starting point is the simple idea that the rate of sea level rise is proportional to the increase in temperature: the warmer Earth gets, the faster ice melts and the oceans expand. This held true for the last 120 years at least.
Extrapolating this to the future, based on emissions scenarios, suggests sea level will rise by between 0.5 and 1.4 metres per century - and the higher estimate is more likely because emissions have been rising faster than the worst-case scenario.A 1-metre rise in sea level will affect 13 million people in five European countries and destroy property worth $600 billion, with the Netherlands the worst affected. In the UK, existing defences are insufficient to protect parts of the east and south coast, including the cities of Hull and Portsmouth.
Besides inundation, higher seas raise the risk of severe storm surges and dangerous flooding. The entire Atlantic seaboard of North America, including New York, Boston and Washington DC, and the Gulf coast will become more vulnerable to hurricanes. Today's 100-year storm floods might occur as often as every four years - in which case it will make more sense to abandon devastated regions and towns than to keep rebuilding them.
If you are interested in the science and various scenarios, go to the New Scientist article.
I have to wonder, we talk about potential fresh water shortages, is there a chance we could offset the sea level rise by building lots of desalination plants and help mitigate both issues?
