When Martin Vermeer of Helsinki University of Technology in Finland and Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany compared global temperature and sea level data for the past 130 years they discovered a strong positive link between the two.

In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they demonstrated that if the current rate of rise remains steady, it would lead to a 34-centimetre rise by 2100. However, under a relatively conservative 2°C warming scenario, sea levels are likely to rise by more than a metre; a 4°C temperature rise would lead to a sea level rise of more than 1.4 metres. ‘More noteworthy even than the very high figures for sea level rise is the almost clockwork precision by which, on climatic time scales, temperature drives sea level rise,’ said Vermeer. 

A recent report from the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research has reached a similar conclusion. Written using contributions from 100 leading scientists, it suggests that melting south polar ice is likely to cause sea levels to rise by about 1.4 metres by 2100. It blames warming seas, which are accelerating melting in the continent’s west.

February 2010