dohboi wrote:I posted this in the Antarctic thread, but since the result is massive sea level rise, possibly in our lifetimes (excluding octogenarians and older, perhaps), it should probably go here as well:
http://www.climatecodered.org/2017/01/a ... multi.html
The Amundsen Sea sector of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has most likely been destabilized and ice retreat is unstoppable for the current conditions.
No further acceleration in climate change is necessary to trigger the collapse of the rest of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, with loss of a significant fraction on a decadal to century time scale.
Antarctica has the potential to contribute more than a metre of sea-level rise by 2100.
A large fraction of West Antarctic basin ice could be gone within two centuries, causing a 3–5 metre sea level rise.
It is looking more and more like 2 meters by 2100 is wildly optimistic. We are going to see well over 2 meters by 2100. I think 3+ meters is likely. Hansen's paper on the subject points to the nonlinearity of the melt process. This is always important to keep in mind. Humans make implicit linearizing assumptions when trying to understand problems. This is just our biology and is the simplest initial approximation approach to modeling. The human brain is a model creation engine even if we do not consciously perceive it.