| Keep calm, carry on, adapt. Slow-moving crises are not crises, they're problems, not emergencies. ---- Here, have some literature, down-voters!
---- [1] Nine long and nearly continuous sea level records were chosen from around the world to explore rates of change in sea level for 1904–2003. These records were found to capture the variability found in a larger number of stations over the last half century studied previously. Extending the sea level record back over the entire century suggests that the high variability in the rates of sea level change observed over the past 20 years were not particularly unusual. The rate of sea level change was found to be larger in the early part of last century (2.03 ± 0.35 mm/yr 1904–1953), in comparison with the latter part (1.45 ± 0.34 mm/yr 1954–2003). The highest decadal rate of rise occurred in the decade centred on 1980 (5.31 mm/yr) with the lowest rate of rise occurring in the decade centred on 1964 (−1.49 mm/yr). Over the entire century the mean rate of change was 1.74 ± 0.16 mm/yr. [0] ---- We compare estimates of coastal and global averaged sea level for 1950 to 2000. During the 1990s and around 1970, we find coastal sea level is rising faster than the global average but that it rises slower than the global average during the late 1970s and late 1980s. The differences are largely a result of sampling the time-varying geographical distribution of sea level rise along a coastline which is more convoluted in some regions than others. More rapid coastal rise corresponds to La Niña–like conditions in the tropical Pacific Ocean and a slower rate corresponds to El Niño–like conditions. Over the 51 year period, there is no significant difference in the rates of coastal and global averaged sea level rise, as found in climate model simulations of the 20th century. The best estimate of both global average and coastal sea level rise remains 1.8 ± 0.3 mm yr−1, as found in earlier studies. [1] ---- Kemp et al. (1) note that recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports emphasize sub-2 °C scenarios. Simultaneously, IPCC reports also overemphasize catastrophic scenarios, as does broader discourse. For example, the cataclysmic Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5) and Shared Socioeconomic Pathway 5-8.5 (SSP5-8.5) scenarios—now widely considered implausible (2)—account for roughly half of the scenario mentions in recent IPCC Assessment Reports’ impacts (Working Group II) sections (Fig. 1A), similar to underlying scientific literature (3). The SSP3-7.0 emissions pathway, which Kemp et al. (1) use in their analyses, assumes a world in 2100 heavily reliant on coal and with no climate policy—an implausible future (3, 4). It projects vastly higher emissions than the International Energy Agency (IEA) stated policies scenario, which has continually been revised downward in recent years (4) (Fig. 1B). [2] ---- [0]: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/200...
[1]: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/200...
[2]: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2214347119 Cherry-picked because hey, why not? |