Upper limit for sea level projections by 2100

By Svetlana Jevrejeva, Aslak Grinsted, John C. Moore. 2014

192 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We construct the probability density function of global sea level at 2100, estimating that sea level rises larger than 180 cm are less than 5% probable. An upper limit for global sea level rise of 190 cm is assembled by summing the highest estimates of individual sea level rise components simulated by process based models with the RCP8.5 scenario. The agreement between the methods may suggest more confidence than is warranted since large uncertainties remain due to the lack of scenario-dependent projections from ice sheet dynamical models, particularly for mass loss from marine-based fast flowing outlet glaciers in Antarctica. This leads to an intrinsically hard to quantify fat tail in the probability distribution for global mean sea level rise. Thus our low probability upper limit of sea level projections cannot be considered definitive. Nevertheless, our upper limit of 180 cm for sea level rise by 2100 is based on both expert opinion and process studies and hence indicates that other lines of evidence are needed to justify a larger sea level rise this century.

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7329807c269d0b31cf1c99c79d7ee9be57b10040

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Citations in the corpus

A high-end sea level rise probabilistic projection including rapid Antarctic ice sheet mass loss (2017, methodology): “…(Katsman et al 2011, Ranger et al 2013), conducting a large expert assessment survey (Horton et al 2014) or combining expert assessment of ice sheet contribution (Bamber and Aspinall 2013, de Vries and van de Wal 2015) with climate models projections (Jevrejeva et al 2014, Grinsted et al 2015).”
The ability of societies to adapt to twenty-first-century sea-level rise (2018, methodology): “The Netherlands While a large part of The Netherlands already lies below sea level, and complex defences against sea floods are in place, SLR entails a number of challenges including (1) salt intrusion stressing agricultural production and freshwater provision in the west51; (2) the Maeslant barrier”
Impacts of global climate change on the floras of oceanic islands – Projections, implications and current knowledge (2015, background): “Other estimates indicate sea level rises between 0.7–1.2 m (Horton et al., 2014) and 0.75–1.9 m (Vermeer and Rahmstorf, 2009; Jevrejeva et al., 2014) in high warming scenarios.”
Hard or soft flood adaptation? Advantages of a hybrid strategy for Shanghai (2020, methodology): “We employ SLR estimates from an ensemble of process-based models (Jevrejeva et al., 2014).”