A new report released last week by a research group consisting of numerous top climatologists paints a frightful picture of the possible future of the world’s water levels. The report furthermore criticizes the UN climate panel IPCC’s reports of the climate risks the earth is facing.
The risk of higher water levels is much closer, and much more intense than what has previously been presented by the IPCC. This is the conclusion of a new report compiled by a group of researchers, which was released last week through the research center Navigating 360. The Danish-led research group is now fighting for a more concrete and intensive government intervention into climate protection, in order to prepare for a scenario where the previous consensus of the trajectory of water levels is surpassed manyfold.
Challenges to combat
The new report, aptly named “The Hidden Climate-catastrophe”, bases its conclusion on the research of the world’s oldest ice caps in Antarctica and the polar circle. By looking at the development of the earth’s varying geographical and meteorological eras throughout the last 1.2 million years, researchers involved in the project, such as Danish climatologist Dorte Dahl Jensen and American biologist Katherine Richardson, have launched a criticism of the IPCC, regarding a possible underestimation of the climate-induced crises the world could experience in the next 75 years.
The basis of the new report’s criticism is based on the IPCC’s observation lack of longevity, and the simplified nature of used models not taking the unpredictable nature of climate development into account.
According to the new report a temperature rise of just 2-3 degrees can lead to an irreversible collapse of the world’s icecaps, resulting in water-levels rising more than one meter in this century, which is the IPCC’s worst case scenario. Furthermore, if the temperature should rise with four degrees or higher, the water levels could rise to several meters above the current levels.
The reports by the IPCC have painted this scenario as improbable, a conclusion that Dorte Dahl-Jensen and like-minded researchers find to be a dangerous underestimation of the possibilities of an immense rise in water levels.
According to the report, the IPCC “underestimate the risk of sudden and severe changes that, according to our observations, can be triggered from Antarctica, Greenland, and the world’s glaciers.”
The report continues by proclaiming that by the year 2100, the temperature of the earth can be compared to that of 130,000 years ago, when the water-levels were 5-9 meters higher than today.
While it is still impossible for the researchers to conclude how fast and severe the melting of the world’s ice caps will be, it is still their assessment that immediate and severe governmental action is needed.
A plea to the centers of power
The consequences of an ice-collapse like the one described in the report would be all-encompassing, especially in low-lying countries like the Netherlands and Denmark, or island states like the Seychelles and the Maldives. For this reason, the report comes with an urgent plea to the world’s governments to take action.
Many governments have already begun extensive developments to combat the risks that the current climate development brings along. In Copenhagen the current mega-project, the new island of Lynnetteholmen, which is to be constructed in the Copenhagen harbor, includes an aspect of climate protection of the city against storm surges.
However, if the fundamental political understanding of the risks that the world is facing turns out to be untrue, or at least skewered, then what good does possibly inadequate protection do?
Sebastian Mernild, head of the SDU climate cluster, questioned the ability of the political system to face future climate challenges in the report: “…The tipping points for both the Greenlandic and West Antarctic ice sheets lay between a temperature rise of 1,5 and 2 degrees… When politicians at the Paris Agreement put the maximum temperature rise at 2 degrees, they implicitly accepted the reality of the two ice sheets reaching their tipping point”.
According to Mernild, the collapse of the two ice sheets would lead to extreme consequences for coastal regions around the world.
Since the release of the report last week multiple parties in the Danish government have criticised Minister of Climate Lars Aagard from the Moderates, for not taking action in connection with the new research.
Lars Aagaard rejects this criticism, as the Danish government receives its official climate recommendations from DMI (Danish Meteorological Institute), which disagrees with the conclusion of the report. On the 18th of March Aagaard told DR that he sees the case as “a debate between researchers”.
