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Estimating global mean sea-level rise and its uncertainties by 2100 and 2300 from an expert survey

Horton, B; Khan, N; Cahill, N; Lee, J; Shaw, T; Garner, A; Kemp, A; Engelhart, SE; Rahmstorf, S

Estimating global mean sea-level rise and its uncertainties by 2100 and 2300 from an expert survey Thumbnail


Authors

B Horton

N Khan

N Cahill

J Lee

T Shaw

A Garner

A Kemp

S Rahmstorf



Abstract

Sea-level rise projections and knowledge of their uncertainties are vital to make informed mitigation and adaptation decisions. To elicit projections from members of the scientific community regarding future global mean sea-level (GMSL) rise, we repeated a survey originally conducted five years ago. Under Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 2.6, 106 experts projected a likely (central 66% probability) GMSL rise of 0.30–0.65 m by 2100, and 0.54–2.15 m by 2300, relative to 1986–2005. Under RCP 8.5, the same experts projected a likely GMSL rise of 0.63–1.32 m by 2100, and 1.67–5.61 m by 2300. Expert projections for 2100 are similar to those from the original survey, although the projection for 2300 has extended tails and is higher than the original survey. Experts give a likelihood of 42% (original survey) and 45% (current survey) that under the high-emissions scenario GMSL rise will exceed the upper bound (0.98 m) of the likely range estimated by the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is considered to have an exceedance likelihood of 17%. Responses to open-ended questions suggest that the increases in upper-end estimates and uncertainties arose from recent influential studies about the impact of marine ice cliff instability on the meltwater contribution to GMSL rise from the Antarctic Ice Sheet.

Citation

Horton, B., Khan, N., Cahill, N., Lee, J., Shaw, T., Garner, A., …Rahmstorf, S. (2020). Estimating global mean sea-level rise and its uncertainties by 2100 and 2300 from an expert survey. npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, 3, Article 18. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-020-0121-5

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Apr 6, 2020
Online Publication Date May 8, 2020
Publication Date 2020
Deposit Date Apr 7, 2020
Publicly Available Date May 11, 2020
Journal npj Climate and Atmospheric Science
Publisher Nature Research
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 3
Article Number 18
DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-020-0121-5

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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.





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