It appears that once again the IPCC predictions have actually underestimated the progression of climate changes due to global warming. Reports are now showing that he ice sheets are melting more rapidly than previously predicted, leading to an average six inch rise in sea level. The Washington Post reports:
The vast ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are melting faster than previously estimated and that melting is accelerating, according to a new report that verifies 18 years of melting via two independent techniques.
Left unchecked, the extra water dumped into the oceans could push average global sea level six inches higher by 2050, the report finds. That would mark the ice sheets – defined as expanses of deep, long-term ice larger than 20,000 square miles – as the largest contributors to sea level rise, outstripping melting from Earth’s other frozen reservoirs, namely mountain glaciers…
“It’s going to be a concern for people in coastal areas,” said Isabella Velicogna of JPL and the University of California, Irvine, a co-author of the report online at Geophysical Research Letters. “It looks like [the IPCC estimate] will easily be an underestimate of the sea level rise.”
While six inches of additional sea height might sound small, the increase will distribute unevenly across the globe, Velicogna said, and have a disproportionate impact on low-lying countries such as Bangladesh.
More on this finding at Climate Progress.