Sea level rises could far exceed IPCC estimates

Could our coastlines disappear underwater much sooner than we think? The controversial view that sea levels could rise at a rate of more than 1 metre per century has found support from a new study of a long-melted ice sheet.

In reconstructing the events at the end of the last ice age, Anders Carlson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and colleagues found that the Laurentide ice sheet, which covered most of North America between 95,000 and 7000 years ago, rapidly disintegrated.

…They found that the ice retreated rapidly between 9000 and 8500 years ago, stabilised, and then made its final rapid retreat between 7600 and 6800 years ago.

The team calculated the volume of water that would have been released in each of these melting stages, and the rate at which it must have raised sea levels. They concluded that levels would have climbed 1.3 metres per century in the earlier period, and 0.7 metres per century in the final melt.

Carlson then used a sophisticated computer model