Geneva (EFE).- The rise in sea level, one of the effects of global warming and a possible source of ecological and humanitarian disasters, is “inevitable for the next centuries or millennia”, warns today the new report of the Intergovernmental Group of Experts on Climate Change (IPCC).
“In the next 2,000 years, the average sea level will rise between 2 and 3 meters if global warming is limited to 1.5 degrees, and it will reach between 2 and 6 meters if it does not exceed 2 degrees,” says the report, which synthesizes those carried out by IPCC between 2015 and 2023, the sixth cycle of investigations of the organization since 1988.
In any case, a “deep, rapid and sustained” reduction in carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases could slow down this rise in sea level, underlines the report, prepared by 93 authors and debated last week in the IPCC meeting in Interlaken (Swiss Alps).
The global mean sea level rose 20 centimeters between 1901 and 2018, but the rise is accelerating due to climate change: it was 1.3 millimeters per year until the 1970s, between 1971 and 2006 it rose to 1.9 millimeters per year. year, and from 2006 to 2018 it already rises to 3.7 millimeters per year.
The report also warns that global warming of between 2 and 3 degrees (which the world is headed for if global commitments to reduce emissions are not increased) will almost completely melt all the ice in Greenland and the western Arctic.
This could further contribute to the rise in sea level, highlights the IPCC report, which even predicts a catastrophic rise of 15 meters by 2300, although in this case the scientific evidence is not definitive.
It does point out that at the current rate of global warming, current circulations in the Atlantic are more likely to “abruptly collapse” before 2100, which would cause “drastic changes in regional climate trends, and a huge impact on ecosystems and activities.” human”.
IPCC: The world needs to cut its emissions in half by 2030
The world needs to halve its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees this century, a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns today.
The report, prepared after a week of meetings in the alpine town of Interlaken (Switzerland) and which synthesizes all those prepared by IPCC experts since 2015, recalls that in the 2011-2020 decade the planet has already warmed 1.1 degrees with respect to pre-industrial levels (1850-1900).
“The global temperature of the surface has warmed since 1970 at a faster rate than in any other 50-year period in the last two millennia,” warns the synthesis report, the sixth produced by the IPCC since its creation in 1988 and which closes a eight-year study cycle, in which the Paris Agreement was signed.
The concentrations in the atmosphere of carbon dioxide (the main greenhouse gas) were in 2019 the highest in the last two million years (410 parts per million), recalls the report, indicating that 79% of emissions come from industry, transport, energy consumption and construction.
At the current rate of emissions reduction, IPCC scientists warn that 1.5 degrees of warming is “likely” to be reached this century, the limit above which experts see the consequences in the form of extreme weather events. they would be especially catastrophic.