The study, conducted by an international team of scientists and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), fed emissions data to a sea-level emulator, which predicted the sea level rise. The researchers’ model also factored in other variables such as thermal expansion, ice sheet and glacier melting and land-water storage. The study further found that 25% of the rise in sea levels by 2030 will be caused by emissions from five territories in the preceding 40 years, namely India, Russia, China, the US and European Union.
According to Alexander Nauels, one of the study’s authors who works at the Climate Analytics institute in Berlin, the point of the study was to show that current emissions will affect sea levels over the next 200 years.
"We all focus on the 21st century," Nauels told AFP, also noting that "sometimes that can create the false impression that after the 21st century nothing else will happen.”
The Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate released last month by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reveals that oceans are getting warmer and more acidic due to increased absorption of carbon dioxide, and their concentration of oxygen is lowering.
The US on Monday also officially notified the United Nations that it was exiting from the Paris Agreement on climate change. The Trump administration first announced that it was planning on withdrawing from the agreement in 2017, claiming that the deal undermines America’s economy and job growth and would result in declines in coal mining and other industries related to natural resources.
The Paris Agreement is an international deal that was created within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2015. Countries who are part of the deal set limits on their greenhouse gas emissions, the primary cause of man-made climate change.
