Paris goal of 1.5°C warming is still too hot for polar ice sheets, study warns
Paris goal of 1.5°C warming is still too hot for polar ice sheets, study warns
At the landmark Paris climate agreement, nearly every country in the world pledged to a goal to limit warming to well below 2° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels by 2100, and work toward a more ambitious goal to limit warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F). The hope is that such a limit will hel...
At the landmark Paris climate agreement, nearly every country in the world pledged to a goal to limit warming to well below 2° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels by 2100, and work toward a more ambitious goal to limit warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F). The hope is that such a limit will help Earth avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change.
However, a recent review suggests that even the more ambitious ceiling of 1.5°C may be too warm for the planet’s polar ice sheets and trigger massive sea level rise.
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This study is indeed disturbing, drawing on multiple lines of evidence suggesting melting may happen faster than previously assumed, I'll study more.
However, there never was any magic safe (global-average-surface-) temperature level, to save polar ice sheets. Melting, and the penetration of heat, is cumulative, so to a first approximation it is the integral of the warming that counts (maybe we could talk about a heating budget, similar to the concept of carbon-budget to avoid a specific temperature).
Although diplomats may stress that the concept of safe level is baked into Article 2 of the Climate convention, that orginally applied to "concentrations" not temperature. Back in the day (early 2000s) I among others pushed (this wasn't easy) to adopt temperature as a goal closer to real impacts, pointing out that required peak+decline concentration pathways.
Nevertheless we always knew that a stable (higher) temperature does not bring a stable sea-level (on a multi-century timescale) . While for some other types of impacts - e.g. ecosystem adaptation, it may be the rate (derivative) rather than the integral that matters more. The 'level' concept was a compromise to coalesce policy (within which - round numbers like 2.0 or 1.5 C also arbitrary).Maybe it could help motivate the global debate, to specifically (dis)agree goals of sea-level rise we try to avoid ? That's a more tangible level ( at least until we get into regional sea-level-rise variations...) , but due to the double integral, it's harder to implement.