Scientist Tries to Predict Rise in Ocean Levels 31 October 2013, by Adam Piore
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Scientist tries to predict rise in ocean levels 31 October 2013, by Adam Piore "If we took the amount of ice on East Antarctica and melted it, sea level globally would rise more than 50 meters (150 feet). You'd drown most of the major coastal cities of the world." (Morningside Heights is about 37 meters above sea level.) In 2010, Maureen Raymo traveled to Western Australia's Roe Plain to survey the elevation of shoreline features and sediments as old as 3 million years. Credit: Michael O'Leary Columbia climatologist Maureen Raymo is trying to predict the planet's future by looking to its past. Ancient rocks can reveal where the seas once stood. Credit: Dan Grossman About 3 million years ago, prior to the last Ice Age, carbon dioxide (CO2) levels were roughly the same level they are now – about 400 parts per million. But they arrived there far more gradually. CO2 is linked to melting ice caps because it absorbs heat energy from Earth's surface and Raymo, a marine geologist and paleoclimatologist prevents it from escaping into space; the amount of at Columbia's Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory, CO2 in the atmosphere has spiked dramatically in is studying how much those levels caused the recent decades due to deforestation and fossil fuel oceans to rise. From that, scientists can figure out consumption. how much of Earth's land mass may be inundated as the climate warms and polar ice caps melt. Raymo is not the first person to look to the period known as the Pliocene for answers about what lies "The big question is what impact global warming ahead. For many years, most experts believed that will have on the East Antarctic ice sheet," says sea levels rose about 25 meters the last time CO2 Raymo, who earned her Ph.D. in geology from levels reached current levels. But Raymo was Columbia in 1989 before returning in 2011 to head never convinced. Lamont's Core Repository, an archive of sediment, rock and coral, as well as digital data related to the Geologists came up with their estimates by material, used for climate research. examining the elevation above present sea level of 3 million-year-old fossils and used them to infer Raymo is one of a sizable group of Columbia ancient sea levels. Australia's West Coast, for researchers examining global warming's impact on instance, is mantled by fossilized coral reefs, which melting polar ice and rising sea levels. rise progressively higher as one moves inland. Since reefs must be covered with water for coral to 1 / 3 grow, scientists assumed that if you could determineadjusts to the current level of CO2 in the the age of the fossilized reefs, their height relative atmosphere, is far from certain. Raymo believes to the current sea level would be an accurate proxy that the number could be as low as 12 meters or as for the sea level at the time that coral stopped high as 35 meters. And as a global database of growing. Pliocene shorelines grows, the uncertainty in these numbers will inevitably shrink. But Raymo still had questions. If sea levels rose, wouldn't the weight of the water alone push the land mass down? And if the land has rebounded as Provided by Columbia University polar ice caps expanded, wouldn't that cause ancient sea levels to look higher than they were? Raymo took her suspicions to a specialist who studied such phenomena: Jerry Mitrovica, an expert in mantle geophysics at Harvard University. That led to a series of papers that forced Raymo's entire field to reevaluate traditional assumptions. After highlighting the shifting land heights caused by water weight and explaining how researchers would have correct for it, the two researchers began work on another variable climatologists had failed to consider – dynamic topography. Deep within the Earth, slow convective motions of our planet's viscous interior can, over time, change the buoyancy of different parts of Earth's mantle – the layer between Earth's crust and core. Hotter, more buoyant areas, often hundreds to thousands of miles across, can push up the surface of the planet from below causing areas of high elevation spanning similar distances. In 2011, Raymo and Mitrovica won a $4.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation for a study to correct for such factors. Raymo and her collaborators have been scouring the globe for what are known as paleo-shorelines, exposed rock in structures such as cliffs and ridges that allow them to measure the relative elevations of shorelines that formed during a small window of time before the last Ice Age began. It's too early to determine how much sea levels rose during the climatological period 3 million years ago that is very similar to ours. But the researchers have gathered enough data to confirm Raymo's initial suspicion – that 25 meters, the typical number cited for expected sea level rise once the planet 2 / 3 APA citation: Scientist tries to predict rise in ocean levels (2013, October 31) retrieved 27 September 2021 from https://phys.org/news/2013-10-scientist-ocean.html This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only. 3 / 3 Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org).