FastFind »   Lastname: doi:10.1029/ Year: Advanced Search  

AGU: Geophysical Research Letters

 

Keywords

  • sea level rise
  • climate change
  • coupled global climate model

Index Terms

  • Atmospheric Composition and Structure: General or miscellaneous
  • Cryosphere: Glaciers
  • Biogeosciences: Computational methods and data processing

Abstract

Sea level rise projections for current generation CGCMs based on the semi-empirical method

Radley Horton

Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA

NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, New York, USA

Celine Herweijer

Risk Management Solutions, London, UK

Cynthia Rosenzweig

NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, New York, USA

Jiping Liu

School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

Vivien Gornitz

Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA

NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, New York, USA

Alex C. Ruane

NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, New York, USA

The semi-empirical relationship between global surface air temperature and mean sea level first developed by Rahmstorf is here applied to the latest generation of Coupled Global Climate Models (CGCMs) used for the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). Our results produce a broader range of sea level rise projections, especially at the higher end, than outlined in IPCC AR4. The range of sea level rise results is CGCM and emissions-scenario dependent, and not sensitive to initial conditions or how the data are filtered temporally. Both the IPCC AR4 and the semi-empirical sea level rise projections described here are likely to underestimate future sea level rise if recent trends in the polar regions accelerate.

Received 26 October 2007; accepted 13 December 2007; published 26 January 2008.

Citation: Horton, R., C. Herweijer, C. Rosenzweig, J. Liu, V. Gornitz, and A. C. Ruane (2008), Sea level rise projections for current generation CGCMs based on the semi-empirical method, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L02715, doi:10.1029/2007GL032486.

Cited By

Please wait one moment ...