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By Jonathan Tirone (Bloomberg) Climate change is causing oceans to rise quicker than scientists’ most pessimistic forecasts, resulting in earlier flood risks to coastal economies already struggling to adapt.
The revised estimates published Tuesday in
Ocean Science impact the two-fifths of the Earth’s population who live near coastlines. Insured property worth trillions of dollars could face even greater danger from floods, superstorms and tidal surges. The research suggests that countries will have to rein in their greenhouse gas emissions even more than expected to keep sea levels in check.
“It means our carbon budget is even more depleted,” said Aslak Grinsted, a geophysicist at the University of Copenhagen who co-authored the research. Economies need to slash an additional 200 billion metric tons of carbon equivalent to about five years of global emissions to remain within the thresholds set by previous forecasts, he said.