Researchers estimate the consequences of current Paris Agreement emissions pledges to long-term sea-level rise. Global mean sea-level rise (GMSLR) will continue long after global mean temperature stabilizes because the key GMSLR contributors respond to warming on time scales ranging from decades to millennia. Alexander Nauels and colleagues used sea-level modeling to estimate the contributions from historical greenhouse gas emissions and those currently pledged under the Paris Agreement to GMSLR until the year 2300. The model projected that greenhouse gas emissions up to 2030 would lock in approximately 1 m of GMSLR by 2300 compared with the baseline period 1986-2005, with approximately 20 cm of GMSLR resulting from emissions pledged under the Paris Agreement. Approximately 25% of this 1 m rise could be attributed to emissions from the top 5 emitters--China, the United States, the European Union, India, and Russia--during the period 1991-2030, and around 11% could be attributed to emissions from the same 5 entities solely during the Paris Agreement years 2016-2030. The results suggest that greenhouse gas emissions in the first decades of the 21st century are likely to affect global sea level for centuries and that limiting long-term GMSLR requires stringent near-term emission reductions, according to the authors.
Article #19-07461: "Attributing long-term sea-level rise to Paris Agreement emission pledges," by Alexander Nauels et al.
MEDIA CONTACT: Alexander Nauels, Climate Analytics, Berlin, GERMANY; tel: +49-30259229541, +49-1794611258; e-mail: alex.nauels@climateanalytics.org
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences