Updates
Projections

New Zealanders should follow the New Zealand Coastal Hazard Guidance (Ministry for the Environment, 2017). Projections in the guidance are based on previous global assessments (Kopp et al., 2014) and indicate that sea level could rise by as much as 1.2 meters by 2100 under high emissions scenarios. However, these projections do not include local influences such as vertical land movement due to tectonics, land compaction, or sediment accumulation. The NZ SeaRise Programme is updating our national projections to incorporate state-of-the-art information regarding future response of Earth’s large ice sheets and local non-climatic influences. These local projections will be used to help make local decisions to inform adaptation.
Recent publications
An international team of scientists, including GNS ice sheet modeller Dan Lowry, has published a paper predicting that sea-level rise from melting polar ice could be halved this century if we meet the Paris Agreement target of limiting warming to 1.5°C.
In this article, for the Antarctic Science Platform, Richard Levy and Tim Naish discuss the connections between the melting of Antarctic ice-sheets and planning to sea-level rise in Aotearoa.
“Sea-level projections for New Zealand’s Scott Base rebuild.“ The impact of sea-level change on our facilities in Antarctica will affect our ability to operate on the southern continent in the coming decades.
Coasts in tectonically active regions face varying threat levels as land subsides or uplifts relative to rising sea levels.
In this article for The Circle: Artic Check-up Nick Golledge discusses the alarming feedback loops between the changing climate and melting ice.
Recently research highlights the long term impacts of twenty-first-century ice-sheet melt.
Sea-level rise in the news
We need to strive to understand as much as we can about the role Antarctica and its ice sheets will play in a warming world – because what happens in Antarctica will shape what happens everywhere on the planet. On the precipice details why action is needed.
Terry will explain how ice sheets are coupled with bedrock below, provide an overview of surprising observations on the deforming earth in Antarctica, and explore implications for the future of the Antarctic ice sheet and global sea level.
In this podcast Rebecca Priestley joins a panel discussion on how human’s connect to distant places, and ends it with mention of the work of NZ SeaRise.