Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Low sea level rise projections from mountain glaciers and icecaps under global warming

Nature volume 439, pages 311–313 (2006)Cite this article

Abstract

The mean sea level has been projected to rise in the 21st century as a result of global warming1. Such projections of sea level change depend on estimated future greenhouse emissions and on differing models, but model-average results from a mid-range scenario (A1B) suggests a 0.387-m rise by 2100 (refs 1, 2). The largest contributions to sea level rise are estimated to come from thermal expansion (0.288 m) and the melting of mountain glaciers and icecaps (0.106 m), with smaller inputs from Greenland (0.024 m) and Antarctica (- 0.074 m)1. Here we apply a melt model3 and a geometric volume model4 to our lower estimate of ice volume5,6,7 and assess the contribution of glaciers to sea level rise, excluding those in Greenland and Antarctica. We provide the first separate assessment of melt contributions from mountain glaciers and icecaps, as well as an improved treatment of volume shrinkage. We find that icecaps melt more slowly than mountain glaciers, whose area declines rapidly in the 21st century, making glaciers a limiting source for ice melt. Using two climate models, we project sea level rise due to melting of mountain glaciers and icecaps to be 0.046 and 0.051 m by 2100, about half that of previous projections1,8.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Get just this article for as long as you need it

$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1
Figure 2: Altitudinal gradients of mass balance in accumulation and ablation areas plotted against annual precipitation for all grid cells.
Figure 3: Time evolution of mountain glacier and icecap metrics.
Figure 4: Temperature forcing and SLR contribution for mountain glaciers and icecaps over the 21st century.

References

  1. Church, J. A. et al. in Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis (eds Houghton, J. T. et al.) 639–693 (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, UK, 2001)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Nakićenović, N. & Swart, R. (eds) Special Report on Emissions Scenarios 570 (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, UK, 2000)

  3. Braithwaite, R. J., Zhang, Y. & Raper, S. C. B. Temperature sensitivity of the mass balance of mountain glaciers and icecaps as a climatological characteristic. Z. Gletscherkunde Glazialgeol. 38, 35–61 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Raper, S. C. B., Brown, O. & Braithwaite, R. J. A geometric glacier model for sea level change calculations. J. Glaciol. 46, 357–368 (2000)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  5. Raper, S. C. B. & Braithwaite, R. J. The potential for sea level rise: New estimates from glacier and ice cap area and volume distributions. Geophys. Res. Lett. 32, L05502, doi:10.1029/2004GL021981 (2005)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  6. Meier, F., Bahr, D. B., Dyurgerov, M. B. & Pfeffer, W. T. Comment on ‘The potential for sea level rise: New estimates from glacier and ice cap area and volume distributions’. Geophys. Res. Lett. 32, L17501, doi:10.1029/2005GL023319 (2005)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  7. Raper, S. C. B. & Braithwaite, R. J. Reply to comment by M. F. Meier et al. on ‘The potential for sea level rise: New estimates from glacier and ice cap area and volume distributions’. Geophys. Res. Lett. 32, L17502, doi: 10.1029/2005GL023460 (2005).

  8. Van de Wal, R. S. W. & Wild, M. Modelling the response of glaciers to climate change by applying the volume-area scaling in combination with a high resolution GCM. Clim. Dyn. 18, 359–366 (2001)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Oerlemans, J. in Ice in the Climate System (ed. Peltier, W. R.) 101–116 (Springer, Berlin/Heidelberg, 1993)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  10. Cogley, J. G. GGHYDRO—Global Hydrographic Data Release 2.3, Trent Technical Note 2003–1 (Department of Geography, Trent Univ., Peterborough, Ontario, 2003); available at http://www.trentu.ca/geography/glaciology/glaciology.htm.

  11. Kotlyakov, V. M. et al. World Atlas of Snow and Ice Resources 1–392 (Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Geography, Moscow, 1997)

    Google Scholar 

  12. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). World Glacier Inventory http://www.nsidc.org/data/glacier_inventory/ (NSIDC, Boulder, Colorado, 1999)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Meier, M. F. & Bahr, D. B. in Glaciers, Ice Sheets and Volcanoes: A Tribute to Mark F. Meier (ed. Colbeck, S. C.) 89–94 (Cold Regions Research Engineering Laboratory Special Report 96–27, Hanover, New Hampshire, 1996); available at http://www.stormingmedia.us/24/2431/A243123.html.

  14. New, M., Hulme, M. & Jones, P. J. Representing twentieth century space-time climate variability. 1. Development of a 1961–1990 mean monthly terrestrial climatology. J. Clim. 12, 829–856 (1999)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  15. National Geodetic Survey data set. GLOBE. Available at the National Geophysical Data Center http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/global/global.html (NGS, 1997).

  16. Paterson, W. S. B. The Physics of Glaciers 480 (Pergamon, Oxford, 1994)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Dyurgerov, M. B. & Meier, M. F. Mass balance of mountain and subpolar glaciers: a new assessment for 1961–1990. Arct. Alp. Res. 29, 379–391 (1997)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Braithwaite, R. J. & Raper, S. C. B. Glaciers and their contribution to sea level change. Phys. Chem. Earth 27, 1445–1454 (2002)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Dyurgerov, M. B. & Meier, M. F. Twentieth century climate change: evidence from small glaciers. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 97, 1406–1411 (2000)

    Article  CAS  ADS  Google Scholar 

  20. Arendt, A. A., Echelmeyer, K. A., Harrison, W. D., Lingle, C. S. & Valentine, V. B. Rapid wastage of Alaska glaciers and their contribution to rising sea level. Science 297, 382–386 (2002)

    Article  CAS  ADS  Google Scholar 

  21. Rignot, E., Rivera, A. & Casassa, G. Contribution of the Patagonia Icefields of South America to sea level rise. Science 302, 434–437 (2003)

    Article  CAS  ADS  Google Scholar 

  22. Meehl, G. A. et al. How much more global warming and sea level rise? Science 307, 1769–1772 (2005)

    Article  CAS  ADS  Google Scholar 

  23. Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. GFDL CM2 Modelhttp://data1.gfdl.noaa.gov/nomads/forms/deccen/ (GFDL, 2005).

Download references

Acknowledgements

Much of this work was supported by the HGF Strategiefonds Projekt (S.C.B.R.). We acknowledge the international modelling groups for providing their data for analysis, the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI) for collecting and archiving the model data, the JSC/CLIVAR Working Group on Coupled Modelling (WGCM) and their Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) and Climate Simulation Panel for organizing the model data analysis activity, and the IPCC WG1 TSU for technical support. The IPCC Data Archive at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is supported by the Office of Science, US Department of Energy.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Sarah C. B. Raper

    Present address: CATE, Dalton Research Institute, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, M1 5GD, UK

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, 27515, Bremerhaven, Germany

    Sarah C. B. Raper

  2. School of Environment and Development, University of Manchester, M13 9PL, Manchester, UK

    Roger J. Braithwaite

Authors
  1. Sarah C. B. Raper
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Roger J. Braithwaite
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sarah C. B. Raper.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

Reprints and permissions information is available at npg.nature.com/reprintsandpermissions. The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Table 1

Sensitivity analysis: parameter settings and experiment results exploring uncertainty. (DOC 31 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Raper, S., Braithwaite, R. Low sea level rise projections from mountain glaciers and icecaps under global warming. Nature 439, 311–313 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature04448

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature04448

This article is cited by

Comments

By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing