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Anthropogenic forcing dominates global mean sea-level rise since 1970

Nature Climate Change volume 6, pages 701–705 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

Sea-level change is an important consequence of anthropogenic climate change, as higher sea levels increase the frequency of sea-level extremes and the impact of coastal flooding and erosion on the coastal environment, infrastructure and coastal communities1,2. Although individual attribution studies have been done for ocean thermal expansion3,4 and glacier mass loss5, two of the largest contributors to twentieth-century sea-level rise, this has not been done for the other contributors or total global mean sea-level change (GMSLC). Here, we evaluate the influence of greenhouse gases (GHGs), anthropogenic aerosols, natural radiative forcings and internal climate variability on sea-level contributions of ocean thermal expansion, glaciers, ice-sheet surface mass balance and total GMSLC. For each contribution, dedicated models are forced with results from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) climate model archive6. The sum of all included contributions explains 74 ± 22% (±2σ) of the observed GMSLC over the period 1900–2005. The natural radiative forcing makes essentially zero contribution over the twentieth century (2 ± 15% over the period 1900–2005), but combined with the response to past climatic variations explains 67 ± 23% of the observed rise before 1950 and only 9 ± 18% after 1970 (38 ± 12% over the period 1900–2005). In contrast, the anthropogenic forcing (primarily a balance between a positive sea-level contribution from GHGs and a partially offsetting component from anthropogenic aerosols) explains only 15 ± 55% of the observations before 1950, but increases to become the dominant contribution to sea-level rise after 1970 (69 ± 31%), reaching 72 ± 39% in 2000 (37 ± 38% over the period 1900–2005).

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Figure 1: Cumulative CMIP5 sea-level contributions and the sum for different model experiments, 1900–2005.
Figure 2: Comparison of modelled and observational average of cumulative GMSLC time series.
Figure 3: Explained fractions (%) of total observed sea-level change rates.

Change history

  • 15 April 2016

    In the version of this Letter originally published, in the paragraph above equation 1 in the Methods section, a percentage value was mistakenly included due to a typographical error. This error has been corrected in all versions of the Letter.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and we thank the climate modelling groups (listed in Supplementary Table 1) for producing and making available their model output. For CMIP, the US Department of Energy’s Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison provides coordinating support and leads development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization for Earth System Science Portals. A.B.A.S. is supported by a CSIRO Office of the Chief Executive Fellowship and the NWO-Netherlands Polar Program. J.A.C. is partially supported by the Australian Climate Change Science Program. B.M. and K.R. were supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): P25362-N26, and by the Austrian Ministry of Science BMWF as part of the UniInfrastrukturprogramm of the Focal Point Scientific Computing at the University of Innsbruck.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CSIRO Oceans & Atmosphere, Hobart, Tasmania 7000, Australia

    Aimée B. A. Slangen & John A. Church

  2. Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research Utrecht (IMAU), Utrecht University, 3584 CC Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Aimée B. A. Slangen

  3. Département de Géographie, Université de Liège, B11-4000 Liège, Belgium

    Cecile Agosta & Xavier Fettweis

  4. Institute of Geography, University of Bremen, 28359 Bremen, Germany

    Ben Marzeion

  5. Institute of Atmospheric and Cryospheric Sciences, University of Innsbruck, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria

    Kristin Richter

Authors
  1. Aimée B. A. Slangen
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  2. John A. Church
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  3. Cecile Agosta
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  4. Xavier Fettweis
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  6. Kristin Richter
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Contributions

J.A.C. and B.M. initiated the study. A.B.A.S. provided the thermal expansion data, carried out the analysis together with J.A.C. and produced the figures. B.M. and K.R. provided the glacier model data. X.F. and C.A. provided the ice sheet SMB model data. A.B.A.S. led the writing with the assistance of J.A.C., and all authors contributed to the writing of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Aimée B. A. Slangen.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Slangen, A., Church, J., Agosta, C. et al. Anthropogenic forcing dominates global mean sea-level rise since 1970. Nature Clim Change 6, 701–705 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2991

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