Major sea level rise still on

Though the number of climate change skeptics seem to be growing lately, especially after the discovery of certain mistakes in currently accepted climate change predictions, majority of scientists is still convinced that one of the worst consequences of climate change, a major sea level rise, still looks very likely to happen.

In fact Dr Svetlana Jevrejeva from the National Oceanography Centre believes that global sea level looks likely to rise by anywhere between 0.6 and 1.6 metres by the end of the century. Major factor responsible for such huge sea level rise are increased carbon emissions which together with other greenhouse gases would be responsible for 95 % of this rise.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimated in 2007 in its famous report that sea level would rise by between 18 and 59 centimeters this century but many top climate change scientists believe these numbers to be too conservative, doubting the comprehensiveness of this research.

Jevrejeva and her research team used a statistical model to look at the cumulative effects of both natural changes and manmade changes on 21st century sea level rise.

As Dr Jevrejeva said: "Our model uses 300 years' of sea level observations from sites across the world. We used it to reproduce past sea level and because it's such a good match, we're confident we can use it to estimate future sea level rise."

Jevrejeva and her research team believe that sea level rise in the 21st century will be dominated by man-made changes in atmospheric greenhouse gases. Natural factors would be responsible for only five per cent of the rise. Currently accepted theories give natural factors such as the Sun warming up the oceans or emissions from volcanic eruptions cooling the atmosphere 25% of responsibility for sea level rise.

And yet, despite the so many warnings, the world still fails to commit to reducing the amount of carbon emissions on global level with new climate deal looking to be impossible to reach. Petty differences between the countries are still major stumbling block when it comes to climate change issue, and because of these differences our future generations may suffer a lot.