Key points
- Climate indicators are “all moving in the wrong direction”: Piers Forster
- World is warming faster than ever before: Study
- Scientists urge leaders to draw up more ambitious national climate plans
ISLAMABAD: Global sea levels are now rising twice as fast as they did last century, a new scientific study said.
According to Sky News, the study found sea levels are now rising on average twice as fast, “at 4.3mm a year on average since 2019, up from 1.8mm a year at the turn of the 20th century”.
The acceleration is stark, but within the realms of what scientists expected. That is because the warming atmosphere has sent more melting ice flowing into the sea, and the ocean water expands as it warms.
Rising seas
For the island nation of the United Kingdom (UK), which risks coastal flooding, cliff falls, and damage to homes and buildings, with 100,000 properties likely to be threatened with coastal erosion in England within 50 years.
A UK government spokesperson said: “We owe it to future generations to tackle the climate crisis, by becoming a clean energy superpower.”
Warming faster
They are also spending £7.9bn on flood defences to “strengthen our resilience” and protect thousands of “homes, small businesses, and vital infrastructure from this growing threat”
The study, involving more than 60 scientists, also warned the world is warming faster than ever before, by an “unprecedented” rate of 0.27°C per decade.
Sky News cited Professor Forster later as saying, “There is little good news across the entire indicator set.” “This is why I don’t have my normal optimism.”
He added: “Greenhouse gas emissions needed to have started dropping significantly in 2024 if we were to keep a chance of keeping long-term warming below 1.5°C. “The world has failed to do this”.
COP30
Scientists urged leaders to draw up more ambitious national climate plans before the COP30 climate summit in Brazil in November.
“In a rapidly changing climate, evidence-based decision-making benefits from up-to-date and timely information,” said the study, Indicators of Global Climate Change 2024, published in Earth System Science Data.
On Thursday, AFP cited more than 60 top scientists as saying from carbon pollution to sea-level rise to global heating, the pace and level of key climate change indicators are all in unchartered territory.
Greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels and deforestation hit a new high in 2024 and averaged, over the last decade, a record 53.6 billion tonnes per year of CO2 or its equivalent in other gases, the scientist claimed in a peer-reviewed study.
This and a host of other climate indicators are “all moving in the wrong direction”, said lead author Piers Forster, head of the University of Leed’s Priestley Centre for Climate Futures, the AFP reported.
