Mitrovica, Gomez & Clark, Science, The Sea-Level Fingerprint of West Antarctic Collapse

Science 6 February 2009: Vol. 323, No. 5915, p. 753 DOI: 10.1126/science.1166510

Brevia

The Sea-Level Fingerprint of West Antarctic Collapse

Jerry X. Mitrovica,¹ Natalya Gomez,¹ and Peter U. Clark²

Recent projections of sea-level rise after a future collapse of theWest Antarctic Ice Sheet (for example, the Fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report) assume that meltwater will spread uniformly (that is, eustatically) across the oceans once marine-based sectors of the West Antarctic are filled. A largely neglected 1977 study predicted that peak values would be 20% higher than the eustatic in the North Pacific and 5 to 10% higher along the U.S. coastline. We show, with use of a state-of-the-art theory, that the sea-level rise in excess of the eustatic value will be two to three times higher than previously predicted for U.S. coastal sites.

¹ Department of Physics, University of Toronto, 60 St. George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 1A7, Canada.
² Department of Geo-sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA.

Link to abstract: http://sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/323/5915/753