The European coastline boasts many unique and critical habitats - from marine turtles nesting on the beaches of Cyprus to rare and endangered liverworts nestled between coastal sand dunes of Wales. It is also here, in these coastal regions of the European Union, that over 205 million people make their homes and livelihoods (2008 estimate). The future and prosperity of these regions is threatened by sea-level rise, yet there is major uncertainty associated with projections for how much sea level will rise and over what time frame.
One of the greatest sources of uncertainty is around how much ice sheets and glaciers will contribute to the rise in sea-level. Greenland and the Antarctica ice sheets contain around 99.5% of the Earth’s glacier ice and if they were to melt completely, global sea levels could rise as much as 65 metres. In 2007, the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) identified this major source of uncertainty and in response a scientific programme, known as ice2sea, was funded by the European Union to address the issue.
Ice2sea is a collaboration of 24 research institutes from around the globe that is coordinating the efforts of experts from a wide range of disciplines. Using fieldwork, satellite observations and computer simulations, the ice2sea programme has helped improve our understanding of how ice sheets and glaciers might contribute to sea-level changes in the future - reducing the uncertainty and improving projections.
Collectively, the ice2sea project has advanced our understanding of how terrestrial ice will affect future sea-level rise more than any other single project ever has.
Jonathan Bamber, Professor of Physical Geography at the University of Bristol, is part of ice2sea and has provided some of the satellite information and other data sets that have been critical to the modelling work. He’s also responsible for integrating the results from the different programme areas into a coherent story that will ultimately help produce the most comprehensive projections of regional sea-level rise to date.
“Collectively, the ice2sea project has advanced our understanding of how terrestrial ice will affect future sea-level rise more than any other single project ever has,” said Bamber.
Other Bristol contributors to the project include Professor Tony Payne (Professor of Glaciology), Dr Tamsin Edwards (Research Associate) and Mr Mathieu Depoorter (PhD Student), all from the School of Geographical Sciences.
The new improved projections of sea-level rise from the ice2sea project have contributed to the 2013 IPCC report and have been given to European policy makers, providing a sound scientific basis for policy development and coastal defence planning.
Understanding uncertainty, and communicating the extent of it effectively and rigorously to people who use scientific data and models is the bedrock of Cabot Institute research.
This article has been taken from the 2013/2014 edition of the Cabot Institute Magazine which you can download for free.