Sea level rise could be double warning

The world's sea levels could rise twice as high this century as UN climate scientists have predicted, according to researchers who looked at what happened more than 100,000 years ago, the last time Earth got this hot.

Experts working on the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have suggested a maximum 21st century sea level rise, a key effect of global climate change - of about 0.8m. Researchers made the estimate by looking at the so-called interglacial period, some 124,000 to 119,000 years ago, when Earth's climate was warmer than it is now due to a different configuration of the planet's orbit around the sun. That was the last time sea levels reached up to 20 feet 6m above where they are now, fuelled by the melting of the ice sheets that cover Greenland and Antarctica. The researchers say their study is the first robust documentation of how quickly sea levels rose to that level.
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