Despite projections by some scientists of global seas rising by 20 feet or more by the end of this century as a result of warming, a new University of Colorado at Boulder study concludes that global sea rise of much more than 6 feet is a near physical impossibility. Tad Pfeffer, a fellow of CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research and his colleagues made calculations using conservative, medium and extreme glaciological assumptions for sea rise expected from Greenland, Antarctica and the world’s smaller glaciers and ice caps — the three primary contributors to sea rise. The team concluded the most plausible scenario, when factoring in thermal expansion due to warming waters, will lead to a total sea level rise of roughly 3 to 6 feet by 2100. A paper on the subject was published in the Sept. 5 issue of Science. Co-authors of the study were of the University of Montana’s Joel Harper and Shad O’Neel of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. The study was funded by the National Science Foundation and a University of Colorado Faculty Fellowship. ‘We consider glaciological conditions required for large sea level rise to […]