When you purchase through link on our site , we may realize an affiliate commission . Here ’s how it work .
On Oct. 29 , 2012 , Superstorm Sandy unleashed a 14 - substructure ( 4 meters ) wall of brine into New York City . Regionally , the storm killed 147 people , impose $ 50 billion in damage , and opened a window into the future .
By mid - C , flood like this could become everyday .
An ice sheet that sprawled across North America during the Last Interglacial period may have stuck around longer than we thought, and that could spell trouble for New York City as the climate warms.
While the Statue of Liberty may not be submerge , low - lying places like Ellis Island could be underwater . By 2100 , sea - story rise alone could come near Sandy ’s 2012 high water mark . TheNYC Panel on Climate Change(NPCC ) predict up to 2.5 feet ( 0.76 m ) of local sea - level wage hike by the 2050s and 9.5 feet ( 3 m ) by 2100 .
However , fresh evidence from Earth ’s past paint a picture these dire scenario may be probable — and perhaps even button-down predictions .
Around 2.6 million years ago , the satellite go down into the Quaternary , a full stop of tack glacial - interglacial cycles that happen more or less every100,000 years . These cycles , driven partly by the planet ’s freaky wobble , pull off the amount of solar radioactivity arrive at Earth . During cold ( glacial ) cycles , ice sheet of paper sprawl across Antarctica , Greenland and North America , shut up by water and frown ocean levels . In warmer ( interglacial ) times , the ice retreated and ocean uprise .
An ice sheet that sprawled across North America during the Last Interglacial period may have stuck around longer than we thought, and that could spell trouble for New York City as the climate warms.
The paint to understanding today ’s rising ocean may lie in the Last Interglacial ( 129,000 to 116,000 years ago ) , when global temperature top out at 1.8 to 3.6 degree Fahrenheit ( 1 to 2 degrees Celsius ) above preindustrial levels . Consideringwe’re currently 2.7 F ( 1.5 C)above preindustrial level , the Last Interglacial could presage changes in the amount tenner as human - cause warming continues .
Related : Atlantic ocean current are weakening — and it could make the climate in some regions unrecognizable
For years , researchers believed North America ’s Laurentide Ice Sheet disappeared very too soon in the Last Interglacial . But new grounds hint the Laurentide lurk thousands of days after that . If true , this fundamentally alters our reason of where and how quickly ice melt back then .
Science Spotlight takes a deeper look at emerging science and gives you, our readers, the perspective you need on these advances. Our stories highlight trends in different fields, how new research is changing old ideas, and how the picture of the world we live in is being transformed thanks to science.
Modern model evoke that if the Laurentide persist , Antarctica likely meld more — and more rapidly — than previously think . And that has worrying conditional relation for future ocean levels .
" We all desire to interpret how small Antarctica ’s ice sheet became the last clip Earth reach similar temperatures,“Roger Creel , a geophysicist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts who studies sea - story change , told Live Science . " Sea - level projections may be too downcast if Antarctic melt was underestimate . "
Sea-level-rise projections
spherical seas have risen a little less than 1 groundwork ( 0.25 m ) since1880 . With the pace doubling since 2006 , another quarter meter is all but sealed by 2100 . But that ’s likely an underestimate , as scientists expect accelerate arctic melt .
The job is pinning down how much the poles will thaw .
envision sea levels is similar to forecasting a storm ’s course : We are try on to auspicate the future from past datum . Unlike with a modern storm , however , very few of our sea - layer records are definitive .
New research shows that rapid Antarctic melt early in the Last Interglacial caused uneven sea-level rise through a land-shifting process called isostatic adjustment. The lingering Laurentide Ice Sheet may have masked the true extent of Antarctic ice loss—offering a warning for future change. 100% = global mean sea level rise; areas above saw higher-than-average rise, while areas below saw seas fall.
lineal measure — taken from tide gauges and artificial satellite data point — becharm just a nictitation of geological time . The Liverpool lunar time period gauge , one of the longest - running record , spans just 300 years , or 0.01 % of the Quaternary . Predicting the future free-base only on direct measurement , then , is a bit like judge a novel ’s ending from just the first few chapters .
Further back in time , the record gets mirky . Ancient glaciers obliterate much of the physical grounds that could help explicate past climate alteration . Where unmediated evidence subsist — say , in chalk core or rubble piles — date stamp can be challenging . What ’s left is a hodgepodge of clues — fossils , deposit and ancient shorelines — that scientists piece together like detective .
Patchwork of evidence
One person deciphering these ancient cue isAndrea Dutton , a University of Wisconsin - Madison geologist .
Far from Antarctica , jagged limestone scarps rise from the turquoise water supply of the Caribbean . Beginning about 129,000 years ago , crank melt , seas swell , and reefs produce to chase the sun . These reefs keep evidence of sea - level fluctuations like mosquitoes in amber . Receding waters strand these fossilized reefs on land , leaving them for investigator like Dutton to study .
Dutton has spend age tracking coral growth - and - death cycles to unravel how sea rose and fell during the Last Interglacial . Researchers still debate how high-pitched or fast seas rose , with estimate range from 6.5 to 33 feet ( 2 to 10 m ) above present level .
By 2100, huge swaths of New York City could be perpetually submerged, including Lower Manhattan, Coney Island, Ellis Island and Red Hook, Brooklyn. Dark blue shows current water levels; light blue shows areas that will be submerged if seas rise 10 feet.
Dutton ’s work has contain her across the earth , and what she ’s find is perplexing . In the Caribbean , for example , ocean levels peak multiple time , whereas Chilean shoring show no such blueprint .
The public broadly imagines undifferentiated sea - level rise — a meter in Vancouver , a measure in Sydney . But that uniform rise " is a figment of our imagination , " Dutton told Live Science .
In fact , decipher ancient ocean level is maddeningly complex . That ’s part because nation surface are n’t electrostatic , either . For instance , Dutton call up researchers cataloging fossil red coral in Papua New Guinea , only to incur their study site lift up by a sudden earthquake , which jumble the geologic disc of historic sea levels . Aside from shifting coastline , gravitational force can pass on water supply unequally across the planet .
" That ’s why it ’s so of import to wait at many sites , " Dutton said . " They all have different story , yet clearly one thing must have happened in terms of global sea level . "
Researchers initially attributed mysterious sea - level shift — multiple peaks in some region and falls in others — primarily to the melting and regrowing of Greenland and Antarctica during the Last Interglacial . But the musical theme of methamphetamine hydrochloride sheets regrowing when temperature remained high never sat correct with some . When evidence emerged from deep in the North Atlantic show the Laurentide persisted , researcher needed a unexampled model .
The lingering Laurentide
Creel set out to explain these inscrutable sea - level patterns as part of his doctorial dissertation work underJacqueline Austermannat Columbia ’s Lamont - Doherty Earth Observatory . Perched on rock once polished by the Laurentide Ice Sheet , the campus overlooks the Hudson River from a secure elevation above encroaching seas .
The Laurentide persist central to the bad question : How high and flying will ocean resurrect again ?
Creel frames it like an accountant . scientist typically budget interglacial sea spirit level from known suspects : ocean caloric expansion , Greenland , Antarctica and tidy sum glacier . But the Laurentide bestow a Modern job to the ledger .
For Creel and Austermann , timing is everything . " Antarctica is probably more vulnerable than we opine , " Creel aver . " If the Laurentide live on longer , it may have masked how much Antarctica melted . "
Once sprawling across 5 million square miles ( 13 million substantial kilometers ) with ice up to 10,000 base ( 3,000 m ) chummy , the Laurentide carved the Hudson River Valley and Great Lakes , growing and shrinking through ice ages . Today , evidence of it lingers in overgrown rubble spile and other topographic oddities . " The Laurentide is gone but not forgotten , " Creel say .
For years , some scientist suspected a long - lived Laurentide , but hard grounds was scarce . That changed in2022 , when researchers studying North Atlantic sediment gist found augury of an enormous internal-combustion engine dam collapse 125,000 years ago — implying large amounts of North American ice .
A month by and by , alead isotope studyrevealed the Laurentide lasted until around 122,000 years ago — well after temperature rise during the Last Interglacial . And a2023 studysuggested this blueprint was n’t strange ; sediments dropped from berg indicated the Laurentide melt only briefly and infrequently across multiple Quaternary interglacials .
To poise the books , Creel and Austermann fit together scatter and on the face of it contradictory pieces of evidence — methamphetamine cores , fossils , deposit and geophysical holding — into a cohesive story .
A fundamental chemical element , they foundin a study publish of late last year , was a cognitive process bid isostatic modification . Ice sheets press down on the land ; when they melt , the reason reverberate , altering Earth ’s rotary motion and gravity .
" It ’s like sitting on a garish mattress , " saidNatasha Barlow , a paleoceanographer at the University of Leeds in the U.K. who was not involved in the study . " It sinks under your weight , and the other end rises — just like how icing compresses the Earth . When it melts , the ' mattress ' rebounds , affect sea levels differently depending on where you are . "
Researchers already know this process come , but the revised exemplar ’s implications are fall : Antarctica experienced " rapid and drastic " ice loss early on in the Last Interglacial — outpace Greenland ’s melt — which caused the south-polar crust to rise , sloshing piddle north . That lift sea levels in the Caribbean and other regions but caused them to devolve near Antarctica . The cognitive process continued , lifting and drop local seas otherwise in the global North versus the South .
" It was like a competition between the pole , " Dutton said .
The model connected many puzzling data points , including the persistent Laurentide Ice Sheet and the confusing ocean - point patterns of the Last Interglacial , Barlow said .
These finding avail explain ancient sea - level puzzles , but they also hint at what ’s amount . If Antarctica disappear faster than bear , place like New York will bear the brunt . While global seas may rise 6 foot ( 2 metre ) by 2100 , New York could see a 10 - groundwork ( 3 m ) rise .
" For many years , we ’ve said it ’s all about Greenland and Antarctica , " Barlow told Live Science . " But the evidence over the last five years pronounce , ' arrest on a second . Maybe the Laurentide persisted longer than we thought . ' This is the first study seriously considering its influence at this level . If we ’re going to fine-tune our models for the future , we need to think about this . "
All eyes on West Antarctica
Because most of Antarctica ’s meth lurks below sea level , it is more vulnerable to meld than Greenland ’s land - based icing — precariously so in West Antarctica .
In1978 , glaciologist John Mercer warn that rising carbon copy dioxide level could trigger the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet , causing 15 foot ( 5 m ) of sea - floor rise and the " submergence of low - lying areas . " His claims , which ab initio drew accusation of alarmism , now seem eerily prescient .
Whether seas rise tardily or exponentially depends on carbon dioxide emissions and ice rag behavior .
In the past ten , research worker have coalesced around the estimation that marine ice rink sheet instability(MISI ) may conduct to considerable West Antarctic melt . In MISI , warm urine melting deoxyephedrine along Antarctica ’s sea-coast , cause the grounding line — the methamphetamine hydrochloride ’s inter-group communication with the seafloor — to retreat . As the run aground descent retirement inland , ice flows faster and more iceberg lettuce fracture into the sea , speed up ice loss in a ego - reenforce cycle . MISI , other ice retreat processes , and high - emission scenarios underpin the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ’s ( IPCC ) worst - case predictions .
Mathieu Morlighem , a Dartmouth glaciologist who studies ice shroud physics , trust MISI may be inevitable .
" In all our model , West Antarctica crock up , " Morlighem tell Live Science , referring to model projections over the next few centuries . West Antarctica alone could put up over 10 feet to orbicular sea levels .
Evidence from the Last Interglacial also defend the forward-looking observations that West Antarctica is particularly prone to melt . Sediment and ice core study put out in2021and2023suggest West Antarctic chalk melted or reduce significantly during the last warm stop . Another2023 studyfound octopus population around West Antarctica interbred during the Last Interglacial , which would have been unlikely with an intact ice canvass .
Combined with data about the Laurentide , the issue icon suggests West Antarctica melted significantly in the Last Interglacial and may do so again over the next several decades .
From the past comes the future
If late finding hold up and substantial West Antarctic melting is imminent , even our dreary anticipation may be optimistic .
In the IPCC ’s " mellow impact , depressed probability " 2100 scenario , sprawling and vivacious low - lie areas — include the Jersey Shore ; Manhattan ’s East Village and Financial District ; the Rockaways ; Coney Island ; Red Hook , Brooklyn ; and part of Staten Island — would be perpetually submerged .
Boost ocean level , and you ’re looking at the voltage for much greater flooding risk .
New York already go through " cheery day flooding , " but tempest spate would magnify the scathe . TheNPCC concludedthat , by the 2080s , rising ocean horizontal surface alone — without any change in storm frequency or intensity — could make today ’s " once - in - a - century " coastal flood happen twice as often , or even 10 to 15 time more frequently .
" I ca n’t dunk . But if I raise the court a animal foot , my chance are sound . supercharge sea stratum , and you ’re looking at the potential for much greater flooding risk,“Daniel Bader , a clime scientist at Lamont - Doherty and an NPCC member , told Live Science .
And the novel brainwave from the Last Interglacial could lend weighting to this scenario , which was once dismissed as utmost .
Still , several expert cautioned against draw too many lessons from the past tense . Ancient cue are scatter , date are imprecise , and the drivers of thaw were vastly dissimilar then . Yet some experts state Live Science they consider the IPCC ’s defective - example models are , if anything , too cautious .
Unlike strong periods driven by lifelike outgrowth , today ’s warming feels more terrible , Dutton said . " Today we ’re forcing both [ natural and human - rush thawing ] simultaneously , " she explained . " nursery gas concentrations are heating both poles at the same time . " warm during the Last Interglacial , by direct contrast , was likely focused more on the Northern Hemisphere .
ForKlaus Jacob , a Columbia University geophysicist and climate palliation expert , whether the worst - case scenario are likely is beside the gunpoint . The opening demand activity : " Would you room a plane with a 10 % likelihood of crashing ? " Jacob said .
Jacob envisioned three possible reply : protection , with barriers like those that defend the Netherlands but failed catastrophically in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina ; adaptation , such as using stilts , abandon ground floors , and embracing Venetian - elan sauceboat tape transport ; and relocation .
— ' We were in disbelief ' : Antarctica is behaving in a way we ’ve never seen before . Can it recuperate ?
— Global ocean levels originate a whopping 125 foot after the last glass long time
— Drinking wastewater , building an island from dent and creating an urban timberland : 3 bold direction metropolis are already accommodate to climate modification
New York only began earnest reflexion after Superstorm Sandy but remains involved in bureaucratic inactiveness , Jacob said . Coastal defenses are stopgaps , he contend ; the real result is managed retirement . In other dustup : " Get the underworld out . "
That means moving to gamy elevations , and potentially abandoning entire low - lying region along the U.S. East Coast , Gulf Coast and swaths of Asia . And if the retirement is n’t managed ?
" It ’s pandemonium , " Jacob told Live Science . " Chaotic retreat . "
This story is part ofThe 89 Percent Project , an initiative of the global news media quislingism Covering Climate Now .
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again , you will then be prompted to embark your show name .
