One-metre sea-level rise this century, scientists say

Oct 9, 2008, 10:37 GMT

Berlin - Global warming calculations have been too optimistic, and the sea level round the globe is likely to rise a full metre this century, two senior German scientists warned Wednesday.

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, who heads the Potsdam Institute for Research on Global Warming Effects and Jochem Marotzke, a leading meteorologist, said UN-backed data on climate change, predicting a rise of 18 to 59 centimetres, was out of date.

'We now have to expect that the sea level will rise by a metre this century,' said Schellnhuber in Berlin.

He said international plans to limit the rise in average global temperatures to just 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, mainly by limiting growth in carbon dioxide emissions, were only achievable with enormous effort.

Schnellnhuber, who is official adviser to German Chancellor Angela Merkel on climate-change issues, said the new findings employed data unavailable to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for its most recent global warming report.

The two experts said the IPCC report had been based on data up to 2005 only, but since then ice loss in the Arctic had doubled or tripled.

Schnellhuber charged that 20 per cent of the loss of the ice sheet on Greenland could be directly linked to the added carbon dioxide emissions from new Chinese coal-fired power stations.