Polar ice sheets are melting faster than most authorities realize and could eventually submerge coastal communities worldwide, according to a pair of studies released today.
Researchers from the University of Arizona and the National Center for Atmospheric Researchers noted that sea levels rose 20 feet during a warming period 129,000 years ago - and said the waters could rise just as high sometime after 2100 if global temperatures continue to climb.
Maryland would be hit harder than most areas, with the Eastern Shore particularly vulnerable, said J. Court Stevenson, a professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Sciences at Horn Point, who was not involved in the studies published today.
"We're talking about our grandchildren having to face this," he said.
Scientists have been warning for decades that carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse" gases from power plants and vehicle exhaust are warming the planet and raising the seas. They say the best way to minimize the damage is to drastically reduce smokestack and tailpipe emissions.
While some researchers dispute specific aspects of global warming, more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries who served on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in 1995 and 2001 that global warming is real and that carbon dioxide produced by humans is largely to blame.
And the two studies published today in the journal Science argue that the impact of melting from Antarctica's ice sheets has been underestimated.
That melting will exacerbate the effects of global warming and play a major role in submerging many coastal communities if nothing is done to curb the emissions, the researchers say.
No one is sure of the extent of the melting or the timing of its effects. But the researchers say that with the warming climate, melting ice sheets in Greenland, the Arctic and Antarctica could inundate coastal areas around the world.
Maps released with the studies show extensive coastal areas in Florida, New Orleans and Cape Cod that the researchers say might one day be submerged.
"As Katrina pointed out, we only need a meter of sea level rise to make much of New Orleans unlivable. The same goes for a number of coastal areas," said Jonathan T. Overpeck, a geosciences professor at the University of Arizona and lead author of a study.
