The Sea-Level Fingerprint of West Antarctic Collapse

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Abstract
Recent projections of sea-level rise after a future collapse of theWest Antarctic Ice Sheet (for example, the Fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report) assume that meltwater will spread uniformly (that is, eustatically) across the oceans once marine-based sectors of the West Antarctic are filled. A largely neglected 1977 study predicted that peak values would be 20\% higher than the eustatic in the North Pacific and 5 to 10\% higher along the U.S. coastline. We show, with use of a state-of-the-art theory, that the sea-level rise in excess of the eustatic value will be three times higher than previously predicted for U.S. coastal sites.
Year of Publication
2009
Journal
Science
Volume
323
Number of Pages
753-
Date Published
02/2009
URL
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009Sci...323..753M
DOI
10.1126/science.1166510
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