All of these changes, we can plot them and if we look exponentially, we see really catastrophic effects in the next few years, certainly in the next decade or two the world will be completely different… I think we’re at the last minute now.
— Peter Wadhams
PM Margaret Thatcher’s 1989 speech to the UN General Assembly made reference to Peter Wadhams, Head of Polar Ocean Physics, Cambridge as her British scientist on board a ship in the Arctic Ocean: “The lesson of these Polar processes is that an environmental or climatic change produced by man may take on a self-sustaining or ‘runaway’ quality and may be irreversible.”
Sea level rise is a major threatening issue that’s directly impacted by Arctic sea ice in what PM Thatcher referred to as lessons to learn from “polar processes” that climate change produced by man may take on a self-sustaining or runaway quality and may be irreversible. PM Thatcher studied chemistry at Oxford University and practiced as a research chemist before becoming a politician. She had strong appreciation of science.
The outlook for sea level rise has never been more pertinent and never so threatening. Global warming is running so far ahead of schedule, the dreaded +1.5°C pre-industrial already knocking on the door, as science consistently plays catchup, and sea level rise is one threat that may be on deck much sooner than anybody thought possible. There’s a risk that society gets blindsided by unanticipated sea level rise.
For one of the best perspectives on future sea level rise, there’s no better source than the world’s leading polar scientist Peter Wadhams, professor emeritus, Ocean Physics, Cambridge University with over 50 “boots-on-the-ground” and submarine trips to the Arctic and author of A Farewell to Ice; A Report from the Arctic. Fortunately, a special interview of the professor is available via a former cinematic feature documentary and the admirable Extended Interview Series: The Future of Sea Level Rise.
The following write-up is solely based upon the 45-minute interview of Dr. Wadhams:
When he initially started researching the Arctic in the 1970s, the ice thickness on average was 6-7 meters (19-23 feet) and multi-years old. Whereas today nearly all the ice is 1-2 meters (3-6 feet) thick and less than one year old. It almost completely melts off every summer, and it is thinning even more. That’s a big change. It impacts the world climate system with a wallop that may be changing the face of the planet during only one human lifetime, a remarkable feat that speaks to the speed of human-caused anthropogenic climate change.
The Arctic Barometer
The Arctic is warming more than any other part of the world, in part, because the troposphere at the Arctic is under 4 miles high versus 11-12 miles at the equator. The changes that affect the climate system of the world are found first in the Arctic. Then, these changes are seen later throughout the world. Of utmost importance, retreat of Arctic sea ice adversely impacts the world climate system and impacts sea level rise. There’s a maxim, what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic.
Impact of Loss of Arctic Sea Ice
First and foremost, the rate of global warming itself is increased as sea ice disappears. When the icy white background is replaced by open water, this reduces the amount of solar radiation that’s reflected from the sun straight back to outer space. The dark background of open seas absorbs solar radiation that otherwise would have been reflected to outer space. The Arctic sea ice and Antarctica, the world’s largest reflectors, under normal conditions (now long gone) reflect 80% of solar radiation back to outer space.
The acceleration of sea level rise: Until the 1980s science had no preconceived idea that the world’s two largest ice sheets Greenland and Antarctica were starting to melt in a serious manner. Now, the entire Greenland ice sheet is melting during summer months. This is a new event of recent decades, and it’s hugely threatening for sea level rise. In the past only small portions melted during the melt season, now it is the entire ice sheet. This is a knockoff impact of loss of Arctic sea ice. Indeed, Greenland is the major contributor to sea level rise. Unfortunately, there’s not much that can be done about it.
Another major threat with loss of Arctic sea ice is exposure to huge amounts of methane -CH4- contained in sediments underneath the Arctic continental shelves. This is shallow water, and the threat is too big to ignore. Layers of permafrost currently prevent large methane outbreaks from the seabed. But now the permafrost is melting and starting to expose compounds called methane hydrates. Each year, more and more, bigger and bigger plumes of methane are erupting out of the formerly frozen seabed. Russian scientists working the region believe a huge pulse of methane could erupt, bringing +0.6°C additional warming throughout the world very suddenly, within a year or two. “This would be a catastrophically rapid rate of climate change.”
Another major impact of loss of Arctic sea ice is pronounced changes in weather. The jet stream at altitude 30,000 feet is driven by westerly winds that separates the Arctic air masses from the tropical air masses. The jet stream slows down as the Arctic warms much faster than the rest of the world. As such, the temperature differential between the Arctic and the tropics decreases, in turn, slowing down the jet stream, which results in north-south lobes or big dips in the jet stream that can halt and remain stationary for extended periods of time. This is a very serious issue as the latitudes where the biggest weather changes impact are located in the same areas where crops are grown. This is a very serious threat to global food production.
Time Scale and Consequences
When the first climate change conference happened in 1992, known as Earth Summit which created the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, it was believed that society had many decades to take corrective mitigation measures. That has proven to be false. What was then feared to happen in many, many decades has arrived much sooner than expected. As for example, unprecedented rates of warming. CO2 emissions increasing faster than ever, adverse changes in weather impact, massive hurricanes, and rampant wildfires.
The Exponential
Moreover, it will only get worse because everything’s changing exponentially. As for example: “If you’re standing on an exponential curve, and you look behind at what’s happened in the past it’s all nice and flat, nothing much has gone on. So, you think well there hasn’t been that much warming effect so we don’t have to worry, but then when you look forward, you’ve got a steep cliff immediately ahead… this complacency or looking backward in the face of exponential change is something the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has been guilty of, e.g., their prediction of sea level rise underestimates the rate of sea level rise because it’s calculated in a linear fashion. And the IPCC doesn’t take a proper accounting of various impacts, for example, they don’t take proper accounting of Greenland’s melt.
The IPCC shows sea level rise linearly, which implies society really doesn’t have to do much about sea level rise because it is rising linearly, but it is not. It’s rising exponentially as are other climate-related changes. Truth be known, “before very long we’ll see cities inundated and catastrophic flooding events, especially in low-lying coastal cities.”
“All of these changes, we can plot them and if we look exponentially, we see really catastrophic effects in the next few years, certainly in the next decade or two the world will be completely different than it is now.”
Regarding a proper understanding and full disclosure of climate threats to governments of the world, the issue has not necessarily been a failure of IPCC reports (Dr. Wadhams himself has participated in submissions) as much as an issue of the final IPCC reports classified as “intergovernmental,” meaning each governmental entity can make changes to suit their own needs. For example, there is no way oil producers will agree to exposing the true facts about the dangers of CO2 emissions. Therefore, what ends up happening with IPCC reports is actually “a betrayal of the human race because when it was initially set up it was meant to be a warning system reporting on the best science and what the problems are and what’s coming, but it stopped doing that job… it became a tool of national governments.” In that regard, politicians can’t handle the truth about the massive changes required of socio-economic systems, and they don’t want to spend the massive amounts of money necessary. Furthermore, in general, people fear, and don’t want to accept, the type of lifestyle changes necessary to combat climate change. Thus, “collectively” we are all at fault for the problems of climate change.
Of course, “if we were an intelligent species,” we would recognize the necessity of converting to renewable energy, but we must do much more, e.g., removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Only reducing CO2 will not be fast enough on its own. What’s already up there needs to be removed as well, an enormous expensive challenge, and a very difficult task to execute. It is overwhelmingly big and expensive.
Wadhams fears that public consciousness that could influence politics of what must be done to stop the consequences of global warming will only become a factor once the worst impacts become so obvious that it’s already too late.
The only realistic solution going forward is a worldwide movement collectively to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, and that will cost a huge amount. It’s also worth looking at the impact food choice has on global warming. It is significant when eating meat versus eating vegetables, for example: If everybody stopped eating meat tomorrow, there would be an instant positive impact on global climate. This is the only item where individual human choice could have a big effect on climate change.
As for the IPCC, it has a couple of black marks against it of concealing serious effects from the public. One in particular is Arctic methane in the seabed because based upon what’s happening, a massive increase in methane emissions could have instant powerful negative impact at any point in time. The IPCC downplays this. Yet, there’s a 50% chance this breaks loose and delivers a huge jolt of warming almost instantly This would be absolutely catastrophic. The IPCC does not include this risk properly in assessments.
Also, IPCC sea level rise projections assume a “level” slow increase rather than an exponential increase, which is much, much steeper. This is a function of governments tampering with the IPCC reports and not wanting to face the music; this undue influence on the reports makes them appear way too conservative.
Wadhams’ book Farewell to Ice was written not only to expose the most radical changes in the Arctic, within the context of our Holocene era, but the loss of sea ice has universal impact on so much more that embodies the climate system. None of the changes are beneficial for humanity. Today, the world is stuck with positive feedback, meaning acceleration of everything bad, not good. This makes it urgent that we start doing something to combat this asap.
Today, society is failing to recognize the prospects of big adverse changes to the planetary system, but in a few years, we are going to think we are living on a different planet. For instance, the effects in the U.S. of the floods, fires, severe droughts, atmospheric river flash floods, the massive hurricanes are all going to be recurring every year and getting worse and worse every year. There will be regions of the planet where people can’t live any longer. The changes will be so big that society won’t be able to ignore them anymore.
The present consensus view of sea level rise is for at least one meter by the end of the century. But glaciologists that study Greenland and Antarctica, each time they do research, they find something new that’s shocking. The fear now is that it may be 2 meters or 6.5 feet by the end of the century. That’s a huge impact for coastal cities. This impact is not taken seriously enough. And 6.5 feet by end of century implies how much by 2035 and by 2050?
Cities like Miami and New Orleans, unless they build extraordinarily strong seawalls, may have to be abandoned quite soon. Sea level rise is very serious, and it’s not something that’s easily reversed.
If we do not start immediately with a full blown worldwide coordinated plan to mitigate and remove CO2 emissions, by 2050 everything will be disastrous. The world won’t be anything like it is today. We’ve got to start implementing solutions now so that when we get to 2050, we’re not seeing the horrific results of a collapsing society.
We must do something major about reducing and removing carbon dioxide CO2 levels on an immediate basis.
Alert: “Global warming has accelerated since 2010 by more than 50% over the 1970-2010 warming rate.” (James Hansen, Global Warming Has Accelerated: Are the United Nations and the Public Well-Informed? Earth Institute, Columbia University, Feb. 3, 2024)
AND: “On millennial timescales, scientists have warned that consistent temperatures in excess of 2°C above pre-industrial levels result in a much greater risk of ‘locking in’ as much as 12 to 20 metres (39-66 feet) of sea level rise from Greenland and Antarctica.” (Cracks in Greenland Ice Sheet Growing More Rapidly, Durham University, Feb. 3, 2025)