Deep emission cuts before mid-century decisive to reduce long-term sea-level rise legacy

[rangerrebew]

Deep emission cuts before mid-century decisive to reduce long-term sea-level rise legacy
 
Alexander Nauels

 
Ansa Heyl

Science Communications Lead (CER)
 
 24 October 2025
Press release Energy, Climate, and Environment (ECE) Integrated Climate Impacts (ICI)
Rising seas are irreversible on human time scales and among the most severe consequences of climate change. Emissions released in the coming decades will determine how much coastlines are reshaped for centuries to come. New research shows that near-term mitigation could spare future generations around 0.6 meters of sea-level rise that would be caused by emissions between 2020 and 2090 following current policies, making today’s decisions critical not only for limiting warming but also for coastal impacts.

Led by IIASA researchers in collaboration with colleagues from institutions in the UK, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Germany, the study published in Nature Climate Change goes beyond the usual sea level projections by quantifying how much sea-level rise in 2300 will be “locked in” by emissions this century. By isolating the effect of near- and mid-term emissions, the study provides a direct link between today’s policy choices and sea levels hundreds of years from now – an aspect that has not been quantified in this way before.

“It is common for sea-level rise research to deliver projections to 2100 based on a standard set of scenarios, which doesn’t allow to isolate the longer-term sea-level impacts of today’s greenhouse gas emissions. But we have to explore these impacts on timescales beyond 2100 because oceans and ice sheets keep responding for centuries,” explains lead author Alexander Nauels, a senior research scholar in the Integrated Climate Impacts Research Group of the IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment Program. “Our study shows clearly that mitigation decisions in the next few decades will have multi-century consequences for coastlines worldwide.”

https://iiasa.ac.at/news/oct-2025/deep-emission-cuts-before-mid-century-decisive-to-reduce-long-term-sea-level-rise

[rangerrebew]

They haven't been rising to begin with.

[DefiantMassRINO]

What rising seas?

[Smokin Joe]

What rising seas?

The ones which drowned the Maldives, flooded Manhattan, and flushed the poop from coastal California's Cities, of course (but which have failed, in the last 400 years to swallow Plymouth Rock. Poor folks and minorities hardest hit, of course.
Seriously, Sea Level rises at the end of Ice Ages. It's normal, it's natural, and humans have little to do with it (unless they time the flushes to reach the ocean all at once).

[DefiantMassRINO]

"Plymouth Rock" is more like "Plymouth Stone".  The last time I checked, it was still above the high tide line.

[rangerrebew]

The ones which drowned the Maldives, flooded Manhattan, and flushed the poop from coastal California's Cities, of course (but which have failed, in the last 400 years to swallow Plymouth Rock. Poor folks and minorities hardest hit, of course.

D*mn!  I clean forgot about those.