Greeland’s sea level problem is rising

The findings, published this week in Nature Communications, show that under the worst-case scenario for greenhouse gas emissions, sea levels could rise by 9-15 millimeters or more by 2100.

To better estimate how much sea-level rise we should expect by the end of 2100, a team of researchers looked to the past.

The team investigated three of Greenland’s largest glaciers, Jakobshavn Isbræ, Kangerlussuaq Glacier and Helheim Glacier, which between them hold enough ice to raise sea level by about four feet.

"Greenland began melting before Antarctica, so much focus has been on predicting how Greenland would change in the warmer climate that is coming," Anders Bjørk, a coauthor on the study, tells Inverse.

Global temperatures are expected to rise by 3.7 degrees C — four times as much as the temperature increase since 1880.

That means just these three glaciers could add even more freshwater to oceans, rising sea levels more than 8 mm by 2100.

That may not seem like much, but experts say that even a centimeter of sea level rise can threaten millions of coastal cities.

"We have a tendency to think that year 2100 is very far into the future and that these distant changes does not affect us," Bjørk says.

"But my grandfather told me stories of his childhood in the 1920s – that is a hundred years ago, and my own children and grandchildren will live to see 2100. It is not a distant future!"

This new research will help us better understand how even just a few glaciers can contribute to the global ocean, so we can better prepare for an uncertain future.