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Multi-century global and regional sea-level rise commitments from cumulative greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades
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Date
October, 2025Author(s)
- Alexander Nauels , Zebedee Nicholls , Tessa Möller, Tim H. J. Hermans, Matthias Mengel, Uta Kloenne, Chris Smith, Aimée B. A. Slangen, Matthew D. Palmer
Abstract
Sea levels respond to climate change on timescales from decades to millennia. To isolate the sea-level contribution of historical and near-term GHG emissions, we use a dedicated scenario and modelling framework to quantify global and regional sea-level rise commitments of twenty-first century cumulative emissions. Under current climate policies, emissions until 2050 lock in 0.3 m (likely range 0.2–0.5 m) more global mean sea-level rise by 2300 than historical emissions until 2020. This additional commitment would grow to 0.8 m (0.5–1.4 m) for emissions until 2090, of which 0.6 m (0.4–1.1 m) could be avoided under very stringent mitigation. Resulting regional commitments would be around 10% higher than the global signal for the vulnerable Pacific region, mainly due to higher relative Antarctic contributions. Our work shows that multi-century sea-level rise commitments are strongly controlled by mitigation decisions in coming decades.
Citation
Nauels, A., Nicholls, Z., Möller, T. et al. Multi-century global and regional sea-level rise commitments from cumulative greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades. Nat. Clim. Chang. 15, 1198–1204 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-025-02452-5
Publisher
Nature Climate Change
Rights Holder
Nature Climate Change
URI
https://knowledgehub.pksf.org.bd/collections/WDQ2ejFmUm81V0NMYXZHSGE3QXZXUT09