PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Antarctica remains the wild card for sea-level rise estimates through 2100

LANL scientists contribute to comprehensive sea-level rise projections

Antarctica remains the wild card for sea-level rise estimates through 2100
2021-05-05
(Press-News.org) LOS ALAMOS, N.M., May 5, 2021-- A massive collaborative research project covered in the journal Nature this week offers projections to the year 2100 of future sea-level rise from all sources of land ice, offering the most complete projections created to date.

"This work synthesizes improvements over the last decade in climate models, ice sheet and glacier models, and estimates of future greenhouse gas emissions," said Stephen Price, one of the Los Alamos scientists on the project. "More than 85 researchers from various disciplines, including our team at Los Alamos National Laboratory, produced sea-level rise projections based on the most recent computer models developed within the scientific community and updated scenarios of future greenhouse gas emissions," said Price.

The estimates show that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial temperatures would cut projected 21st century sea-level rise from land ice in half, relative to currently pledged emissions reductions. For example, the paper notes that, when looking at all land ice sources, the median projection of cumulative rise in sea level by the year 2100 decreases from approximately 25 cm to approximately 13 cm when emissions are limited.

The term "land ice" includes mountain glaciers such as those in Alaska, Europe, high-mountain Asia, etc.; ice caps including those of Iceland and the Canadian Arctic; and ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.

Continental Wild Card Interestingly, Price points out, Antarctica continues to be the wild card. "Future changes to Antarctica remain highly uncertain," he said. "Because of this, our high-end estimates for sea-level rise from land ice are more than twice as large as the 'most likely' estimate." This is largely due to substantial uncertainty in how strongly warm ocean waters erode floating parts of the ice sheet from beneath.

Apart from that uncertainty, the bulk of the Antarctic sea-level rise projections do not show a strong sensitivity to different emissions scenarios, but a small number of projections result in an up to five-fold increase in sea-level contribution, Price said. Indeed, improving DOE's ability to accurately simulate Southern Hemisphere climate and Antarctic ice sheet evolution has been a focus of Los Alamos efforts for more than a decade.

The Los Alamos role: Los Alamos and the U.S. Department of Energy contributed at many stages of the newly published work, including: evaluation and selection of the most appropriate climate models to use for exploring future changes to the Antarctic region; the development of experimental protocols and the best methods for using climate model output to drive ice sheet models; conducting ice sheet model simulations to project the future sea-level rise contribution from the Antarctic Ice Sheet

Since 2013, Los Alamos has been the lead institution on the Cryosphere Science Campaign within DOE's Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) project, which focuses on improving projections of Antarctic ice sheet evolution and sea level rise. Likewise, since 2010, Los Alamos has been the lead DOE institution on three DOE Office of Science funded projects around the development of "next generation" ice sheet models including ISICLES (2010-2012), PISCEES (2012-2017), and ProSPect (2017-2022). Los Alamos also currently leads or contributes to a number of ongoing efforts towards performing similar "end-to-end" analyses (climate change through future sea-level rise impacts) within a consistent, coupled Earth system modeling framework.

For this paper, Los Alamos's simulations were done using a combination of the Grizzly and Badger supercomputers at the Lab, and NERSC (Cori-KNL) high-performance computing resources. Additional Los Alamos contributors to this work include Xylar Asay-Davis, Alice Barthel, Matthew Hoffman, and Tong Zhang.

INFORMATION:

The paper: "Projected land ice contributions to 21st century sea level rise" (in press), Nature. Full author list here, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03302-y

The funding: Funding was provided by the DOE Office of Science, from the offices of Biological and Environmental Research (BER) and Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR).

About Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, is managed by Triad, a public service oriented, national security science organization equally owned by its three founding members: Battelle Memorial Institute (Battelle), the Texas A&M University System (TAMUS), and the Regents of the University of California (UC) for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration.

Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health, and global security concerns. LAUR: LA-UR-21-22260


[Attachments] See images for this press release:
Antarctica remains the wild card for sea-level rise estimates through 2100

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Ice core chemistry study expands insight into sea ice variability in Southern Hemisphere

2021-05-05
Sea ice cover in the Southern Hemisphere is extremely variable, from summer to winter and from millennium to millennium, according to a University of Maine-led study. Overall, sea ice has been on the rise for about 10,000 years, but with some exceptions to this trend. Dominic Winski, a research assistant professor at the UMaine Climate Change Institute, spearheaded a project that uncovered new information about millennia of sea ice variability, particularly across seasons, in the Southern Hemisphere by examining the chemistry of a 54,000-year-old South Pole ice core. The Southern Ocean experiences the largest seasonal ...

Nanoscope presents novel gene delivery and electrophysiology platforms at ARVO

Nanoscope presents novel gene delivery and electrophysiology platforms at ARVO
2021-05-05
ARLINGTON, TX (May 5, 2021) -- Nanoscope Technologies LLC, a biotechnology company developing gene therapies for treatment of retinal diseases, is featuring multiple scientific presentations highlighting its groundbreaking research on optical gene delivery for vision restoration and OCT-guided electrophysiology platforms for characterization of retinal degeneration and assessment of efficacy of cell-gene therapy at the 2021 ARVO annual (virtual) meeting, May 1-7. ARVO, the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, is the largest eye and vision research organization in the world with nearly 11,000 members in more than 75 countries. Nanoscope's lead product is an optogenetic ...

Expanded contraception access led to higher graduation rates for young women in Colorado

2021-05-05
Increased access to birth control led to higher graduation rates among young women in Colorado, according to a study following the debut of the 2009 Colorado Family Planning Initiative (CPFI). The study identified a statistically significant 1.66 percentage-point increase in high school graduation among young women one year after the initiative was introduced. The findings provide concrete evidence for the rationale behind the U.S. Title X program, which calls for access to reproductive health services for low-income and uninsured residents, in part to help ensure women's ability to complete their education. However, at a time when funding for family planning programs is debated, robust scientific evidence to support this claim has been lacking. To investigate the link between access ...

Strange isotopes: Scientists explain a methane isotope paradox of the seafloor

Strange isotopes: Scientists explain a methane isotope paradox of the seafloor
2021-05-05
Methane, a chemical compound with the molecular formula CH4, is not only a powerful greenhouse gas, but also an important energy source. It heats our homes, and even seafloor microbes make a living of it. The microbes use a process called anaerobic oxidation of methane (AOM), which happens commonly in the seafloor in so-called sulfate-methane transition zones - layers in the seafloor where sulfate from the seawater meets methane from the deeper sediment. Here, specialized microorganisms, the ANaerobically MEthane-oxidizing (ANME) archaea, consume the methane. They live in close association with bacteria, which use electrons ...

How accurate were early expert predictions on COVID-19, and how did they compare to the public?

2021-05-05
Who made more accurate predictions about the course of the COVID-19 pandemic - experts or the public? A study from the University of Cambridge has found that experts such as epidemiologists and statisticians made far more accurate predictions than the public, but both groups substantially underestimated the true extent of the pandemic. Researchers from the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication surveyed 140 UK experts and 2,086 UK laypersons in April 2020 and asked them to make four quantitative predictions about the impact of COVID-19 by the end of 2020. Participants were also asked to indicate confidence in their predictions by providing upper and lower bounds of where they were 75% sure that the true answer would fall - for example, ...

Greater access to birth control leads to higher graduation rates

2021-05-05
When access to free and low-cost birth control goes up, the percentage of young women who leave high school before graduating goes down by double-digits, according to a new CU Boulder-led study published May 5 in the journal Science Advances. The study, which followed more than 170,000 women for up to seven years, provides some of the strongest evidence yet that access to contraception yields long-term socioeconomic benefits for women. It comes at a time when public funding for birth control is undergoing heated debate, and some states are considering banning certain forms. "One of the foundational ...

From 4500 possibilities, one compound emerges as promising treatment for PAH

From 4500 possibilities, one compound emerges as promising treatment for PAH
2021-05-05
One of the dangerous health conditions that can occur among premature newborns, children born with heart defects, and some others is pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). Commonly mistaken for asthma, this condition occurs when blood vessels in the lungs develop excessive resistance to blood flow. This forces the heart's right ventricle to work harder, causing it to enlarge, thicken and further elevate blood pressure. While early treatment usually succeeds, the condition can become persistent and progressive, which can lead to heart failure and death. The exact incidence and prevalence of PAH remains unclear, but reviews of patient registries in Europe have estimated that the condition occurs in nearly 64 of every 1 million children, including transient cases. ...

Mantis shrimp eyes inspire six-color imaging platform for cancer surgery

Mantis shrimp eyes inspire six-color imaging platform for cancer surgery
2021-05-05
Inspired by the powerful eyes of the mantis shrimp, scientists have designed an imaging system that can distinguish between cancerous and healthy tissues during cancer surgery. The system accurately labeled tumors in mice and visualized lymph nodes near tumors in 18 patients undergoing surgery for breast cancer. With further development, the camera could help surgeons remove the marginal tumor tissues that can remain after unguided surgery, potentially lowering the risk of cancer relapse. It is critical for surgeons to remove as much tumor tissue as possible during surgery, but anywhere from 25% ...

Can an AI algorithm mitigate racial economic inequality? Only if more black hosts adopt it

2021-05-05
Machine learning algorithms can leverage vast amounts of consumer data, allowing automation of business decisions such as pricing, product offerings, and promotions. Airbnb, an online marketplace for vacation rentals and other lodging, created an algorithm-based smart-pricing tool that is free to all Airbnb hosts and allows hosts to set their properties' daily price automatically. A new study investigated the impact of Airbnb's algorithm on racial disparities among Airbnb hosts. Adopting the tool narrowed the revenue gap between White and Black ...

New, almost non-destructive archaeogenetic sampling method developed

New, almost non-destructive archaeogenetic sampling method developed
2021-05-05
An Austrian-American research team (University of Vienna, Department Evolutionary Anthropology and Harvard Medical School, Department of Genetics), in collaboration of Hungarian experts from Eötvös Loránd University, has developed a new method that allows the almost non-destructive extraction of genetic material from archaeological human remains. The method allows anthropologists, archaeologists and archaeogeneticists to avoid the risk of serious damage to artefacts of significant scientific and heritage value, which can then be fully examined in future research. Bioarcheological ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Andrew Siemion to receive the SETI Institute’s 2024 Drake Award

New study shows how the Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus enters our cells

Neoadjuvant chemotherapy proves effective for locally advanced penile squamous cell carcinoma

Study flips treatment paradigm in bilateral Wilms tumor, shows resistance to chemotherapy may point toward favorable outcomes

Doctors received approximately $12.1 billion from drug and device makers between 2013-2022

Discovery suggests new strategy against follicular lymphoma

Making the future too bright: how wishful thinking can point us in the wrong direction

Ochsner Health named to Newsweek’s America’s Greatest Workplaces 2024 for Job Starters

Three-year study of young stars with NASA’s Hubble enters new chapter

North Carolina takes the lead in PFAs research with Collaboratory’s $3 million investment to expand the state’s research capacity

Is it the school, or the students?

Exploring the relationship between HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis and the incidence of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis – findings from Denmark

Music: Song lyrics have become simpler and more repetitive since 1980

Environment: More than half of Colorado River’s water used to irrigate crops

When inequality is more than “skin-deep”: Social status leaves traces in the epigenome of spotted hyenas in Tanzania

Study explores the future of at-home cancer treatment

First performance standards published to measure the effectiveness of lifestyle medicine treatments

To keep volunteers, connect them

Suppressing boredom at work hurts future productivity, study shows

Older brain cells linger unexpectedly before their death

Clear shift in arterial diseases in diabetes

Celebrating half a century of pioneering excellence: EBMT marks its 50th anniversary

Ancient DNA reveals the appearance of a 6th century Chinese emperor

DNA study IDs descendants of George Washington from unmarked remains, findings to aid service member IDs going back to World War II

Familial Alzheimer’s disease transferred via bone marrow transplant in mice

Perspectives of oncologists on the ethical implications of using AI for cancer care

Industry payments to US physicians by specialty and product type

Andrew E. Place, MD, PhD appointed as Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center Vice President, Pediatric Chief Medical Officer

COVID-19 antibody discovery could explain long COVID

Wild plants face viral surprise

[Press-News.org] Antarctica remains the wild card for sea-level rise estimates through 2100
LANL scientists contribute to comprehensive sea-level rise projections