Climate scientists have long predicted that global warming will melt polar ice sheets and cause sea levels to rise throughout the century, potentially swamping island nations and flooding low-lying coastal cities. But exactly how much ocean waters will rise has yet to be settled. Now, two studies have come out that at first appear to contradict each other, leading to clashing headlines like
"An Inconvenient Truth" Exaggerated Sea Level Rise [Telegraph]
, and
Sea Level Rise May Be Twice More Than Expected [Discovery News].
One study seems to downplay the risk of an extreme sea-level rise, while the other hypes it up. But a closer look reveals that the two studies actually bring researchers nearer to scientific consensus. In the study published in Science [subscription required], researchers examined the hypothesis of a six-foot sea-level rise by 2100, and calculated how quickly the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica would have ...
