Potsdam Institute Researcher: "We Have Entered A New Era Of Irreversible Climate Change"

World leaders need to ensure that global warming is kept low enough to avoid “pulling the plug” on vast ice shelves in Antarctica, thereby causing a catastrophic sea level rise across the globe, a leading scientist warned yesterday.

Dr Anders Levermann, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, noted last month’s major scientific report warning that a collapse of large sections of the west Antarctica ice shelf had already begun and was now “unstoppable.”

“We have entered a new era of irreversible climate change, a tipping point of part of the climate system,” he told a side event at the UN climate talks in Bonn. “West Antarctica has tipped and there isn’t anything we can do about it.”

As delegates from 185 countries continued their informal consultations on a new climate treaty, Dr Levermann said parts of the East Antarctic Ice Shelf were also “showing signs of instability” and could be lost if the “ice plug” still holding it was eroded. “We need to keep global warming low enough to avoid pulling that plug,” he warned. Otherwise, the Wilkes Ice Basin and other large glaciers could be “sucked” into the Southern Ocean over time, feeding a rise in sea levels of three or four metres.

EDIT

http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot.com/2014/06/west-antarctica-has-tipped-and-there.html