James R. Houston, 2022. “Coastal Forum: New 2021 sea level rise projections by the IPCC”, Shore & Beach, 90(1), 62-63.
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http://doi.org/10.34237/1009017
Coastal Forum: New 2021 sea level rise projections by the IPCC
James R. Houston
Director Emeritus, Engineer Research and Development Center; james.r.houston@usace.army.mil
The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) should have been completed in 2019 based on IPCC’s normal six-year publication cycle of climate assessments following its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) that was published in 2013 (IPCC 2013). A heavy review load caused by an explosion of research on climate change that needed to be evaluated in addition to the Covid- 19 pandemic caused a delay in AR6 until 2022. However, the portion of AR6 that deals with the physical basis for climate change including sea level rise was published in August 2021 (IPCC 2021a). IPCC (2021a) was supported by updated projections of the contributions of Antarctica (IPCC 2019) and Greenland (The IMBIE Team 2020) to sea level rise. IPCC (2021a) was peer reviewed extensively with the first draft receiving comments from 750 reviewers and the second draft from 1279 (IPCC 2021b).