Paris, November 7

Global warming could drive a much more dramatic increase in sea levels than current projections suggest, scientists say, citing a rise of 10 metres during Earth’s last warming interlude more than 100,000 years ago.

Such a change far outstrips current projections and could be catastrophic for vast swathes of humanity, a team at Australian National University concluded in a study.

During the last interglacial period, “sea levels rose at up to three metres per century, far exceeding the roughly 0.3-metre rise observed over the past 150 years,” they said in a blog about their findings, published yesterday in the journal Nature Communications.

Over the last million years, Earth has alternated between roughly 100,000-year-long cold periods — ice ages — and shorter, temperate spells such as the last 11,500 years, known as the Holocene.

“This caused warming in the northern polar region and triggered ice melt in Greenland.”

A crucial point is that warming and ice loss are now happening in both polar regions at the same time.

“That means that if climate change continues unabated, Earth’s past dramatic sea level rise could be a small taste of what’s to come,” they concluded.