‘Melting ice & rising seas’ team wins PM Science Prize

A team finding links between melting ice sheets in Antarctica and rising sea levels in NZ has won the 2019 Prime Minister's Science Prize.

New Zealand's most valuable science prize, worth half a million dollars, has gone to a large team of researchers finding links between melting ice sheets in Antarctica and rising sea levels in New Zealand.

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The 'Melting ice and rising seas' team from Victoria University of Wellington, NIWA and GNS Science is the winner of the prestigious 2019 Prime Minister's Science Prize.

The team has found evidence that Antarctic melt due to climate change could contribute to global sea level rise of 1.4 metres by the year 2100, rather than the one metre that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted in 2013.

When the effect of land subsidence is taken into account the rise could be as much as two metres for some places in New Zealand.

And the researchers warn that a global temperature rise of 2°C will commit the planet to a long-term rise of tens of metres.

Engine room of sea level change

Starting about 15 years ago the team, which includes geologists, glaciologists, climate and social scientists, began drilling ice and sediment cores in Antarctica.

The cores have revealed how the Antarctic ice sheets have advanced and retreated as the climate has warmed and cooled over the past 20 million years.

The data have been used in ice sheet and climate models to show the impact of Antarctic melting under a warming climate.

Professor Tim Naish, from the Antarctic Research Centre at Victoria University of Wellington, says his early research in global sea levels was brought into focus when he began working in Antarctica.

"It was a chance to go to the engine room of where these sea level changes were coming from," says Prof Naish.

Prof Naish says sediments are a wonderful archive of past climates.

'For me it's always been about using the rocks to understand how sea-level has changed. Or, by drilling about the Antarctic margin, how the Antarctic ice sheet has changed through time, particularly during periods of past warmth, which are relevant to the world we're heading towards with climate warming," says Prof Naish.

Lessons from the past

Prof Naish says that we currently have 416 parts per million carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The last time the world had C02 levels that high was three million years ago during the Pliocene warm period.

As a result, he says, the "West Antarctic ice sheet went away. Bits of East Antarctica went away. And global sea-level was up to 20 metres higher."…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details