Dr Tom Bracegirdle from the British Antarctic Survey presented a plenary at the 2012 SCAR-OSC, where he showed us his projections for climate change and sea level rise over the next 100 years from his modelling experiments.
Dr Bracegirdle argued that there was steadily increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, with seasonal changes related to vegetation. May 2012 was the second warmest May on record. Coupled Model Intercomparison Projects (CMIPs) are coupled ocean/atmosphere/sea ice models that can be used to predict global environmental responses to various atmospheric CO2 projections. These models predict an increase in Antarctic circumpolar westerlies, with larger warming at depth at high latitudes, and a decrease in total sea ice. Dr Bracegirdle summed up by stating that the climate change over the next 50 years is likely to be differetn to the last 50 years due to different forcing factors.