Overview
- Under current policies, emissions from 2020 to 2050 alone would commit about 0.3 meters of additional global sea-level rise by 2300.
- Continuing current-policy emissions through 2090 would lock in roughly 0.8 meters of rise by 2300.
- Immediate mitigation aligned with the Paris Agreement would avoid around 0.6 meters compared with the 2090 trajectory.
- The authors emphasize that sea-level rise is effectively irreversible on human timescales because oceans and ice sheets respond for centuries.
- Regional disparities are pronounced, with vulnerable Pacific islands projected to see above-average rise and face earlier adaptation limits, according to the IIASA-led paper in Nature Climate Change.