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Originally published in Science Express on 19 July 2007
Science 24 August 2007:
Vol. 317. no. 5841, pp. 1064 - 1067
DOI: 10.1126/science.1143906
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Reports

Glaciers Dominate Eustatic Sea-Level Rise in the 21st Century

Mark F. Meier,1* Mark B. Dyurgerov,1,2 Ursula K. Rick,1,3 Shad O'Neel,1,4,5 W. Tad Pfeffer,1,6 Robert S. Anderson,1,5 Suzanne P. Anderson,1,7 Andrey F. Glazovsky8

Ice loss to the sea currently accounts for virtually all of the sea-level rise that is not attributable to ocean warming, and about 60% of the ice loss is from glaciers and ice caps rather than from the two ice sheets. The contribution of these smaller glaciers has accelerated over the past decade, in part due to marked thinning and retreat of marine-terminating glaciers associated with a dynamic instability that is generally not considered in mass-balance and climate modeling. This acceleration of glacier melt may cause 0.1 to 0.25 meter of additional sea-level rise by 2100.

1 Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, UCB 450, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309–0450, USA.
2 Department of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, SE-1061, Stockholm, Sweden.
3 Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, UCB 311, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309–0311, USA.
4 Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska-Fairbanks, Fairbanks, AK 99775–7320, USA.
5 Department of Geological Sciences, UBC 399, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309–0399, USA.
6 Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering, UCB 428, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309–0428, USA.
7 Department of Geography, UCB 260 University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309–0260, USA.
8 Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences, Staromonetny 29, 119107, Moscow, Russia.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: mark.meier{at}colorado.edu

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Sea levels: science and society.
R. Edwards (2008)
Progress in Physical Geography 32, 557-574
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Kinematic Constraints on Glacier Contributions to 21st-Century Sea-Level Rise.
W. T. Pfeffer, J. T. Harper, and S. O'Neel (2008)
Science 321, 1340-1343
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