Global Warming

Sea Levels Rising Faster Under Climate Change

Australian scientists have pinned down a variety of errors in observations of sea level during the past 23 years, revealing that the world’s oceans are rising at an accelerating rate.

Previous studies based on tide gauges or satellite data alone have suggested there has been a slowing in the rate of sea level rise over the past decade as compared to the one before it.

But a team led by University of Tasmania geophysicist Christopher Watson found there was a considerable “bias drift” in observations from the first of three satellites used to measure sea level, mainly due to the degradation of the spacecraft’s electronics.

Writing in the journal Nature Climate Change, lead author Watson says that data from the most reliable tide gauges in the world and from corrected satellite data reveal the mean global sea level rise from 1993 to mid-2014 was between 0.10 and 0.11 inches per year.

This is in line with projections made by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which predicts a 3.2-foot rise by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions are not curbed.