Global sea level rise highest in 27 centuries, scientists find

The following article was published on Examiner.com a year ago, February 23, 2016

In a paper published Mon. Feb. 22, 2016 scientists were able to prove what has been suspected for some time: climate change is not only warming the planet, but pushing the seas to rise to dangerous levels.

"A significant GSL (global sea level) acceleration began in the 19th century and yielded a 20th century rise that is extremely likely ...faster than during any of the previous 27 centuries," report scientists in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

In their paper, "Temperature-driven global sea-level variability in the Common Era," lead investigator Robert E. Kopp of Rutgers and his team of scientists from Woods Hole, Tufts and other institutions, determine the estimated global sea-level (GSL) change over the past approximately 3,000 years based on information culled from a global database of regional sea-level data.

The scientists report that GSL varied by ∼±8 cm over the pre-Industrial Common Era, (also known as the Christian Era), with a marked decline over 1000–1400 CE coinciding with ∼0.2 °C of global cooling. The 20th century spike was "extremely likely faster than during any of the 27 previous centuries," the team reports. (A centimeter equals 2.54 inches.)

The modeling further shows that without global warming, GSL in the 20th century very likely would have risen by much, much less, between −3 cm and +7 cm, rather than the ∼14 cm observed.

"Semiempirical 21st century projections largely reconcile differences between Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projections and semiempirical models," according to the scientists' abstract.

New Orleans is one of many regions of the world that will be most gravely affected by sea rise. Here on the Louisiana coast we are already losing wetlands at an alarming rate, at about 75 square kilometers (about 29 square miles) annually, and harsher, warmer weather on land and sea means a greater risk of hurricanes. PHOTO: Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons Images. Source: US EPA