Rate of Sea-level Rise 'Steeper'
Published on by Water Network Research, Official research team of The Water Network in Academic
The Rate at which the Global Oceans Have Risen in the Past Two Decades is More Significant than Previously Recognised, Say US-based Scientists
Their reassessment of tide gauge data from 1900-1990 found that the world's seas went up more slowly than earlier estimates - by about 1.2mm peryear.
But this makes the 3mm per year tracked by satellites since 1990 a much bigger trend change as aconsequence.
It could mean some projections for future rises having to berevisited.
"Our estimates from 1993 to 2010 agree with [the prior] estimates from modern tide gauges and satellite altimetry, within the bounds of uncertainty. But that means that the acceleration into the last two decades is far worse than previously thought," said Dr Carling Hay from Harvard University in Cambridge,Massachusetts.
"This new acceleration is about 25 per cent higher than previous estimates," she told BBCNews.
Dr Hay and colleagues report their re-analysis inthis week's edition of the journal Nature.
Tide gauges have been in operation in some places for hundreds of years, but pulling their data into a coherent narrative of worldwide sea-level change is fiendishlydifficult.
Historically, their deployment has been sparse, predominantly at mid-latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, and only at coastal sites. In other words, the instrument record is extremelypatchy.
What is more, the data needs careful handling because it hides all kinds of"contamination".
Source: Eco-Business
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