Study: sea levels rising quicker than previously estimated – Blue and Green Tomorrow
Study: sea levels rising quicker than previously estimated – Blue and Green Tomorrow:
This is a bit of good news which really is really bad news related to sea level rise.
The good news, if you can call it that is sea levels appear to have been rising far slower during the first century of the industrial revolution than previously measured (estimated). Apparently the tidal measures that have been around for centuries didn’t represent some areas well, the poles and Florida, for example. A new study publishing in Nature analyzes and adjusts for the big gaps in prior ocean level measures. This is from a study in the journal Nature. Here.
The bad news, is that the last few decades have been more than twice what was measured/estimated.
At the new rate of 3mm per year, sea levels should rise only about one foot over the next 100 years. But this doesn’t count thermal expansion of the oceans warming (thermal expansion) over time such that a couple degrees centigrade should produce yards of increased sea levels once the temperature works its way through some 2 miles of ocean (on average).
If this doesn’t make you nervous, you have been munching out a little too much on Colorado brownies, and not living very close to the sea shore.
