Global Sea Level Rise Accelerates Since 1990

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/sea-level-rise-accelerates-since-1990-21586

Published: July 1st, 2017
By Alister Doyle, Reuters

The rise in global sea levels has accelerated since the 1990s amid rising temperatures, with a thaw of Greenland's ice sheet pouring ever more water into the oceans, scientists said this week.

The annual rate of sea level rise increased to 3.3 millimeters (0.13 inch) in 2014 — a rate of 33 centimeters (13 inches) if kept unchanged for a century — from 2.2 mm in 1993, according to a team of scientists in China, Australia and the United States.

Sea levels have risen by about 20 cm in the past century and many scientific studies project a steady acceleration this century as man-made global warming melts more ice on land.

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A thaw of Greenland's ice sheet accounted for more than 25 percent of the sea level rise in 2014 against just 5 percent in 1993, according to the study led by Xianyao Chen of the Ocean University of China and Qingdao National Laboratory of Marine Science and Technology.

Other big sources include loss of glaciers from the Himalayas to the Andes, Antarctica's ice sheet and a natural expansion of ocean water as it warms up from its most dense at 4 degrees Celsius (39.2°F).

A U.N. panel of climate scientists said in 2014 that sea levels could rise by up to about a meter (about 3 feet) by 2100.

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