A new research published in Monday’s Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences shows that sea level is rising due to melting ice sheets. By 2100, the oceans will be on average more than 60cm higher.
In the last 25 years, the pace of sea level rise has quickened. It was already predicted by scientists, but the research offers an incontrovertible evidence.
The lead author, Steve Nerem of the University of Colorado, is worried because the projected sea level rise is a conservative estimate: the actual situation could be even worse.
There are two main causes to sea level rise: warming waters and the melting of ice sheets and glaciers. While a year-to-year fluctuations can be caused by natural events, the larger long-term trends are linked to climate change.
Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute in Germany, explained that, while sea levels have been stable for about 3,000 years, during the 20th century they rose quickly, due to global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels.