Climate-change–driven accelerated sea-level rise detected in the altimeter era

By R. S. Nerem, B. Beckley, John T. Fasullo, B. Hamlington, D. Masters, G. Mitchum. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2018

968 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Significance Satellite altimetry has shown that global mean sea level has been rising at a rate of ∼3 ± 0.4 mm/y since 1993. Using the altimeter record coupled with careful consideration of interannual and decadal variability as well as potential instrument errors, we show that this rate is accelerating at 0.084 ± 0.025 mm/y2, which agrees well with climate model projections. If sea level continues to change at this rate and acceleration, sea-level rise by 2100 (∼65 cm) will be more than double the amount if the rate was constant at 3 mm/y. Using a 25-y time series of precision satellite altimeter data from TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1, Jason-2, and Jason-3, we estimate the climate-change–driven acceleration of global mean sea level over the last 25 y to be 0.084 ± 0.025 mm/y2. Coupled with the average climate-change–driven rate of sea level rise over these same 25 y of 2.9 mm/y, simple extrapolation of the quadratic implies global mean sea level could rise 65 ± 12 cm by 2100 compared with 2005, roughly in agreement with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 5th Assessment Report (AR5) model projections.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/755644b5d2676783f736346b1c55b71c546115a0

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Global and Planetary Change

In Oceanography

Citations in the corpus

The direct drivers of recent global anthropogenic biodiversity loss (2022, positive): “While quantitative estimates of the impacts of climate change—the driver that is studied most often ( 18 )—show increases over time ( 44 , 45 ) that are projected to continue ( 5 , 46 , 47 ), similarly robust information is not yet readily available for the less studied drivers.”
Continuity of the Mass Loss of the World's Glaciers and Ice Caps From the GRACE and GRACE Follow‐On Missions (2020, methodology): “5◦ resolution (Oleson et al., 2013) and (2) Global Land Data Assimilation System 2.”
Long‐Term (1979‐Present) Total Water Storage Anomalies Over the Global Land Derived by Reconstructing GRACE Data (2021, background): “the averaged time series of both our and Humphrey's reconstructions over the global land (excluding the Antarctica) against the GMSL between December 1992 and June 2019 (see Figure 3a) as derived from satellite altimetry (Nerem et al., 2018).”
Satellite and Ocean Data Reveal Marked Increase in Earth’s Heating Rate (2021, background): “However, acceleration of melting ice on land accounts for the majority of sea level rise acceleration in recent decades, leaving less than 10% of the sea level acceleration signal attributed to increasing rates of ocean warming (Nerem et al., 2018).”
The green care code: How nature connectedness and simple activities help explain pro‐nature conservation behaviours (2020, background): “Global warming (Al-Ghussain, 2018), sea-level rise (Nerem et al., 2018), permafrost degradation (Colucci & Guglielmin, 2019), glacier melting and retreat (Brighenti et al., 2019)—headline news and scientific reports about the disastrous effects of climate change are ubiquitous.”
Accelerated global glacier mass loss in the early twenty-first century (2021, neutral): “between discontinuous glaciers (equation (6)).”