Sea levels rising at fastest rate in 2,800 years due to global warming

Sea levels are rising several times faster than they have in the past 2,800 years, with the process accelerating because of manmade global warming, according to new studies. An international team of scientists examined two dozen locations across the globe to chart rising and falling seas over centuries and millennia.

Until the 1880s and the world’s industrialisation, the fastest seas rose was about 3cm to 4cm a century. During that time global sea levels did not get much higher or lower than 7.6cm above or below the 2,000-year average. But in the 20th century the world’s seas rose 14cm. Two different studies published on Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences said that by 2100 the world’s oceans would rise between 28cm to 131cm, depending on how much heat-trapping gas Earth’s industries and vehicles expel.

Rutgers earth and planetary sciences professor Bob Kopp, lead author of the study, which looked back at sea levels over the past three millennia, said: “There’s no question that the 20th century is the fastest. “It’s because of the temperature increase in the 20th century which has been driven by fossil fuel use.”

Sea level rise in the 20th century was mostly manmade, the study authors said. A separate, not-yet-published study by Kopp and others found that since 1950 about two-thirds of the US coastal floods in 27 locales were linked to manmade warming.