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Sea Level

Sea Level Rise

Since 1993, world sea levels have been rising at about 3 millimeters per year, and this increase is accelerating at 0.1 mm/yr/yr 1.

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Source: Lindsey 2.

Sea level will continue to rise through the 21st century, even if greenhouse gas emissions are brought under control.

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Source: Lindsey 2.

Ice loss from Greenland is accelerating, with 120 billion tons of loss from 1901-1990 and 330 billion tons from 2006-2018. Rising sea levels are expected to exacerbat the damages from coastal storms and flooding 2. The United States will have to spend an estimated $300 billion cumulatively by 2100 on seawalls 3.

Sea Ice

Sea ice has generally been decreasing in the Arctic and increasing in Antarctica.

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Data on Arctic sea ice from Fetterer et al. 4. Data on Antarctica from the World Ocean Assessment 1.

Ocean Circulation

The most serious change to ocean circulation has been the slowing of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. This is expected to cause disproportionate sea level rise on the East Cost of the United States and to reduce the oceans' ability to take up carbon 1.

References

  1. United Nations "The Second World Ocean Assessment". 2021. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. Lindsey, R. "Climate Change: Global Sea Level". climate.gov, NOAA. April 2022. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. Hummel, M. A., Griffin, R., Arkema, K., Guerry, A. D. "Economic evaluation of sea-level rise adaptation strongly influenced by hydrodynamic feedbacks". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 118(29): e2025961118. July 2021. ↩

  4. Fetterer, F., Knowles, K., Meier, W., Savoie, M., Windnagel, A. "Sea Ice Index, Version 3". National Snow and Ice Data Center. Accessed October 24, 2022. ↩