Study: Sea level rise is accelerating worldwide

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Skip Stiles, executive director of Wetlands Watch, stands on a flood wall in a neighborhood of Norfolk that is regularly flooded by high tides because of a rising sea level.(Photo: H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY)
The rate that seawater is rising has sped up in the past two decades, according to a study Monday in the British journal Nature Climate Change.

The level of ocean water has risen 2.6 to 2.9 millimeters — about a tenth of an inch — each year during the past 20 years, the study said. That may not seem like much, but it translates into much extra water in the oceans that can more easily swamp coastal cities.

The study contradicted previous reports that said the rate had slowed in the past few decades. The latest study's lead author, scientist Christopher Watson at the University of Tasmania in Australia, said his report used more precise satellite and tidal gauge data to measure the sea level.

Throughout the 20th century, sea levels rose about 1.7 millimeters a year.

Heat-trapping greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels for energy cause more glaciers and ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica to melt. The process causes the water to expand, because warmer water takes up more space than cooler water.

The rising sea level has already impacted U.S. coastal cities. Parts of Norfolk, Va.;Charleston, S.C.; and Miami flood at high tides, in so-called sunny-day or nuisance flooding, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Other cities, such as New Orleans and New York, have been devastated by flooding from storm surges, which are magnified by the rise in the sea level.

The sea level has risen nearly 8 inches worldwide since 1880, the start of the Industrial Revolution, according to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Global sea level will rise about 1 foot to slightly more than 3 feet (39 inches) by 2100, the U.N. panel said. NOAA has projected sea levels could rise even higher, as much as 6½ feet, by the end of the century.

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