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THE DAILY ASTORIAN TUESDAY, MARCH 1, 2016
Seas are rising way faster than any time in past 2,800 years
By SETH BORENSTEIN
AP Science Writer
WASHINGTON — Sea
levels on Earth are rising sev-
eral times faster than they have
in the past 2,800 years and are
accelerating because of man-
made global warming, accord-
ing to new studies.
An international team of sci-
entists dug into two dozen loca-
tions across the globe to chart
gently rising and falling seas
over centuries and millennia.
Until the 1880s and the world’s
industrialization, the fastest seas
rose was about 1 to 1.5 inches (3
to 4 centimeters) a century, plus
or minus a bit. During that time
global sea level really didn’t
get much higher or lower than
3 inches above or below the
2,000-year average.
But in the 20th century the
world’s seas rose 5.5 inches
(14 centimeters). Since 1993
the rate has soared to a foot per
century (30 centimeters). And
two different studies published
last week in the journal Pro-
ceedings of the National Acad-
emy of Sciences, said by 2100
that the world’s oceans will rise
between 11 to 52 inches (28
to 131 centimeters), depend-
ing on how much heat-trap-
ping gas Earth’s industries and
vehicles expel.
“There’s no question that
the 20th century is the fastest,”
said Rutgers earth and plan-
etary sciences professor Bob
Kopp, lead author of the study
that looked back at sea levels
over the past three millennia.
“It’s because of the tempera-
ture increase in the 20th cen-
tury which has been driven by
fossil fuel use.”
To ¿gure out past sea levels
and rates of rise and fall, sci-
entists engaged in a “geologi-
cal detective story,” said study
co-author Ben Horton, a Rut-
gers marine scientist. They
went around the world look-
ing at salt marshes and other
coastal locations and used dif-
ferent clues to ¿gure out what
the sea level was at different
times. They used single cell
organisms that are sensitive
to salinity, mangroves, coral,
sediments and other clues in
cores, Horton said. On top of
that they checked their ¿g-
ures by easy markers such as
the rise of lead with the start of
the industrial age and isotopes
only seen in the atomic age.
When Kopp and colleagues
charted the sea level rise over
the centuries — they went
back 3,000 years, but aren’t
con¿dent in the most distant
200 years — they saw Earth’s
sea level was on a downward
trend until the industrial age.
Sea level rise in the 20th
century is mostly man-made,
the study authors said. A sep-
arate, not-yet-published study
by Kopp and others found
since 1950, about two-thirds
of the U.S. nuisance coastal
Àoods in 2 locales have the
¿ngerprints of man-made
warming.
And if seas continue to
rise, as projected, another
18 inches of sea level rise is
going to cause lots of prob-
lems and expense, especially
with surge during storms, said
study co-author Stefan Rahm-
storf of the Potsdam Institute
for Climate Impact Research
in Germany.
“There is such a tight rela-
tionship between sea level and
temperature,” Horton said.
“I wish there wasn’t, then we
wouldn’t be as worried.”
The link to temperature
is basic science, the study’s
authors said. Warm water
expands. Cold water contracts.
The scientists pointed to spe-
ci¿c past eras when tempera-
tures and sea rose and fell
together.
The Kopp study and a sep-
arate one published by another
team projected future sea level
rise based on various tech-
niques. They came to the same
general estimates, despite
using different methods, said
Anders Levermann, a co-au-
thor of the second paper and
a researcher at the Potsdam
Institute.
If greenhouse gas pol-
lution continues at the cur-
rent pace, both studies proj-
ect increases of about 22 to 52
inches (5 to 131 centimeters).
If countries ful¿ll the treaty
agreed upon last year in Paris
and limit further warming to
another 2 degrees Fahrenheit,
sea level rise would be in the
11 to 22 inch range (28 to 56
centimeters).
Jonathan Overpeck at
the University of Arizona,
who wasn’t part of the stud-
ies, praised them, saying they
show a clear cause and effect
between warming and sea
level rise.
A view from the air shows
the destroyed homes left
in the wake of Superstorm
Sandy in Ortley Beach,
N.J., in 2012. Sea levels
on Earth are rising several
times faster than they have
in the past 2,800 years and
are accelerating because
of man-made global
warming, according to new
studies.
`
Mike Groll
AP Photo
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