Manmade climate change responsible for extreme sea level rise: Study
Human-caused climate change is responsible for increases in extreme sea water levels at local and regional scales across the globe during the 21st century, a new research has found
Human-caused climate change is responsible for the unprecedented increases in extreme sea water levels at local and regional scales across the globe during the 21st century, a new research has found.
The research led by Climate Central and published in Science Advances finds that human-caused sea level rise is detectable at 97% of global tide gauge sites investigated.
The study further found that climate change was responsible for 58% of the observed days with extreme water levels during 2000-2018. Averaged across all locations, climate change has nearly tripled the number of days exceeding extreme water level thresholds since the 1970s.
"These studies highlight how we've loaded the climate dice against not only our children and grandchildren, but ourselves!" Daniel Gilford, the paper author and climate scientist at Climate Central, said.
"The effects of human-caused climate change are already here. We will continue to face growing threats like increasing coastal flood risks unless we immediately and sharply reduce our climate pollution", he added.
Research Methodology
Climate Central researchers used two largely independent methods to estimate the climate change signal in sea level rise and extreme water levels at 519 tide gauge sites around the world.
Results from the first method were determined by calculating attributable sea level rise from four contributing factors: thermal expansion of water, melt from mountain glaciers, and ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets.
The second method compared observed sea levels from 1900-2018 to a modeled scenario of the same period but without the influence of climate-warming pollution.
"Similar conclusions from both methods give confidence in the overall findings — human-caused sea level rise is responsible for driving the majority of extreme water levels worldwide", the researchers said.
The findings of the study are further supported by the findings in a complementary new paper in Nature Climate Change by researchers from Tulane University, titled, "Human-driven sea-level rise has quadrupled the frequency of coastal sea-level extremes since 1900", released concurrently with this work.
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