Sea-level rise is accelerating, just like climate change science says it should.
Photo: go_greener_ozSince sea-level rise is one of the most certain and widely reported effects of climate change, climate deniers are keen to find evidence that it isn’t happening. They’ve seized on some admittedly confusing data in the last few years. Precise, satellite-based sea-level measurements began in 1993. Between then and approximately 2002, global mean sea level increased by an average of slightly more than three millimeters per year. However, in the ensuing decade, when climate change was supposed to be accelerating, global mean sea-level rise appeared to slow to slightly more than two millimeters per year—a deceleration of nearly 30 percent.
This kind of data is a dream for people who deny climate change. They use it in combination with the claim that global warming has “paused” in the last decade, arguing that measurements on the ground are inconsistent with climate change theory. Here’s noted climate change skeptic Judith Curry making that claim: “Once again, the emerging best explanations for the ‘pause’ in global surface temperatures and the slowdown in sea-level rise bring into question the explanations for the rise in both in the last quarter of the 20th century. And makes the 21st century of sea level rise projections seem like unjustified arm waving.”
This argument has always been badly flawed, because one of its pillars of evidence, the supposed “pause” in global warming, is a fantasy. Global temperature continues to increase rapidly. There is no pause.
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