BOSTON, Jan. 14 (UPI) — Over the last three decades, sea level rise has been accelerating more than previously estimated, according to new analysis by a Harvard-led research team. The study also found that sea level rise had been overestimated in the decades prior to 1990.
Before the 1990s and the maturation of satellite, GPS and other geolocation technologies, measuring changes in global sea levels was a task that relied mostly on tidal gauges scattered along the coastline.
But the information these tidal gauges returned was spotty, undermined by time gaps. Their locations were not evenly spread across the globe, leading to additional inaccuracies when averaging regional changes. Local influences like dikes, locks and dams had varying effects on the measurements.
As part of the new study, climate and data scientists reanalyzed tide gauge data using algorithms that accounted for local inaccuracies and other potential inconsistencies. They found that sea level rise from 1900 to 1990 was exaggerated by as much as 30 percent.
However, the same analysis — bolstered, also, by satellite data — suggests sea level rise has been underestimated since 1990.
“What this paper shows is that sea-level acceleration over the past century has been greater than had been estimated by others,” explained researcher Eric Morrow, who recently earned a doctorate at Harvard’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. “It’s a larger problem than we initially thought.”
The new research was published this week in the journal Nature.
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