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Saturday, October 31, 2009

Sea level rise: Current global average is 3.2 mm per year

Sea Level Change Data 
from the University of Colorada at Boulder

Long-term mean sea level change is a variable of considerable interest in the studies of global climate change. The measurement of long-term changes in global mean sea level can provide an important corroboration of predictions by climate models of global warming. Long term sea level variations are primarily determined with two different methods. Over the last century, global sea level change has typically been estimated from tide gauge measurements by long-term averaging. Alternatively, satellite altimeter measurements can be combined with precisely known spacecraft orbits to provide an improved measurement of global sea level change.
Since August 1992 the satellite altimeters have been measuring sea level on a global basis with unprecedented accuracy. The TOPEX/POSEIDON (T/P) satellite mission provided observations of sea level change from 1992 until 2005. Mean sea levelJason-1, launched in late 2001 as the successor to T/P, continues this record by providing an estimate of global mean sea level every 10 days with an uncertainty of 3-4 mm. The latest mean sea level time series and maps of regional sea level change can be found on this site. Concurrent tide gauge calibrations are used to estimate altimeter drift. Sea level measurements for specific locations can be obtained from our Interactive Wizard. Details on how these results are computed can be found in the documentation and the bibliography. Please contact us for further information.

Link:  http://sealevel.colorado.edu/

2 comments:

Brent Haines said...

NOT MUCH OF A RATE OF RISE!!
FROM 16,000 YBP TO 6,000 YBP THE AVERAGE RATE OF RISE WAS 13MM PA.

Tenney Naumer said...

hmm, seems a whole bunch of ice sheets up and melted during the time range you mentioned.

I doubt that the sea level rise during that time period was a linear function.

The current rate of sea level rise just had a step function -- 10 or 12 years ago it was only about 1.7 mm per year, and it just jumped.