A new study found that heavy rainfall from Amazon to Australia curbed sea level rise by moving water from sea to land.
According to the study, the sea level rise rate would have been 3.3 mm a year from 2003-2011 with natural shifts from La Nina excluded, experts said in a writing. This prediction is very far from the actual rate which is 2.4 mm, baffling climate scientists.
"There is no slowing in the rate of sea level rise," lead author Anny Cazenave of the Laboratory for Studies in Geophysics and Spatial Oceanography in Toulouse, France, said to Reuters.
The U.N. panel of climate experts concluded that the slowing of sea level rise is an effect of atemperature rise which is not as intense as before.
"Eventually water that falls as rain on land comes back into the sea," professor at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Anders Levermann explained to Reuters. Levermann who was not involved in the study, added that some of this water becomes ground water, drains into rivers, or evaporate.
"The slowdown in sea level rise ... is due to natural variability in the climate and is not indicative of a slowdown in the effects of global warming," the researchers wrote in the study.
Although there are doubts, scientists believe that the "missing heat" might be going into the oceans as part of natural variations in the climate.
Since 1900, sea level rose for almost 20 cm. The U.N. panel of climate experts predict rise between 26 and 82 cm over 100 years to the end of 21st century.
Another study claimed that freakish heavy rainfall over Australia in years 2010-2011 curbed sea level rise. Sea level rise is one of the most evident effects of global warming through the years.
This study was published in the March 16 issue of Nature Climate Change.
