A new study estimated that the sea level rise could reach as high as 98 centimeters by 2100.
Researchers at the University of Tasmania analyzed the satellite data dating as far as 1993 to determine the changes in sea level rising for the past 20 years. The team spent roughly five years using tide gauges to check the satellite data.
The analysis showed that the global sea levels are rising faster than previously thought. It contradicted an earlier prediction that it would slow down as predicted by climate models of the IPCC.
"The thing that was really puzzling us was that the last decade of sea level rise was marginally slower, ever so subtly slower, than the decade before it," Christopher Watson, study author and a geodesist from the University of Tasmania, told The Guardian.
"A single number implies that that rate is constant over time. And I think what is emerging here is that that's not the case. That rate of change is actually increasing. For everyone that lives around the coastal margin, that's a really concerning fact."
The researchers observed that the sea levels rose by 1.7 millimeters each year for the past 20 years. It doesn't seem like a lot, but it is enough to flood coastal cities, such as Norfolk, Va., Charleston, S.C., and Miami, Fla., if not mitigated. New Orleans and New York had also experienced devastating flooding due to storm surges that were magnified by rising sea levels, according to USA Today.
It is estimated that the global sea level rise could reach as high as 98 centimeters by 2100, and more than 6 feet by the end of the century. By then, 26 U.S. cities are predicted to suffer from storm surges and constant flooding.
The researchers believe that the reasons for the continuous rise in the global sea levels are the melting glaciers and ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica brought on by global warming.
"The acceleration is also consistent with what we expect, given the increasing contributions from the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets," Watson wrote in an email to the Washington Post.
The study was published in the May 11 issue of Nature Climate Change.
