Global Sea Level Rise: Analyses and Implications

Rising sea levels present one of the most direct socio-economic threats from ongoing climate change. Comprehensive monitoring of global sea level by satellite altimetry began in 1993, and showed a rate of global sea level rise in excess of 3 mm/yr; this rate is almost double the average rate of approximately 1.7 mm/yr over the 20th century. Such an increase provides concrete evidence of the acceleration of sea level rise in the latter part of the 20th century. Here, we will address the variability in global sea level and their sources of interannual and decadal change, using the data-adaptive methods of singular spectrum analysis (SSA) to effectively separate oscillatory components and noise from the underlying trends in sea level. The implications of these findings will be discussed