Sea Levels Could Rise Twice as Fast as Predicted

If global warming continues apace this century, sea levels worldwide could eventually rise nearly 20 feet above today's levels, and reach more than five feet above today's levels by 2100 — twice as fast as previously predicted.

That's according to new research by the National Oceanography Centre of Britain and international partners, which analyzed sea levels the last time the world got warmer. During the last interglacial period (124,000 - 119,000 years ago) the melting of the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica led to sea level rise of more than five feet per century.

That's faster than predicted by the United Nations, whose Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessed the state of climate science this year, before 180 nations met in Bali, where they agreed to a roadmap for negotiating the next global warming treaty. As with other recent findings — the unprecedented melting of the Arctic this summer, and the possible slowing of uptake of carbon dioxide by the Atlantic, for instance — this research shows that even the dire IPCC warnings may be conservative.

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