Sea level is rising at merely 3.1 millimeters per year, satellite measurements report, defying alarmist United Nations predictions that sea level would rise approximately 6.2 millimeters (mm) per year.
In its Fifth Climate Assessment, released in 2014, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported a mean projected sea level rise of approximately 0.5 meters (20 inches) by the year 2100. To reach that prediction, sea level would need to rise approximately 6.2 mm per year.
Instruments aboard NASA satellites have been measuring global sea level since 1993. The satellite data show sea level is rising merely 3.1 mm per year, or half the IPCC prediction. Moreover, the satellite data show no acceleration of that pace during recent years.
Skeptics of the asserted global warming crisis note that even the reported 3.1 mm rise per year is overstated, because the government-funded keepers of the sea level data add some fictitious sea level rise. The keepers of the data note that as glacial ice melts from land masses, land masses rebound and gain elevation. Rather than reporting the pace at which sea level is rising in relation to the world’s land masses, the keepers of the data add fictitious sea level rise to account for what sea level would be if land masses were not rebounding from the loss of ice. This, of course, is not a measure of actual sea level rise relative to the coasts, but a measure of sea level in a fictitious world in which land masses did not rebound from ice loss.
Either way, the data continue to undermine alarmist predictions of rapid sea level rise. Sea level rise would need to immediately double its present pace to meet IPCC predictions. And with each passing year of just 3.1 mm rise, future sea level would have to rise even more dramatically to meet IPCC predictions. And that simply is not happening.