Summary

Climate change is driving rapid, and accelerating, sea level rise. Melting ice and ocean volume expansion are combining to threaten coastlines. Global warming is causing polar ice caps and mountain glaciers to melt which adds to ocean mass. Second, oceans are absorbing heat which causes the seawater volume to expand.

Sea level rise threatens coastal communities and makes storm flooding much more damaging. This visualization uses satellite data to keep close tabs on global sea levels. It is updated weekly.  

The data

This visualization shows global mean sea level in millimetres from 1993 to the present. Precise monitoring of sea level rise is made possible using altimetry satellites. The data is provided by AVISO CNES.

Citation

Legeais, J.-F., Ablain, M., Zawadzki, L., Zuo, H., Johannessen, J. A., Scharffenberg, M. G., Fenoglio-Marc, L., Fernandes, M. J., Andersen, O. B., Rudenko, S., Cipollini, P., Quartly, G. D., Passaro, M., Cazenave, A., and Benveniste, J. (2018). An improved and homogeneous altimeter sea level record from the ESA Climate Change Initiative. Earth System Science Data, 10, 281-301. DOI: 10.5194/essd-10-281-2018.