Back to the Drawing Boards. Sea Level Rise Will Be Twice What We've Been Told to Expect.

What's a mere 1.5 mm per year? That depends.

Researchers from the University of Bonn have found that we have underestimated sea level rise due to ocean warming by about half.

“To date, we have underestimated how much the heat-related expansion of the water mass in the oceans contributes to a global rise in sea level,” said co-author Jurgen Kusche, a professor at the University of Bonn.

The overall sea level rise rate is about 2.74mm per year, combining both thermal expansion and melting ice.

Sea level rise was also found to vary substantially from place to place, with the rate around the Philippines “five times the global rate.”

The UBonn research has put a few noses out of joint but it's understood the conclusions will be corroborated by new research soon to be released by NCAR, the US National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Actual sea level rise varies substantially from area to area as this graphic of US SLR illustrates. 

As shown, here on the Pacific coast, sea levels haven't risen as they have elsewhere. It turns out that the winds took our warming and drove it to the ocean depths, part of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. 

That won't last long. The Pacific is now releasing that stored heat to the surface and it'll be coming our way. Sort of like catch-up.

What we're only now discovering is that governments can squander massive amounts of money engineering to meet the wrong threat. If the decision makers choose to go with the original IPCC estimates of one meter of sea level rise by 2100 but ignore subsequent science concluding it will actually be two to three times that, then you've bet the farm on the wrong horse. Adios farm.