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We love the coast. Coastal regions, particularly some low-lying river deltas, have very high population densities. In excess of 150 million people live within 1 metre of high tide level, and 250 million within 5 metres of high tide. There are billions of dollars invested in coastal infrastructure immediately adjacent to the coast. Many of the world's mega cities (populations of many millions) are on the coast.

Sea level is rising as a result of increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Sea level rise contributes to coastal erosion and inundation of low-lying coastal regions, particularly during extreme sea level events. It also leads to saltwater intrusion into aquifers, deltas and estuaries. These changes impact on coastal ecosystems, water resources, and human settlements and activities. Regions at most risk include heavily populated deltaic regions, small islands (especially coral atolls), and sandy coasts backed by major coastal developments.

On this web site, we attempt to bring together information on sea level rise and its causes. We also include our estimates of global and regional sea level, links to other web pages and data sets and a list of our publications.

Our most recent estimate of changes in global averaged sea level since 1993 are estimated from satellite altimeter data (red) and since 1870 by combining in situ sea level data from coastal tide gauges and the spatial patterns of variability determined from satellite altimeter data (blue).

Note that error bars have not been shown for the altimeter data (red curve) for clarity, but are about ±5 mm.

Note also that the error bars on the tide gauge-based estimate get larger in the last few years. This is because the number of gauges going in to the estimate drops off for the last couple of years because of delays getting the most recent data into the PSMSL archive, which is where we get this data from. This is simply due to the the time it takes the various national archives to compile and submit the data.

CLICK HERE to download a print-quality pdf (66KB) of this figure.

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Website owner: Neil White | Last modified 23/12/09

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