Seas Are Rising Faster Than Any Time in Nearly 3,000 Years

Twin Lakes Beach in Santa Cruz, Calif. and Schwann Lagoon, the body of water on the right. The Nature Conservancy an environmental group in California is recruiting drone hobbyists to map flooding and coastal damage after El Nino storms with the idea that the images will help predict what the future coastline will look like as sea levels rise from global warming. Matt Merrifield/The Nature Conservancy via AP

WASHINGTON—Sea levels on Earth are rising several times faster than they have in the past 2,800 years and are accelerating because of man-made global warming, according to new studies.

An international team of scientists dug into two dozen locations across the globe to chart gently rising and falling seas over centuries and millennia. Until the 1880s and the world’s industrialization, the fastest seas rose was about 1 to 1.5 inches a century, plus or minus a bit. During that time global sea level really didn’t get much higher or lower than 3 inches above or below the 2,000-year average.

But in the 20th century the world’s seas rose 5.5 inches. Since 1993 the rate has soared to a foot per century. And two different studies published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said by 2100 that the world’s oceans will rise between 11 to 52 inches, depending on how much heat-trapping gas Earth’s industries and vehicles expel.

A high tide energized by storm surges washes across Ejit Island in Majuro Atoll, Marshall Islands on March 3, 2014, causing widespread flooding and damaging a number of homes. Climate change is a major concern for Pacific island states such as the Marshals, Kiribati and Tuvalu, where many atolls are barely three feet above sea level and risk being engulfed by rising waters. Giff Johnson/AFP/Getty Images