Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Oceanography

Human influence on sea-level rise

Nature Climate Change volume 6, pages 661–662 (2016)Cite this article

Subjects

Detection and attribution of sea-level rise is hampered by the lack of historical model estimates for the individual components. Now research bridges this gap and uncovers an accelerating anthropogenic contribution over recent decades.

Over the past century, tide gauges have shown that the global mean sea level (GMSL) has risen steadily by 14–22 cm (ref. 1) (depending on the reconstruction technique); an increase very likely being unprecedented over any of the previous 27 centuries2. Despite having identified ocean thermal expansion and glacier mass loss as the two dominant contributors to GMSL rise over the twentieth century, debate has continued on how much of the observed GMSL change is related to natural or anthropogenic causes. The attribution to natural radiative forcings (such as solar and volcanic), natural internal climate variability and anthropogenic greenhouse gases or aerosols requires, besides observations, fully forced historical climate models containing individual forcings either in tandem or in isolation. Writing in Nature Climate Change, Aimée Slangen and colleagues3 now uncover the anthropogenic contribution from the observed twentieth-century GMSL rise and provide evidence that it accelerated from less than 15% before 1950 to more than 70% in recent decades.

Your institute does not have access to this article

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Figure 1: Twentieth-century sea-level rise.

References

  1. Church, J. et al. in Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis (eds Jouzel, J., van de Wal, R., Woodworth, P. L. & Xiao, C.) Ch. 13 (IPCC, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013).

    Google Scholar 

  2. Kopp, B. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1517056113 (2016).

  3. Slangen, A. B. A. et al. Nature Clim. Change http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2991 (2016).

  4. Dangendorf, S. et al. Nature Commun. 6, 7849 (2015).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Marcos, M. & Amores, A. Geophys. Res. Lett. 41, 2502–2507 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Slangen, A. B. A. et al. Geophys. Res. Lett. 41, 5951–5959 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Marzeion, B. et al. Science 345, 919–921 (2014).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Dangendorf, S. et al. Geophys. Res. Lett. 41, 5564–5571 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Wunsch, C. Ann. Rev. Mar. Sci. 8, 1–33 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Hamlington, B. & Thompson, P. Geophys. Res. Lett. 42, 4102–4109 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sönke Dangendorf is at the Research Institute for Water and Environment, University of Siegen, Paul-Bonatz-Str. 9-11, 57076 Siegen, Germany,

    Sönke Dangendorf

Authors
  1. Sönke Dangendorf
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sönke Dangendorf.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Dangendorf, S. Human influence on sea-level rise. Nature Clim Change 6, 661–662 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2994

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2994

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing