Earthsky Interviews
Private: Sea level rise rate doubled since 1850
05-28-2006 - Earth
JB: That’s according to Kenneth Miller, professor of geological sciences at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Miller and his colleagues took five core samples, drilled to a depth of 500 meters, or about 1600 feet.
DB: They studied the sediments, fossils, and isotopes of the core. By comparing them with other known measurements, Miller’s team constructed something that hadn’t existed before – a comprehensive record of sea level and climate changes that span 100 million years. Combined with other records, sea level changes can now be traced over 500 million years, according to Miller. The results are “published”:http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/310/5752/1293?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=kenneth+miller&searchid=1133474746326_17507&stored_search=&FIRSTINDEX=0 in the journal Science.
Kenneth Miller: I think that the part that has caught most of the attention in a record that spans hundreds of millions of years, basically, is the past five thousand years, where our studies show that sea level, globally, has been rising at a rate of about a millimeter per year over the past five thousand years, while tide gauge data, which record things basically since 1850, shows almost double the rate of change. And that does imply that human induced warming has caused an increase in the rate of sea level rise.
JB: This summer, Miller will continue his drilling studies to detail sea level change. We have more at earthsky.org. Thanks today to “NASA”:http://www.nasa.gov: explore, discover, understand. We’re Block and Byrd for Earth and Sky.