Sea Level Rise Is Partly Anthropogenic – but Due to Subsidence, Not Global Warming
May 16, 2022
Rising sea levels are all too often blamed on climate change by activists and the media. But a recent research study has revealed that, while much of sea level rise in coastal cities is indeed due to human activity, the culprit is land subsidence caused by groundwater extraction, rather than any human-induced global warming.
The study, conducted by oceanographers at the University of Rhode Island, measured subsidence rates in 99 coastal cities around the world between 2015 and 2020, using data from a pair of Europe’s Sentinel-1 satellites. The subsidence rates for each city were calculated from satellite images taken once every two months during the observation period – a procedure that enabled the researchers to measure the height of the ground with millimeter accuracy.
Several different processes can affect vertical motion of land, as I discussed in a previous post. Long-term glacial rebound after melting of the last ice age’s heavy ice sheets is causing land to rise in high northern latitudes. But in many regions, the ground is sinking because of sediment settling and aquifer compaction caused by human activities, especially groundwater depletion resulting from rapid urbanization and population growth.
https://www.scienceunderattack.com/blog/2022/5/16/sea-level-rise-is-partly-anthropogenic-but-due-to-subsidence-not-global-warming-103
