The effects of rising sea level are felt most acutely in the increased frequency and intensity of occasional storm surges. The amount of sea level change experienced at any given location also depends on a variety of other factors, including whether regional geological processes and rebound of the land weighted down by previous ice sheets are causing the land itself to rise or sink, and whether changes in winds and currents are piling ocean water against some coasts or moving water away. Fluctuations in sea level also occur due to changes in the amounts of water stored on land. All of these result from a warming climate. This sea level rise has been driven by expansion of water volume as the ocean warms, melting of mountain glaciers in all regions of the world, and mass losses from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Source: Shum and Kuo (2011) ( larger version) The shaded area represents the sea level uncertainty, which has decreased as the number of gauge sites used in calculating the global averages and the number of data points have increased. Sea level is rising faster in recent decades measurements from tide gauges (blue) and satellites (red) indicate that the best estimate for the average sea level rise over the last decade is centred on 3.6 mm per year (0.14 inches per year). Observations show that the global average sea level has risen by about 16 cm (6 inches) since the late 19th century.
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