New Data Shows Different Calculations On Sea Level Rise

According to new data from satellites, predictions made of sea level rising in the future were overestimated, says a report in The Register.

A dedicated spacecraft, Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment, which sends data into the orbit which includes information on how much ice is melted from the world's ice sheets and glaciers, leading to a significant sea level rise.

"GRACE data contain a lot of signals and a lot of noise. Our technique learns enough about the noise to effectively recover the signal, and at much finer spatial scales than was possible before," said professor Frederik Simons of Princeton University, in a report in The Register. "We can 'see through' the noise and recover the 'true' geophysical information contained in these data. We can now revisit GRACE data related to areas such as river basins and irrigation and soil moisture, not just ice sheets."

The new method of filtering the signals to identify the correct data of how much ice melts down and Simons and his colleague Christopher Harig focused on the GRACE data covering the Greenland ice sheet. The Princeton statement detailed the annual acceleration in ice loss and compared with previous estimates which were found.

"While overall ice loss on Greenland consistently increased between 2003 and 2010, Harig and Simons found that it was in fact very patchy from region to region," according to a Princeton statement published in The Register report. "In addition, the enhanced detail of where and how much ice melted allowed the researchers to estimate that the annual acceleration in ice loss is much lower than previous research has suggested, roughly increasing by 8 billion tons every year. Previous estimates were as high as 30 billion tons more per year."

The estimated ice loss was predicted at nearly four times higher than what the current data shows. Considering the new data, Greenland's ice loss wouldn't be a major concern. According to the Princeton statement: "At current melt rates, the Greenland ice sheet would take about 13,000 years to melt completely, which would result in a global sea-level rise of more than 21 feet (6.5 meters)."

With this statement it can be estimated that the sea level will rise by 5cm from Greenland by the year 2130. This new research was published in "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences," says The Register.