20th Century Sea-Level Rise on East Coast Fastest in 2,000 Years

According to a Rutgers-led study, sea-level rises along the US Atlantic Coast were the fastest recorded in over 2.000 years, where southern New Jersey had the faster sea-level rise rates.

Rise of East Coast Sea-Levels

The rise in global sea-levels is due to the rapid melting of ice and the undeniable warming of oceans where the rate of sea-level rises from 1900-2000 is twice the average of years 0-1800.

According to the study published in the journal Nature Communications entitled "Common Era sea-level budgets along the U.S. Atlantic coast," recent years showed the most significant change in the global rate of sea-level rise.

For the first time, the study focused on phenomena contributing to the change of sea-levels over 2,000 years at 6 sites along the coasts of New York City, Connecticut, New Jersey, and North Carolina using a sea-level budget.

Researchers say that a sea-level budget further enhances understanding of processes that drive sea-level changes. The process is regional, including geological and land subsidence, global, and local, including groundwater withdrawal.

Jennifer S. Walker, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral associate from the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Rutgers University says that a thorough understanding of change in sea-levels across the sites over the long-term is critical for regional and local planning in response to future sea-level rise.

Adding that by learning how various processes differ over time and contribute to the change in sea-levels researchers can accurately estimate future contributions of processes at specific sites.

(Photo: Photo by Jerome Dominici from Pexels)

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Dangers of Sea-Level Rise

The increase in sea-level rise stem from climate change is constantly threatening to permanently inundate low-lying cities, lands, and islands. It heightens low-lying vulnerability to floods and damage from coastal storms and the like.

The majority of sea-level budget studies previously conducted are global and limited to the 20th and 21st-century data. On the other hand the Rutgers-led study estimated sea-level budgets over 2,000 years, the longest timeframe studied.

The goal of the study was to better understand how certain processes drove seal-level to change and shape future change, the sea-level budget method used by researchers could be applied to other sites across the globe.

Utilizing statistical models, researchers developed a sea-level budget for 6 sites, dividing sea-level records into local, regional, and global components. The team found that regional land subsidence, the sinking of land beginning from the retreat of the Laurentide ice sheet thousands of years in the past, dominates all site's budgets over the past 2,000 years.

Regional factors like ocean dynamics, site-specific local processes, and groundwater withdrawal help cause the land to sink which contributes to each budget over time and location.

The overall rate of sea-level rise for each of the 6 sites in the 20th century was the fastest in a 2,000-year period.

Southern New Jersey was found to have the fastest rates over the 2,000 periods with a 1.6 millimeter a year increase according to researchers.