{"id":514709,"date":"2026-03-04T23:13:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T23:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/514709\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T23:13:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T23:13:07","slug":"global-sea-levels-have-been-underestimated-due-to-poor-modelling-research-suggests-oceans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/514709\/","title":{"rendered":"Global sea levels have been underestimated due to poor modelling, research suggests | Oceans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Sea levels around the world have been underestimated due to inaccurate modelling, with research suggesting ocean levels are far higher than previously understood.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The finding could significantly affect assessments of the future impacts of global heating and the effects on coastal settlements.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Globally, the research found ocean levels are an average of 30cm higher than previously believed, but in some areas of the global south, including south-east Asia and the Indo-Pacific, they may be 100-150cm higher than previously thought.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Rising sea levels are a major threat to coastal communities across the world, and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that by 2100 levels may rise by 28-100cm.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The latest research, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-026-10196-1\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">published in Nature<\/a>, combined the analysis of 385 pieces of peer-reviewed scientific literature released between 2009 and 2025 with calculations of the difference between the commonly assumed and actual measured coastal sea levels.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Authors Dr Philip Minderhoud of Wageningen University in the Netherlands and PhD researcher Katharina Seeger discovered that more than 90% of these studies did not use local, direct measurements of sea levels but instead used land elevation measurements referenced against global geoid models.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Geoid models provide an estimate of global sea levels based on the Earth\u2019s gravity and rotation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">As a consequence, sea levels were undervalued by an average of 24-27cm, depending on the geoid model used, with some discrepancies as much as 550-760cm.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Minderhoud said: \u201cIn reality, sea level is influenced by additional factors such as winds, ocean currents, seawater temperature and salinity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The new calculations reveal that following a relative sea level rise of 1 metre, it is estimated that 37% more coastal areas will fall below sea level, affecting up to 132 million individuals.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cIf sea level is higher for your particular island or coastal city than was previously assumed, the impacts from sea level rise will happen sooner than projected before,\u201d said Minderhoud.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Describing the discrepancy as an \u201cinterdisciplinary blind spot\u201d, the scientists are concerned that a large proportion of the studies analysed in their research, which they believe are inaccurate, are referenced in the most recent climate change reports published by the IPCC.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">The study contains ready-to-use coastal elevation data for across the world integrated with the latest sea level measurements and calls for the re-evaluation of existing coastal hazard studies methodology to ensure climate change policies are accurately informed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sea levels around the world have been underestimated due to inaccurate modelling, with research suggesting ocean levels are&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":514710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-514709","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}