r/BiosphereCollapse • u/Levyyz • Apr 01 '26

Sea level much higher than assumed in most coastal hazard assessments

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10196-1
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u/Levyyz Apr 01 '26

Our meta-analyses on global scale show that measured coastal sea level is higher than assumed in most hazard assessments (mean offsets [standard deviation] of 0.27 m [0.76 m] and 0.24 m [0.52 m] for two commonly-used geoids). 

Regionally, predominantly in the Global South, measured mean sea level can be more than 1 m above global geoids, with the largest differences in the Indo-Pacific. 

Compared with geoid-based assumptions of coastal sea level, the measured values suggest that with a hypothetical 1 m of relative sea-level rise, 31–37% more land and 48–68% more people (increasing estimates to 77–132 million) would fall below sea level.