Social media users recently widely shared two photos that allegedly prove the unchanging sea levels, as can be seen below.
Misbar’s team conducted a thorough research and found that the photos do not prove that the sea levels have not changed over time.
Misbar’s team found that because the tide rises and falls, whether sea levels have risen or not cannot be proven by photos.
Similar claims have been repeatedly debunked by independent fact-checkers including Misbar.
NASA Monitors the Rising Sea Levels
NASA's Sea Level Change science team analyzed satellite data and reported that the average global sea level increased by 0.11 inches (0.27 centimeters) from 2021 to 2022. According to NASA, the increase in sea levels equates to adding water from a million Olympic-size swimming pools to the ocean every day for a year.
Based on long-term satellite measurements, the projected rate of sea level rise will hit 0.26 inches (0.66 centimeters) per year by 2050.
Satellite Observations of Rising Seas
NASA's 30-year satellite record provides a rich and accurate understanding of the trends in sea levels worldwide. The program's data shows that sea levels continue to rise. The rise in sea levels is primarily caused by human-caused climate change driven by the excessive amounts of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, that society pumps into the atmosphere.
Climate change is causing the melting of Earth's ice sheets and glaciers, adding more fresh water to the ocean. Warming also causes the expansion of seawater, resulting in rising seas. These effects are overriding natural effects on sea surface height.
NASA's Commitment to Climate Information
NASA is committed to providing annual sea level observations and future projections to help vulnerable communities worldwide understand the risks they face in a new climate. The space agency's timely updates are essential in showing which climate trajectory the world is on. The 30-year satellite record allows researchers to see through the shorter-term shifts that happen naturally in the ocean and identify the trends that inform us where we are headed.
IPCC Fifth Assessment Report: Earth's Critical Warming Threshold to Be Crossed by Early 2030s
According to a new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world is at risk of crossing a critical threshold for global warming in the early 2030s. The report, which provides the most comprehensive understanding to date of the ways in which the planet is changing, states that global average temperatures are estimated to rise 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels sometime around “the first half of the 2030s” as humans continue to burn coal, oil, and natural gas.
This holds a special significance in global climate politics because, under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, virtually every nation agreed to “pursue efforts” to hold global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. However, Earth has already warmed an average of 1.1 degrees Celsius since the industrial age, and with global fossil-fuel emissions setting records last year, that goal will soon be unreachable.
To prevent the planet from overheating dangerously beyond this level, nations will need to make an immediate and categorical shift away from fossil fuels. This would require industrialized nations to join together immediately to reduce greenhouse gases roughly in half by 2030 and then stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere altogether by the early 2050s. If those two steps were taken, the world would have about a 50 percent chance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. However, delays of even a few years would most likely make that goal unattainable, promising a hotter, more dangerous future.
Misbar is committed to countering climate change denialism and misinformation since fact-checking is more important than ever.
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