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Sea level is climbing — and speeding up
What's making the ocean rise?
Two physical reasons. The ocean warms and expands as it gets hotter. And land ice — Greenland, Antarctica, and the world's mountain glaciers — melts and pours into the sea. Here is the recent split.
- Thermal expansion · warmer ocean water takes up more space
- Greenland · ice sheet melting into the North Atlantic
- Mountain glaciers · thousands of land glaciers worldwide retreating
- Antarctica · West Antarctic glaciers + ice shelves draining into the Southern Ocean
- Land water shifts · groundwater pumping, reservoirs, and changing soil moisture moving water to the sea
Combined ice melt (Greenland + Antarctica + mountain glaciers) is about 52% of recent rise. Thermal expansion at 38% is still the largest single component. Earlier in the twentieth century thermal expansion dominated; the ice share has grown over the satellite era.
Component split from the United Nations climate panel sixth assessment, Chapter 9, Table 9.5 — average over 2006–2018. The five shares add to 100% of recent observed rise (~3.7 mm/yr).
Ice sheets are pouring into the ocean
The per-ice-sheet figures below are the same long-record mass-balance averages as the headline tiles above — not a live ice meter.
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What does this mean for your coast?
Pick a coastal city, or use your approximate location to jump to the nearest tracked port.
Which cities face the highest water by 2050?
Illustrative local ranges (mm) ranked by high-end 2050 envelope. Cup height uses one shared scale (tallest = highest 2050 high-end) so you can compare cities — not each city’s own yardstick. Blue fill = mid projection; red cap = high-end; gray line = low-end.
Coastal cities — tide gauges & 2050 ranges
Tide gauges measure relative sea level (ocean + land motion). The satellite curve above is absolute open-ocean height.
| City | Trend | Anomaly | 2050 low | 2050 high | Land motion |
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How fast each city is rising
Where the United Nations climate panel sees sea level by 2100
Global mean envelopes (metres) — not city-specific vertical land motion.
| Scenario | Low | Mid | High |
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What drives this
- Ocean heat →Warming water expands — thermal expansion is a top driver of rising seas.
- Polar ice →The same warming that shrinks sea ice melts the land ice that adds water.
What this drives
- Coastal flood risk →A higher baseline turns ordinary high tides and storms into damaging floods.
How we know this
- Global curve: the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's satellite-altimetry team stitches Topex, Jason, and Sentinel-6 into one mean sea-level series since 1993.
- Update cadence: we mirror the agency's most recent public file. Their last refresh landed February 2025 — newer cycles will appear when they publish again.
- Acceleration chart: two straight-line trends — first half vs second half of the satellite record — so you can see the steeper recent slope without reading millimetres per year squared.
- Coastal cities & map: reference tide-gauge trends and coordinates — not a live tide-gauge feed on this page.
- Ice loss: ice-sheet mass-balance assessment averages for Greenland and Antarctica; refreshed when a new assessment is published, not with every satellite download.
- Limitations: tide gauges measure relative sea level (water + sinking land). Jakarta and Venice can outpace the open-ocean satellite curve.
- Primary data: U.S. agency satellite sea-level page · ice-sheet mass-balance project · How this page is built