This graph features global sea level measurements from as far back as 800,000 years up to the present time with an atmospheric temperature overlay option. The graph is customizable and can be resized, printed, or pasted into your website. This is a free service, but we do ask for a donation if you find this useful. This is a project of the 2 Degrees Institute, a non-profit organization.
This geologic sea level reconstruction is based on the dominant pattern of variability in seven proxy sea level records, scaled to have the well-documented 130-meter range in sea level between the peak of the last Ice Age and today. The seven input series are based on a variety of approaches to extracting the sea level component from marine δ 18 O records – e.g., subtracting the ocean temperature component with the Mg/Ca proxy, calibrating to the sea level record from coral benchmarks, hydraulic modeling of evaporative enrichment in semi-enclosed basins, and inverse ice sheet and ocean modeling. Sea level during the last interglacial 125,000 years ago has been set to +7.5 meters to be consistent with global datasets suggesting sea level was 6-9 meters higher than present at that time.
Credits: Spratt, R.M. and L.E. Lisiecki. 2016. A late Pleistocene sea level stack. Climate of the Past, Vol. 12, pp. 1079-1092. doi:10.5194/cp-12-1079-2016. Dutton, A., A.E. Carlson, A.J. Long, G.A. Milne, P.U. Clark, R. DeConto, B.P. Horton, S. Rahmstorf and M.E. Raymo. 2015. Sea-level rise due to polar ice-sheet mass loss during past warm periods. Science, Vol. 349, doi:10.1126/science.aaa4019.
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Global sea level variations estimated as the common component of change across 24 globally distributed, high-resolution, continuous proxy sea level records derived from coastal sediment cores. There is a small uncertainty (±2 mm/year) in the trend over the whole record, but the shorter-term century-to-century variations are robust.
Credits: Kopp, R.E., A.C. Kemp, K. Bittermann, B.P. Horton, J.P. Donnelly, W.R. Gehreis, C.C. Hay, J.X. Mitrovica, E.D. Morrow, and S. Rahmstorf. 2016. Temperature-driven global sea-level variability in the Common Era. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 113, pp. E1434-E1441. doi:10.1073/pnas.1517056113.
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This instrumental reconstruction relies on the past two decades of satellite altimetry measurements to determine the dominant patterns of sea level change, and then uses longer-term tide gauge records from around the world to estimate the time-varying amplitudes of these patterns. Data available from https://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/sl_data_cmar.html
Credits: Church, J.A. and N.J. White. 2011. Sea-level rise from the late 19th to the early 21st Century. Surveys in Geophysics, doi:10.1007/s10712-011-9119-1.
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Since 1993, measurements from the TOPEX and Jason series of satellite radar altimeters have allowed estimates of global mean sea level. These measurements are continuously monitored against a network of tide gauges. When seasonal variations are subtracted, they allow estimation of the global mean sea level rate. This dataset has been calibrated further to reflect the year 1900 as the baseline which allows for a seamless record of the older sea level datasets included in this graph. As new data, models and corrections become available, these estimates are continually revised (about every two months) to improve their quality. Data available from http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
Credits: Veng, T., and Andersen, O. B. 2020. Consolidating sea level acceleration estimates from satellite altimetry. Advances in Space Research, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asr. 2020.01.016.
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Dr. Pieter Tans
NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory
Dr. Jeremy Shakun
Boston College
Dr. Geoff Dutton
NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory
Dr. Ed Dlugokencky
NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory
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