Taking the Fingerprints of Global Sea Level Rise

Although estimates of globally averaged sea level rise are important, the impact of changing sea level on specific communities requires that we determine not only the global average but also the geographic variability. This lecture describes efforts to model this variability, and to use it to help constrain the sources of meltwater in an approach known as "sea level fingerprinting". The talk demonstrates the power of the fingerprinting approach and shows that previous estimates of the recent acceleration of sea level rise were too low. This conclusion underscores the imperative we face as a global society as we move inexorably into a progressively warming world.

In collaboration with the Center for Sea Level Change, NYUAD