UK sea levels rising quicker than century ago: study

Sea levels around Britain are rising much faster than a century ago, while the country is warming slightly more than the global average, leading meteorologists said Thursday.

The annual study – the State of the UK Climate 2021 – found that the past few decades have been “warmer, wetter and sunnier” than the 20th century.

It’s getting hot on the heels of temperatures that topped 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time last week in England, a record 40.3C.

“This year’s report continues to show the impact of global temperature increases on the UK’s climate,” the Met Office, the country’s meteorological authority, said in a summary.

It added that the findings “reaffirm that climate change is not just a problem for the future and that it is already affecting the conditions we experience here at home”.

Meteorologists noted in the report that in the past three decades, sea levels had risen in some places at more than double the rate recorded at the beginning of the 20th century.

They have risen by about 16.5 cm (6.5 in) since 1990 – about three to 5.2 mm per year, compared to 1.5 mm per year in the early 1900s.

This exposes more coastal areas to larger and more frequent storm surges and “wind-driven wave effects,” according to the Met Office.

Svetlana Yevrejeva, of the National Oceanographic Center, said there was evidence that the increases were due to increased ice loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.

The melting of glaciers around the world and ocean warming were also responsible, she noted.

“As sea levels rise, storm surges can have greater consequences,” Yevrejeva warned.

The annual study also found that Britain has been warming at a broadly consistent but “slightly higher” rate than global average temperature increases.

Mike Kendon of the Met Office, lead author of the report, said record temperatures, such as last week’s unprecedented heat wave, “became routine rather than the exception.”

“It is telling that while we consider 2021 to be near average for temperature in the context of the current climate, if this had happened just over three decades ago it would have been one of the warmest years in the UK on record,” he added. ready.

The UK hosted the COP26 summit last November, when numerous countries agreed collective measures to prevent catastrophic climate change.

But fears are growing that many could stop fulfilling commitments, including ending funding for fossil fuel projects abroad, as they struggle to replace Russian energy imports.

In Britain, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss – the favorite in a leadership battle to replace outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson – has vowed to abolish energy bill levies earmarked for the renewable sector, to put people through an increasingly crisis of the cost of living.

© 2022 AFP