Hundreds of studies have missed how much the oceans are rising

Hundreds of studies have missed how much the oceans are rising Skip to content Subscribe today Every print subscription comes with full digital access Subscribe Now Menu All Topics Health Humans Anthropology Health & Medicine Archaeology Psychology View All Life Animals Plants Ecosystems Paleontology Neuroscience Genetics Microbes View All Earth Agriculture Climate Oceans Environment View All Physics Materials Science Quantum Physics Particle Physics View All Space Astronomy Planetary Science Cosmology View All Magazine Menu All Stories Multimedia Reviews Puzzles Collections Educator Portal Century of Science Unsung characters Coronavirus Outbreak Newsletters Investors Lab About SN Explores Our Store SIGN IN Donate Home INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM SINCE 1921 SIGN IN Search Open search Close search Home INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM SINCE 1921 All Topics Earth Agriculture Climate Oceans Environment Humans Anthropology Health & Medicine Archaeology Psychology Life Animals Plants Ecosystems Paleontology Neuroscience Genetics Microbes Physics Materials Science Quantum Physics Particle Physics Space Astronomy Planetary Science Cosmology Tech Computing Artificial Intelligence Chemistry Math Science & Society All Topics Health Humans Humans Anthropology Health & Medicine Archaeology Psychology Recent posts in Humans Neuroscience The right sounds may turn sleep into a problem-solving tool By Bethany BrookshireMarch 3, 2026 Health & Medicine Over 40? 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The region shows some of the greatest discrepancies in an analysis reporting on widespread underestimates of current ocean heights. Thanh Hue/Getty Images News By Nikk Ogasa 4 hours ago Share this:Share Share via email (Opens in new window) Email Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook Share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit Share on X (Opens in new window) X Print (Opens in new window) Print Hundreds of global and regional studies on sea level rise and coastal flooding may have underestimated sea levels by an average of 20 to 30 centimeters. Out of 385 peer-reviewed studies published from 2009 to 2025, around 99 percent incorrectly estimated ocean height, leading to sea level approximations that were off by as much as a century of projected sea level rise, researchers report March 4 in Nature. These included 45 studies referenced by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its Sixth Assessment Report. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday. The findings suggest that the toll of future sea level rise is even greater than anticipated. A one-meter increase in sea level — which could happen in a century — would submerge areas inhabited by as many as 132 million people, the researchers say­­ — an increase of up to 68 percent more people than previously suggested. Sea level rise is slow but dangerous if you ignore it, says climate scientist Anders Levermann of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research in Germany. “That’s basically what we’ve done unknowingly,” he says. “These estimates now tell us that we are much further in the future than we thought we were.” Physical geographers Katharina Seeger and Philip Minderhoud of Wageningen University in the Netherlands discovered the discrepancy after evaluating hundreds of global and regional studies on sea level rise, storm surges, tsunamis and general coastal hazards. Over half were published in the last five years. Their analysis revealed a common mistake pervading 90 percent of the evaluated research related to the type of data used. Generally, scientists and engineers assessing an area’s vulnerability to coastal hazards compare land elevations with sea levels. Ideally, land elevation data include actual measurements, such as those gathered by satellites. Likewise, sea level data should include measurements collected by tidal gauges, ocean buoys, satellites or other monitoring instruments. But Seeger and Minderhoud found that most of the studies they evaluated neglected to include direct sea level measurements, instead relying on wonky, digital shapes called geoids. A geoid can be imagined as an irregular, undulating blue ball representing the global ocean based on data about Earth’s gravity and rotation. But there are two key problems with using geoids to estimate sea level. First, they can be off by several meters in areas lacking gravitational data. Second, geoids do not account for ocean circulation, currents, winds, tides, water temperatures and other factors influencing sea level. The new work shows that most research did not correct for these geoid shortcomings with actual measurements when estimating sea level, Minderhoud said at a March 3 news brief