Study: Sea level rising twice as fast since 1850

[gulfcoastliberal]

http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051126/NEWS/511260318

Related: Greenland glacial melt accelerating
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20051121/glacier_pla.html

The rate of the sea level's rise has doubled over the last 150 years, a sign that fossil fuel use has contributed to global warming, according to a scientific paper published Friday by a Rutgers University-led team.

Ancient ocean sediments deep under Shore beaches and the Pine Barrens provide a record of sea-level changes over the past 100 million years. The study's findings show a steady rise of 1 millimeter per year that started 5,000 years ago began to accelerate after 1850, said professor Kenneth G. Miller, chairman of geological sciences at Rutgers.

Cores from 1,500-foot-deep borings at Island Beach State Park, Bass River State Forest and three other locations — along with tidal gauge data and modern satellite imagery to determine more recent sea-level changes — provided baseline data for the study published in Science magazine. The research team corrected data to account for land settlement along the shoreline to arrive at what it says is the annual, 2-millimetersea-level rise of today (that's about one-twelfth of an inch per year, or 1 inch in 12 years).

"New Jersey is one of the best places in the world to study sea-level change," Miller said. "The reason is New Jersey has been very quiet tectonically," with little major change to its deep geology since the days of dinosaurs.