The rate of sea-level rise in the past decades is greater
than projected by the latest assessments of the IPCC, while global temperature
increases in good agreement with its best estimates. This is shown by a study
now published in the journal Environmental Research Letters. Stefan Rahmstorf
from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and his colleagues
compare climate projections to actual observations from 1990 up to 2011. That
sea level is rising faster than expected could mean that the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) sea-level rise projections for the future may
be biased low as well, their results suggest.