Acceleration of Sea Level Rise Goes Undetected for Decades

The global warming may have been speeding up the pace of sea level rise for over two decades without people noticing it, a new scientific study estimated.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Scientists from the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Colorado suggested that acceleration had not been detected because it had been masked by a volcanic eruption.

The study, published Wednesday in the scientific journal Nature, shows how satellite observations starting in 1993 had been distorted by the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines.

The cataclysmic outburst temporarily blocked sunlight and cooled the planet, giving observers an artificially low starting point, researchers said.

"A consequence of this finding is that barring another major volcanic eruption, a detectable acceleration is likely to emerge from the noise of internal climate variability in the coming decade," the study reads.

Climate change has been swelling seas by changing the density of water, which expands when heated, as well as by melting glaciers. Scientists studying the phenomenon noticed how the rate of ice melting has increased in recent decades but the pace of sea level rise has remained inexplicably linear.