The Rising Concern for Sea Level Rise: Altimeter Record and Geo-Engineering Debate

Abstract

The Oceans from Space V Symposium, held in Venice, Italy, on 24–27 October 2022, devoted special sessions to sea level rise, as described by a series of satellite altimeters, and to remediations of consequent calamities in vulnerable mediterranean seas. It emerged that various aspects of climate change can be modelled in time as a Single Exponential Event (SEE), with a similar trend (a 54–year e–folding time) for CO2 concentration in the Earth’s atmosphere, global average sea surface temperature, and global average sea level. The sea level rise record, combining tide gauges data starting in 1850, as well as more recent altimeter data, for the last 30 years, is already 25 cm above historical values. If the curve continues to follow the exponential growth of the simple SEE model, it will reach about 40 cm by the year 2050, 1 m by 2100, and 2.5 m by 2150. As a result, dramatic impacts would be expected for most coastal areas in the next century. Decisive remediations, based on geo-engineering at the basin scale, are possible for semi-enclosed seas, such as the Mediterranean and Black Seas. Damming the Strait of Gibraltar would provide an alternative to the conclusion that coastal sites such as the City of Venice are inevitably doomed.