Don’t dismiss facts of sea level rise

In criticizing the study I co-authored for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a recent letter to your paper (“Sea-level fear not fact-based,” July 11) is fundamentally wrong about two things: the pace of sea level rise historically, and its projected future rate. Decades of sea level rise observations and numerous climate models lay out the facts.

Over the past 25 years, sea levels rose at a pace double the 20th century average, and studies show it continues to accelerate. Ice sheets have been melting more rapidly than previously predicted, and our understanding about the sensitivity of the Antarctic Ice Sheet has grown.

These changes are reflected in the sea level rise projections we used in our scientific study, “Underwater: Rising Seas, Chronic Floods, and the Implications for US Coastal Real Estate,” which were taken from the 2014 National Climate Assessment (NCA) — a government report assessing the latest climate science. The high-end scenario we used projects about 6.5 feet of sea level rise by the year 2100; the upcoming 2018 NCA includes an even higher projection of 8 feet by 2100, based on the latest science about potential ice loss.

A fact-based perspective of sea level rise does paint a daunting picture of our future, one that may cause fear. But dismissing facts to assuage that fear distracts us from the critical investments we must make: reducing our global warming emissions urgently to minimize future sea level rise and making communities more resilient to rising seas.