Study finds sea levels are higher than we thought, placing millions more at risk
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Climate change's rising seas may threaten tens of millions more people than scientists and government planners originally thought because of mistaken research assumptions on how high coastal waters already are, a new study said.
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By — Seth Borenstein, Associated Press Seth Borenstein, Associated Press By — Annika Hammerschlag, Associated Press Annika Hammerschlag, Associated Press Leave your feedback Share Copy URL Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Study finds sea levels are higher than we thought, placing millions more at risk Science Mar 4, 2026 7:48 PM EST Climate change's rising seas may threaten tens of millions more people than scientists and government planners originally thought because of mistaken research assumptions on how high coastal waters already are, a new study said. WATCH: As rising sea levels swallow Bangladesh's land, its climate refugees are forced to adapt Researchers studied hundreds of scientific studies and hazard assessments, calculating that about 90% of them underestimated baseline coastal water heights by an average of 1 foot (30 centimeters), according to Wednesday's study in the journal Nature . It's a far more frequent problem in the Global South, the Pacific and Southeast Asia, and less so in Europe and along Atlantic coasts. The cause is a mismatch between the way sea and land altitudes are measured, said study co-author Philip Minderhoud, a hydrogeology professor at Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands. And he attributed that to a "methodological blind spot" between the different ways those two things are measured. Grow your mind Subscribe to our Science Newsletter to explore the wide worlds of science, health and technology. Enter your email address Subscribe Form error message goes here. Thank you. Please check your inbox to confirm. Each way measures their own areas properly, he said. But where sea meets land, there's a lot of factors that often don't get accounted for when satellites and land-based models are used. Studies that calculate sea level rise impact usually "do not look at the actual measured sea level so they used this zero-meter" figure as a starting point, said lead author Kat...
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