A study said melting glaciers contributed almost 2 cm of sea level rise this century. Should you be worried?

Sea level has risen by almost 2 cm this century as a result of the melting of glacier ice around the world, a new study says. The study said that for the last 25 years glaciers have been losing 273 billion tonnes of ice every year - equal to the amount of water needed for human consumption over 30 years.

But a mere 2 cm of sea level rise — which seems so miniscule compared to this — could plunge the world into chaos. As Andrew Shepherd, head of Northumbria University’s Department of Geography and Environmental Science, told The Guardian, every centimeter of sea level rise puts an extra 2 million people at risk of flooding each year somewhere on Earth.

But it has been rising much faster in recent years – from 0. 18 cm a year in 1993 to 0. 42 cm a year now. NASA says the recent rate of rise is unprecedented over the past 2, 500+ years, and global sea levels have simply risen by more than 10 cm between 1993 and 2024.

Sea levels have also risen in India’s coastal cities over the past few decades. A 2024 report by the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP) in Bengaluru said that Mumbai experienced the worst rise of any Indian city, between 1987 and 2021, at 4. 44 cm. With an average elevation of about 10 metres above sea level, the island city is especially vulnerable to future sea level rise. Sea levels have risen by 2. 726 cm in Haldia, Andhra Pradesh; 2. 381 cm in Visakhapatnam; and 2. 213 cm in Kochi, Kerala, according to the CSTEP report.

Both natural and human systems may suffer from sea level rise. People whose homes are near the coast are eventually displaced by more frequent and severe coastal flooding, which also makes coastal erosion worse.

Researchers say the oceans could rise much more if global warming is slowed. “Current rates of acceleration mean that we are on track to add another 20 cm of global mean sea level by 2050, ” Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, director of the ocean physics program and NASA’s sea level change team in Washington, said in a 2024 statement “doubling the amount of change in the next three decades compared to the previous 100 years and increasing the frequency and impacts of floods across the world.