Fact check: Rates of sea level rise vary worldwide. In parts of Scandinavia, the land is rising faster

Kate S. Petersen, USA TODAY
·5 min read
15

The claim: Post implies Scandinavian sea levels show global sea levels aren't rising

A March 14 Facebook video (direct link, archive link) describes authentic National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sea level rise data for three Scandinavian cities: Bergen, Norway; Copenhagen, Denmark; and Stockholm, Sweden.

The three cities show no sea level rise, minimal sea level rise and negative sea level rise, respectively.

"In this weekly feature from the Climate Discussion Nexus, we check claims of relentless sea level rise against actual data," reads the video's caption.

The video was shared 1,800 times in five weeks.

Some commenters suggested that sea level rise hasn't happened at all.

"So, the climate alarmists were wrong," wrote one commenter.

"I see no increase of sea levels," wrote another.

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Our rating: Missing context

The implied claim is wrong. Global sea levels are rising, but not at the same rate everywhere on Earth. In the Scandinavian cities listed in the video, the land is also rising due to a common geological process. The result is that, compared to the land, sea levels in Scandinavia can be stable or falling even while global average sea levels are rising.

Sea levels rising worldwide, but land is also rising in Scandinavia

Around the world, land rises and falls as it rebounds from the weight of glaciers that disappeared thousands of years ago. This is called glacial isostatic adjustment and, in Scandinavia, it is causing land to rise, according to Martin Stendel, a climate scientist at Danish Meteorological Institute.

A pedestrian makes their way across a flooded section of Avenida Menendez in St. Augustine, Fla., after storm-driven high tides flooded low-lying areas of the city.
A pedestrian makes their way across a flooded section of Avenida Menendez in St. Augustine, Fla., after storm-driven high tides flooded low-lying areas of the city.

Sea levels have also risen, but the land around Bergen and Stockholm is rising faster, he said. In Copenhagen, sea level rise is outpacing isostatic adjustment by a thin margin, leading to the slight sea level increase described in the video.

The land uplift occurring in Scandinavia is not unprecedented, according to William Sweet, an NOAA oceanographer.

"This is also happening in some areas in Alaska and Canada," he said in an email. "Additionally, there are other regions of the world where tectonic shifts can also cause land to rise up and create apparent drops in relative sea level."

Due to these and other factors, local rates of sea level rise vary across the Earth, and some areas have experienced very rapid sea level rise. For instance, Grand Isle, Louisiana, has experienced the equivalent of roughly 3 feet of rise per hundred years, according to NASA data.

On average, global sea levels have risen between 6-8 inches over the last hundred years, according to NOAA.

Fact check: In Norway, land is rising faster than sea level is rising

The misleading social media video is part of a series that highlights areas on Earth experiencing sea level fall or relatively low sea level rise.

The poster said in a comment with the video that it is intended "to illustrate the complexity and triviality of sea level rise, in contrast to the alarmists' simplistic claim that it's uniform and menacing."

However, publically available sea level rise information from the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, NOAA and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change clearly state that sea level rise is not uniform and varies between locales.

Sea level rise is causing or contributing to increased high-tide flooding, coastal erosion, habitat loss, saltwater intrusion into coastal aquifers and higher storm surges.

When contacted by USA TODAY, the Facebook user did not provide evidence to support their post.

AFP fact-checked a YouTube version of the video and found that it lacks context.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: Sea levels rising in Scandinavia, but land rising faster