Sea levels rose rapidly in past 150 years: study

Sea levels have risen more rapidly in the last 150 years than at any other time in the past 6,000 years, scientists have found. The study led by the Australian National University looked at the fluctuation of ocean levels over the past 35,000 years, based on ice volume changes around the world.

According to Professor Kurt Lambeck from ANU, sea levels were oscillating by no more than 20 centimetres over several millennia, ABC News reported.

"In the last 6,000 years before the modern onset of sea level rise, the sea level has been quite stable," he said.

"We see no evidence for oscillations in sea level greater than say plus or minus 25 or 30 centimetres, on timescales of 100 years or longer - there's just no evidence for that," said Lambeck.

However, he said there has been a rapid upward trend accompanying global industrialisation.

"For the last 150 years we've been seeing this increase, this rising sea level, at a rate of a few millimetres per year and in our older records we do not see similar behaviour," he said.

Lambeck said comparing the historical data with recent data from tidal gauges shows an increasing rate of sea level rise in recent times.

"What we see in the tide gauges we don't see in the past record, so there's something going on today that wasn't going on before. I think that is clearly the impact of rising temperatures," said Lambeck.

He said increasing temperatures have been documented to have clear effects on sea levels.