California’s Sea Level Projections May Be Way Off—Thanks to Sinking Land

Rising and sinking land across the state of California could affect sea levels in the state in the coming decades, according to an analysis by researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The researchers studied satellite radar data to capture the vertical movement of land across more than one thousand miles (1,610 kilometers) of California coast. Comparing that data with historical observations of the same locations, the team found that land was subsiding and rising at levels much higher than regional estimates. The team’s research—published last month in Science Advances—reveals the amount of surface motion on the ground using data from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1 satellites and ground-based receiving stations that are part of the Global Navigation Satellite System. The data was collected between 2015 and 2023 and shows how different areas across the state are rising and sinking. In the image below, areas in blue are subsiding, while areas in red are rising (the dark ... Read full article.