Taking a Measure of Sea Level Rise: Land Motion

Earth’s surface may seem motionless most of the time, but an array of measurements show that natural and human-caused processes cause coastal land to rise and fall.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using data from Blackwell, Em, et al. (2020), topographic data from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), and GNNS data from SONEL and NASA/JPL/Caltech. Photos courtesy of the Onsala Space Observatory and NOAA under a Creative Commons license. Story by Adam Voiland, with input from Manoochehr Shirzaei (Virginia Tech), William Hammond (University of Nevada, Reno), Ben Hamlington (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), and Em Blackwell (Arizona State University).

Published November 5, 2020
Data acquired 2007 - 2018

Sources:

ALOS

In situ Measurement

Map

Photograph

Sentinel-1A

Sentinel-1B

Collection:

Sea Level Rise