Climate change: Dams played key role in limiting sea level rise
The construction of large-scale dams has played a surprising role in limiting rising seas, say scientists.
Over the past century, melting glaciers and the thermal expansion of sea water have driven up ocean levels.
But this new study finds that dams almost stalled the rising seas in the 1970s because of the amount of water they prevented from entering the oceans.
Without them, the annual rate of rise would have been around 12% higher.
Measuring how much the seas have risen over the past 100 years or so is a difficult task for scientists.
Researchers found that there was a gap between how much water they knew had gone into the oceans compared to how much those oceans had actually risen by over the past century.
In this new work, the authors revisited information about sources and measurements to come up with a new, more accurate estimation.
As well as the melting of glaciers and the thermal expansion of the seas from heat energy entering the waters, the researchers found that water storage facilities such as dams and reservoirs had made a significant impact on sea levels throughout the period.
There are around 58,000 large dams in the world right now with many of them constructed over the past 60 years.
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