Sea level rises in Dublin Bay are double global average

SEA level rises in Dublin Bay appear to be double the global average, new research has found.

The study notes that Dublin has invested in coastal flood protection but warned that sea levels could rise by 60 centimetres by the year 2100.

Dublin’s rising sea level is in line with other similar bays in Brest, France, and Newlyn, Cornwall, England.

The study examined sea level trends over eight decades and confirmed elevated rates in recent years – with major fluctuations in some decades.

Researchers at the Hamilton Institute and ICARUS Climate Research Centre at Maynooth University found that the Dublin sea level rose by an estimated 1.1mm per year between 1953 and 2016.

However, this has escalated to a major extent in recent years and the research identified a rate of 7mm per year between 1997 and 2016.

The study said that low sea rates in previous decades are ‘in stark contrast’

to figures reported in the recently published climate change action plan for 2019-2024 by Dublin City Council, which reports a sea level rise (SLR) of 6 to 7mm between the years 2000 and 2016.

‘This rate is approximately double that of the global mean sea level rise and is particularly surprising given that the earlier rates of rise in Dublin were much lower than the global mean sea level rise over similar periods,’ the study notes.

The researchers at Maynooth, in collaboration with University College Cork and DCU, are continuing to examine the reasons behind the sea rise. They compared sea level records for Dublin Port, gauges at Arklow and Howth Harbour, and sea level rates in Cornwall and Brest.

They note that both Belfast and Malin Head, being in the north of the country, are in regions of seabed uplift after being pressed down by glaciers during the last ice age. However, Dublin is in a region of neutral glacial uplift, so these long-term effects of post-glacial land motion should be negligible, ‘and hence greater

consistency of the local sea level rise rates with the global figure is to be expected’, the researchers said.