The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

“NASA is undertaking an “intensive research effort” into the problem of rising seas brought on by global warming, the agency announced Wednesday. And it will include satellite mounted tools so accurate that “if they were mounted on a commercial jetliner, flying at 12,192 metres, they could detect the bump caused by a dime lying flat on the ground,” as agency earth science director Mike Freilich put it Wednesday.

The focus reflects the growing urgency of the topic. Recent scientific reports have documented apparently accelerating ice loss from Greenland, and potential destabilisation of parts of the West Antarctic ice sheet.

The agency says that we’ve seen 7.6 cm of global sea level increase since the year 1992 — with large regional variation — and a further rise of 91.44 cm has likely been “locked in” by warming that has already occurred. Other scientists have recently suggested that we may be about to unleash considerably more than that.”

To read more about the changing world and what you can do to prepare, visit: www.greatwavesofchange.org