Subsidence more than doubles sea-level rise today along densely populated coasts

Oelsmann, Julius, Nicholls, Robert J., Lincke, Daniel, Marcos, Marta, Shirzaei, Manoochehr, Sánchez, Laura, Ohenhen, Leonard, Dettmering, Denise, Hinkel, Jochen, Horton, Benjamin P. and Seitz, Florian (2026) Subsidence more than doubles sea-level rise today along densely populated coasts. Nature Communications. ISSN 2041-1723 (In Press)

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Abstract

Despite its strong influence on relative sea-level (RSL) rise, there is still low confidence in estimates of vertical land motion (VLM) and its contribution to RSL change. To address this problem, we synergize diverse VLM data, which now cover almost 65% of the coastal population, and are key to resolve small scale subsidence, including East, South, and Southeast Asian cities and populated deltaic regions, largely not covered by earlier geodetic measurements. We find that the average modern (1995-2020) global RSL rise experienced by coastal populations (6 mm/year) is about twice as large as the climate-driven absolute sea-level rise. This reflects a strong tendency for higher rates of subsidence in densely populated areas, with 71% of the global coastal population living in subsiding regions. Paired with community efforts to extend consistent observations, these data are essential to ensure reliable estimates of present and future RSL rise to support risk and adaptation assessment.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Data Availability: The global VLM reconstruction from Oelsmann et al., 2024 [OE24] is available at https://zenodo.org/records/8308347. GNSS VLM data [Blewitt et al., 2018] are available at https://geodesy.unr.edu/velocities/midas.IGS14.txt. InSAR VLM estimates for Europe can be downloaded from the EGMS data explorer https://egms.land.copernicus.eu/. InSAR VLM data for the US [8] is provided for different regions: The Pacific coast (available through the Virginia Tech Data Repository at https://doi.org/10.7294/17711000), the Atlantic coast (https://doi.org/10.7294/19350959) and the Gulf coast (https://doi.org/10.7294/22731326). The InSAR city subsidence data from Shirzaei et al., 2024 is available at: https://data.lib.vt.edu/articles/dataset/InSAR-Based_Coastal_Land_Subsidence/25864435/1. Delta InSAR data from Nienhuis et al., 2017 is available at https://osf.io/m83z4/files/osfstorage. The delta-subsidence data from Ohenhen et al., 2026 is available at Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15015923). Subsidence data for Chinese cities [Ao et al., 2024] can be obtained from https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl4366#supplementary-materials. The GIA estimates contained in the VLM data are available at https://vesl.jpl.nasa.gov/solid-earth/gia/. The ASLC data were obtained from https://data.marine.copernicus.eu/product/SEALEVEL_GLO_PHY_L4_MY_008_047/description. The information of the coastal segments of the DIVA model (location, population, length) and the VLM estimates of NI21b can be obtained from the source files provided at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-00993-z#Sec16. Figures are made with data from Natural Earth (free vector and raster map data @ naturalearthdata.com). The delta subsidence and the total global estimates of this study is available at (zenodo-link) (currently available from this temporary repository:) https://tulane.box.com/s/m12eo06roaojub48rh1bpitxt8hqntb2 Code Availability: The code used to process data and generate all figures is available at zenodo (doi link will be uploaded with final editorial checks) linked to the following GitHub repository (link will be included)
Faculty \ School:	University of East Anglia Research Groups/Centres > Theme - ClimateUEA
UEA Research Groups:	University of East Anglia Schools > Faculty of Science > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Collaborative Centre for Sustainable Use of the Seas
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	20 May 2026 16:07
Last Modified:	20 May 2026 16:07
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/103118
DOI:	issn:2041-1723

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