Since 1993, satellites have been measuring the height of the ocean surface to millimeter precision, tracking one of the clearest fingerprints of a warming planet: global sea level rise.

This animation shows the linear trend in sea level from satellite altimetry (1993-2025), in mm/year. Land is shown in flat gray, sea level anomaly only exists over the ocean. As before, the bulging and sinking is a visual amplification of the color, not a physical deformation, sea level doesn't literally bulge outward like this.

The pattern is far from uniform. While the global average sits around 3-4 mm/year, some regions, especially the western Pacific, are rising two to three times faster, driven by ocean dynamics and heat redistribution, not just total volume added. A few pockets show little change or even a slight decline over the same 33 years. Global averages hide this kind of regional inequality, and for coastal communities, the regional number is the one that actually matters.

Data: Copernicus Marine Service (CMEMS), satellite altimetry, DUACS vDT2024