The Sea-Level Lie: Exposed

Written by Dr. Matthew Wielicki on May 6, 2025. Posted in Current News

For years, climate narratives have relentlessly painted a dire picture: the ice caps are melting, oceans are rising, and humanity is teetering on the edge of catastrophic flooding.

You’ve heard it repeatedly from politicians, activists, and media outlets eager to dramatize each incremental rise in global temperatures as an unprecedented disaster. But what if the fundamental assumptions driving these alarming predictions were deeply flawed?

Over the last year, I’ve exposed a pattern of contradictions between what we’re told about sea-level rise and what the data actually show… contradictions that now culminate in a far deeper crisis of scientific understanding. In fact, it’s this body of work that has led coastal policymakers, those tasked with real-world decisions about infrastructure, zoning, and emergency response, to reach out to me privately to understand what is really happening. They’re rightly skeptical when headlines scream about surging seas, yet local tide gauges tell a much different story.

Take, for example, my piece where I dismantled absurd claims, like those made in the New York Post, suggesting that New York City sea levels might surge 13 inches by the 2030s.

Those projections were based on implausible worst-case scenarios and ignored critical facts: much, if not most, of New York’s relative sea-level rise is due to land subsidence.

In fact, current sea levels measured at the Battery tide gauge in New York are roughly equivalent to levels first observed in the early 1940s, meaning nearly a century of ‘catastrophic’ sea-level rise has simply brought us back to where we already were.

In another article, I examined the Holocene Thermal Maximum, a period when Greenland was 4–8.5°C warmer than today. Astonishingly, despite this warmth, global sea levels were lower than today. How is this possible if the models that predict catastrophic sea-level rise are correct? If Greenland’s ice sheet survived such warming without deluging the coasts, how do we reconcile this with claims that current modest warming will do so?

Then there’s “Adjusting Reality“, where I explored the peculiar pattern in satellite sea-level measurements: each time a new satellite is launched, the sea-level trend is adjusted upward. Not downward. Never flat. Always up. A skeptic might wonder whether these “corrections” reflect science… or storytelling.

In “How a Simple Math Error Derailed Doomsday Sea-Level Forecasts“, I discussed recent research showing that foundational equations used in ice-flow models might be significantly flawed. A mischaracterization of how temperate glacier ice flows could mean that projections of future sea-level rise have been overstated. When plugged into the same models the IPCC uses, the corrected equations yield far less ominous results.

And finally, a piece that presented satellite evidence that many coastlines around the world are actually growing. Yes, growing. Despite rising seas, land accretion, driven by natural processes like sediment deposition, is outpacing erosion in many regions.

Now, three recent papers may deliver the most decisive blow yet to the climate establishment’s sea-level narrative.

First, a 2024 paper in Science China Earth Sciences highlighted in SciTechDaily reports that for the first time in decades, the Antarctic Ice Sheet experienced a net mass gain. This growth occurred between 2021 and 2022 and was driven primarily by unusually high snowfall over East Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula. According to GRACE and GRACE-FO satellite data, the mass gain was large enough to offset losses in West Antarctica. This unexpected rebound underscores the role of short-term precipitation anomalies in modulating ice sheet mass and calls into question long-held assumptions that Antarctica is in a state of uniform and irreversible decline.

Second, a study in Earth and Space Science Open Archive, still undergoing peer review, explores the fundamental assumptions baked into ice-sheet models used to project future sea-level rise. It suggests that current modeling approaches fail to capture key processes and feedbacks, meaning the scientific community may be grossly over- or underestimating the true behavior of ice sheets under warming scenarios.

Third, a 2025 study in PLOS ONE titled “Segmented linear integral correlation Kernel ensemble reconstruction” introduces a novel method for reconstructing past climate from proxy data. It reinforces just how much uncertainty remains in our temperature history, undermining claims that current warmth or sea-level rise is historically unprecedented.

Each of these findings adds to a growing list of contradictions.

So let’s pause and ask: If Greenland was warmer with lower sea levels, if Antarctica is gaining mass overall, and if our models rely on flawed assumptions, what exactly is driving current sea-level rise?

The IPCC asserts with high confidence that sea levels will continue to rise primarily due to melting glaciers and ice sheets. But if the biggest ice sheets aren’t losing mass, and some are gaining, how do we square that with their certainty?

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