How much higher will it be? 6 inches? 2 feet?
How much higher will it be? 6 inches? 2 feet?
If I'm reading the paper correctly, the authors don't argue that sea levels will rise more than previously predicted. Rather, they argue that the classical technique for estimating impact by using elevation (SRTM) is overestimating elevation and therefore underestimating the impact of rising sea levels. The authors claim that their technique (CoastalDEM) also underestimates the impact of rising sea levels, but reduces the systemic bias present in previous estimates.
This seems like a significant limitation, especially when a lot of the affected area consists of river deltas (eg, most of Bangladesh, the Mekong delta in Vietnam). One would expect that a rise in sea level in a delta would lead to increased silt deposition on the newly-submerged parts of the delta, reducing the impact compared to a naive calculation, perhaps quite significantly.
But what the paper is claiming, is that accepted methods of determining elevation are positively biased (estimates of land mass being higher than this new paper says):
"CoastalDEM reduces linear vertical bias from 4.71 m to less than 0.06 m."