Observed and projected change in sea level 1970–2008, relative to the sea level in 1990

The solid lines are based on observations smoothed to remove the effects of interannual variability (light lines connect data points). Data in most recent years are obtained via satellite based sensors. The envelope of IPCC (2001) projections is shown for comparison; this includes the broken lines as individual projections and the shading as the uncertainty around the projections.