High winter sea levels in Venice are linked to warmer sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic Ocean, and cooling in that ocean over coming decades should therefore temporarily compensate for the city’s sea level rise
Environment
6 December 2022
St Mark’s Square in Venice, Italy, regularly gets flooded as the city sinks and water levels rise Mirco Toniolo Errebi/Shutterstock
The sea level in Venice may level off by about 2035, giving the city a brief respite from constantly rising water. It turns out that changes in the surface temperature of the Atlantic Ocean are linked to how high the water gets in Venice, and as the North Atlantic enters a cooler phase, it should slow the rise of water in the Mediterranean.
A combination of subsidence and sea level rise has left Venice …
