Over the past 10 years at least, sea levels have been rising relatively steadily. This is mostly due to melting glaciers and ice sheets, and is a natural — if detrimental — consequence of global warming. The rate of ocean level rise has been a little over 3 millimeters per year (about 1/8th of an inch per year)… until last year. The rate of increase suddenly reversed itself in 2010, and the sea levels actually dropped a bit, by about 6 mm. What happened?

La Niña happened. Equatorial ocean temperatures fluctuate on a cycle; when they are warmer it’s called an El Niño, and when they’re cooler it’s La Niña. As you might expect, this affects how water evaporates off the ocean surface, and therefore rainfall across the world as well. Right now we’re in a La Niña, characterized by drought conditions in the southern US (like in Texas), and heavier than usual rainfall in Australia, northern South America, and other locations:

That map is from the NASA/German Aerospace Center’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites, which map where water is on the Earth and how ...