The rate of global sea level rise has increased by 50 per cent in a little over two decades, a study from Australian and international researchers has found.

The study, published by Nature Climate Change, used refined satellite estimates to show global sea level rise has increased from 2.2 millimetres each year in 1993, to 3.3 millimetres each year in 2014.

It was launched in an effort to understand why an accelerated rate of sea-level rise, between 1993 and 2014, had not been accurately represented in data from altimeters [satellite instruments used to measure height or altitude], despite accelerating contributions from ice sheets.

According to researchers from Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, CSIRO Australia and the Universities of NSW, Tasmania and Arizona, the dramatic increase is thought to be mostly related to the melting of the Greenland ice sheet.