Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Various pundits and scientists keep talking about a threatened acceleration in the sea level rise. Here’s the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report:
Anthropogenic forcing is also expected to produce an accelerating rate of sea level rise (Woodworth et al., 2004).
The usual font of misinformation says:
Church and White (2006) report an acceleration of SLR since 1870. This is a revision since 2001, when the TAR stated that measurements have detected no significant acceleration in the recent rate of sea level rise.
Over at the inversely named “SkepticalScience” blog, which is inadequately skeptical, we find:
The blue line in the graph below clearly shows sea level as rising, while the upward curve suggests sea level is rising faster as time goes on. The upward curve agrees with global temperature trends and with the accelerating melting of ice in Greenland and other places.
The Guardian gets in their licks:
Sea levels are already on the rise as a result of increasing temperatures, because the oceans expand as they warm up, but until now scientists have had a poor understanding of how quickly ice sheets such as those in Greenland and Antarctica will begin to disappear.
Meanwhile, back in the world of reality we have the latest satellite data up to September of 2010:
Figure 1. Satellite-measured sea level rise. Errors shown are 95% confidence intervals. Data Source.
The smaller trend of the recent half of the record is statistically different from the larger trend of the first half. Will this reduction continue into the future? Who knows? I’m just talking about the past, and pointing out that we sure haven’t seen any sign of the threatened acceleration in the satellite record. Quite the opposite, in fact.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled warnings of global inundation from accelerating sea level rise …
w.
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When the sea level has already risen 400 feet since the end of the last ice age, the last ‘few millimeters’ is nothing but measurement error. Afterall, how do we know that 10,000 years ago the sea level didn’t really rise 410 feet? Or 390 feet? or +-20 feet of the Al Gore movie?
Engineering calls this measurement error.
When the “data” reality doesn’t meet up with the doom-saying science predictions, just change the dates, and or adjust the predictions — Junk science has a simple beauty all it’s own … LOL.
BTW, not criticizing the author, just what is going on.
The gentle rising curve in the chart immediately suggests to me a segment of a sine wave plot just beginning to nose over toward its peak, with a period of perhaps 120 -150 years.
As always our data history duration is so short we won’t be able to confirm that for a life time or two.
Larry
I don’t think the average person knows what the technical definition of acceleration means. The term seems to mean, in common vernacular, simply an increase in the thing being observed.
The Australian government have warned local councils to get ready for much faster ocean rising in the future.
They have provided maps of threatened towns, villages and cities.
That puts many property owners in great difficulty as there are no buyers for property said to be threatened by rising sea levels.
Many people will have lost all their assets and be destitute if this nonesence is allowed to continue.
The only way out would be for someone harmed by this nonsense to take it to court.
It would need ample funds to pursue unless a class action could be started.
It would also require an able barrister who can understand some simple science.
Plus a judge who is experienced in examining evidence and is not afraid of kicking up a bit of a rumpus..
Absolutely spot on Willis. It is clear from the satellite measurements (when viewed upside down) that sea levels are in decline. I wish my share portfolio graph showed such a lack of acceleration. I would be rich!!! Must be a slow news day at WUWT to publish this analysis. Sea levels are headed in one direction: UP.
MJK
But it’s all about the tipping points, runaway positive feedbacks, paradigm shifts, and the last straw that breaks the camel’s back. When the atmosphere reaches any one of those points, then all hell will break loose.
/sarcasm
Has someone noticed that the moon is orbiting the Earth faster? Sea levels do have an accelerating rise twice every day 😉
3 cm every 10 years. OMG, we are doomed! How can we possibly adapt to these extreme changes?
I don’t think I will be able to sleep tonight knowing that the sea level will be 8 microns closer to drowning me in my sleep.
Hi Willis, thanks for continuing to point out the continuing nonsense about sea acceleration of sea level increase.
Before putting too much faith in the TOPEX/Poseidon figures, you may want to look at how the are calculated (adjusted?): see http://www.mdpi.org/sensors/papers/s6030131.pdf
It would be useful to have a formal reconciliation of the TOPEX/Posiedon numbers and the numerous conclusions in the literature of 1.5-1.9 mm per year (e.g., Wunch 2007, Leuliette 2009).
This interview is a MUST READ in any discussion on sea level rise. Dr Mörner discusses trends in the 20th century (1.1 mm/yr), Pacific Islands such as Tuvalu, and below I have excerpted his discussion of satellite data ‘corrections’.
Interview: Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner
Claim That Sea Level Is Rising Is a Total Fraud
Tide gauging is very complicated, because it gives different answers for wherever you are in the world. But we have to rely on geology when we interpret it. So, for example, those people in the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], choose Hong Kong, which has six tide gauges, and they choose the record of one, which gives 2.3 mm per year rise of sea level. Every geologist knows that that is a subsiding area. It’s the compaction of sediment; it is the only record which you shouldn’t use.
Now, back to satellite altimetry, which shows the water, not just the coasts, but in the whole of the ocean. And you measure it by satellite. From 1992 to 2002, [the graph of the sea level] was a straight line, variability along a straight line, but absolutely no trend whatsoever
Then, in 2003, the same data set, which in their [IPCC’s] publications, in their website, was a straight line—suddenly it changed, and showed a very strong line of uplift, 2.3 mm per year, the same as from the tide gauge.
It was the original one which they had suddenly twisted up, because they entered a “correction factor,” which they took from the [Hong Kong] tide gauge.
It looks like it is measured from the satellite, but you don’t say what really happened. And they answered, that we had to do it, because otherwise we would not have gotten any trend!
http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/NilsAxelMornerinterview.pdf
Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner is the head of the Paleogeophysics and
Geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden.
He is past president (1999-2003) of the INQUA Commission
on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, and
leader of the Maldives Sea Level Project. Dr. Mörner has
been studying the sea level and its effects on coastal areas for
some 35 years. He was interviewed by Gregory Murphy on
June 6 for EIR. [June 22, 2007]
Looks like another travesty, ain’t that so Kevin?
My favorite ocean twins are these ones:
http://blog.sme.sk/blog/560/252537/sealevel.jpg
what’s more funny, that this article is missing the slower sea level rise before 1992, or that some readers won’t even accept the article because they refuse to accept sea level satellite data.
Sorry for the typos in the earlier post.
See Wunsch (2007) at – http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/papersonline/Wunschetal_jclimate_2007_published.pdf . Dr. Wunsch will never agree to be called a “skeptic” (and despite teaching at MIT I doubt he’s a Republican) but this paper is the souce of the quote “It remains
possible that the database is insufficient to compute mean sea level trends with the accuracy necessary to discuss the impact of global warming—as disappointing
as this conclusion may be”.
See Leuliette (2009) abstract at http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2008GL036010.shtml
See also Wöppelmann (2009) – http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL038720.shtml
A few years ago, the U of Colo Jason/Topex chart was showing an overall 3.2 mm/yr rise, now it’s down to 3.1, and unless things pick up shortly, they may have to drop it to 3.0 mm/yr.
Also, the Jason 3 satellite is under construction by Thales Alenia, and will be launched in 2013. A subsequent satellite, Jason CS, is on the drawing board for 2017.
I guess people might want to check the SkepticalScience article that the article quotes but does not link to:
How much is sea level rising?
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?p=3&t=104&&a=68
You can possibly see the effects of the 1998 El nino and 2008 La Nina in the data, looks like these satellites are measuring something real.
I think the acceleration comes in an earlier period. It seems to coincide with the change over from gauges to satellite, something that worries me about this particular observation.
I’m not sure why anybody would expect acceleration in SLR over the satellite period. The global temp data isn’t showing an acceleration over the second half of the satellite period.
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/icrutem3_hadsst2_0-360E_-90-90N_n_su_1992:2010a.png
Neither is ocean heat content
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/inodc_heat700_0-360E_-90-90N_n_1992:2010a.png
Willis’s conclusion for this period sounds like it should also be the expectation of the climate scientists.
Willis are you assigning then IPCC acceleration to the wrong part of the record?
Jerejeva et al., 2008 show that 20th century sea level rise alternated between roughly 30-yr periods of ~3 mm/yr rises punctuated by roughly 30-yr hiatus periods…
Jerejeva, 20th Century Sea Level
The Jerejeva reconstruction goes back to 1700. The CU satellite data tie right into the Jerejeva reconstruction with a small static shift…
Jerejeva and CU Sea Level
The warm up from the Little Ice Age began in the 1600’s… Less than 100 years before sea level started its current rise (sea level has actually been rising since the Holocene transgression – But that’s a different story). CO2 started rising in about 1850.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc might be a logical fallacy… But… If the warming started before sea level started to rise… And both of those started before the CO2 started rising… It’s not very likely that CO2 caused the warming and the sea level rise.
David L @ur momisugly 4:05 am —
I don’t think the average person knows what the technical definition of acceleration means. The term seems to mean, in common vernacular, simply an increase in the thing being observed.
mjk @ur momisugly 4:17 am
I wish my share portfolio graph showed such a lack of acceleration. … Sea levels are headed in one direction: UP.
A very prescient comment there, David L. Who would have thought someone would have proved your point quite so succinctly and quite so quickly?
Willis, the Universty of Colorado graph you show does not look as flat as the Universitry of Colorado graph shown on the ENSO section of WUWT. Maybe my eyes are off , but if not WUWT?
I’m not a statistician, but surely the best tool for detecting time-trend anomalies is a statistical process control (SPC) chart? Or doesn’t it work on top of underlying trends?
I’m more worried about post glacial sea level rises stopping as that would be an indication that we are headed for the next glacial period. A whole lot more folk are going to die if it gets colder rather than warmer. I’m still wondering where all these sea levels are rising, I’ve visited quite a few seaside places here in the UK and the sea is still were I found it many, many years ago as a child. Maybe urbinisation and industrialisation of coastal areas has something to do with the land moving under our feet? Or maybe we only measure sea levels where we worry about them? It will be interesting to see what data our satellites come up with over the next few decades (once we are sure they are accurate enough).
mjk says:
January 8, 2011 at 4:17 am
You might want to look up the term “acceleration”. Of course sea level has been rising, just as it has since the end of the last ice age, but that isn’t the point. On a graph, an acceleration would appear as a parabola, arcing upwards. But, if you put a straight edge on that line you will see just the opposite. Oops.
AusieDan says:
January 8, 2011 at 4:06 am
The Australian government have warned local councils to get ready for much faster ocean rising in the future.
They have provided maps of threatened towns, villages and cities.
That puts many property owners in great difficulty as there are no buyers for property said to be threatened by rising sea levels.
##############################
Chance for somebody with money to pick the property up cheap and hold it until the truth is out. A greenie would never do that, would they?
My question is how, where and when do they measure the sea level.
The above graph as a range of +- 20mm I would have thought that the surfaces of the oceans are constantly changing.
Am I missing something?
Good find Willis.
A polynomial fits the data better than a linear trend. A polynomial extension of the data only gives modest rise in sea level by 2100.
I downloaded the Aviso sea level data (which is a little more up to date, includes the Envisat satellite and includes all the adjustments that should be done like seasonality as well) in addition to the University of Colorado.
http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/en/news/ocean-indicators/mean-sea-level/products-images/index.html
Aviso as well is not a linear trend.
http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/6379/sealevel2010.png
Extending out both to 2100, we see only 6 inches of sea level rise in Aviso by 2080 after which it peaks (and the University of Colorado data shows a peak occuring a little too soon so perhaps Aviso is better).
http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/4504/sealevel.png