Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Much has been made in AGW circles of the sea level forecast of Vermeer and Rahmstorf, in “Global sea level linked to global temperature” (V&R2009). Their estimate of forecast sea level rise was much larger than that of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (FAR). Their results have been hyped at places like RealClimate as being much more realistic than the IPCC estimates.
So I figured I’d see how Vermeer and Rahmstorf are faring to date. Their results for each of the IPCC “scenarios” are archived here, and the first thirty years of their estimates are presented along with nearly twenty years of actual observations in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Satellite-based sea level observations (blue line), along with the V&R2009 sea level estimates corresponding to the various IPCC future scenarios. Sea level observations from the University of Colorado. PHOTO SOURCE
So … how are the V&R2009 predictions holding up?
Well, … or to be accurate, not well. As you can see, the observations showed an actual sea level rise that is below the lowest of the V&R2009 estimates from the lowest of the IPCC scenarios.
At present, assuming that the distance between their “best” estimate and their “lower” estimate is two standard deviations, the data is now more than four standard deviations below the “best” V&R2009 estimate.
So in answer to how their forecasts are faring, the answer is … very poorly. Abysmally, in fact. Actual observations are lower by four standard deviations than the V&R2000 “best” estimate, and are two standard deviations lower than their “lower” estimate.
w.
Technote 1 – The Colorado folks have recently included a 0.3mm/year increase in sea levels in their results. They say (possibly correctly) that this is necessary to adjust for the sinking of the ocean floor with the increasing weight of sea water from the melting at the end of the last ice age. However, since neither the IPCC nor the V&R2009 figures include that adjustment, I have not included it in this analysis so that we can compare apples to apples.
Technote 2 – I have aligned the Colorado observational results so that their trend line is zero in 1990, in order that they can be compared directly with the V&R2009 results, which have 1990=0 as their starting point. This also aligns the starting observations with the V&R2009 “best” estimate.
Technote 3 – some folks felt that my last post, “Yes, Virginia, there is an FOIA” was short on science content and long on passion … hey, what can I say, I’m a passionate guy. I trust this post will redress the balance in their estimation.
[UPDATE] Steven Mosher has graciously pointed me to a stunning disassembly of V&R2009, at the blog Climate Sanity. Makes my effort above look simplistic by comparison. He shows, among other things, that the V&R formula for sea level leads to ridiculous results when it is fed with actual data rather than IPCC scenarios … quite lethal to their claims. Well done, that man. – w.
Myth busted!
So, by the metric of “will the multi-year trend be upwards” they did pretty well I’d say. 🙂
Hide the decline! RED ALERT! Hide the decline!!!
Willis, there’s a modicum of difference between passion and the ad hominem stinkpot from the other guys.
Actually, it’s worse that we thought! Ice is going to melt even faster and increase the rate of sea level rise beyond V&R http://beta.news.yahoo.com/warming-ocean-could-melt-ice-faster-thought-175316541.html
The easy ice has already been melted.
Repeat after me.
The easy ice has already been melted.
I need a T-shirt!
@fredb
Yes, what a silly comment. It’s been upwards since the last ice age. And, we’re supposed to be alarmed that it continues to do what it’s done for thousands of years?
Oh my goodness! What have you done??? The line you show as blue should have been mustard yellow, and above the tangled spaghetti mess………
Be afraid, be very afraid… “In addition, Yin explained, if floating ice along the coastal areas melts it will allow the flow of glaciers to accelerate, bringing more ice into the seas.”
And more ice in the sea is supposed to warm it perhaps… LOL
—-
.Warming ocean could melt ice faster than thought
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID – AP Science Writer | AP – 2 hrs 24 mins ago
….tweet3EmailPrint……WASHINGTON (AP) — Warming air from climate change isn’t the only thing that will speed ice melting near the poles — so will the warming water beneath the ice, a new study points out.
Increased melting of ice in Greenland and parts of Antarctica has been reported as a consequence of global warming, potentially raising sea levels. But little attention has been paid to the impact of warmer water beneath the ice.
Now, Jianjun Yin of the University of Arizona and colleagues report the warming water could mean polar ice melting faster than had been expected. Their report was published Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience.
While melting floating ice won’t raise sea level, ice flowing into the sea from glaciers often reaches the bottom, and grounded ice melted by warm water around it can produce added water to the sea.
“Ocean warming is very important compared to atmospheric warming because water has a much larger heat capacity than air,” Yin explained. “If you put an ice cube in a warm room, it will melt in several hours. But if you put an ice cube in a cup of warm water, it will disappear in just minutes.”
In addition, Yin explained, if floating ice along the coastal areas melts it will allow the flow of glaciers to accelerate, bringing more ice into the seas.
“This mean that both Greenland and Antarctica are probably going to melt faster than the scientific community previously thought,” co-author Jonathan T. Overpeck said in a statement.
Overpeck, co-director of the University of Arizona’s Institute of the Environment, said: “This paper adds to the evidence that we could have sea level rise by the end of this century of around 1 meter and a good deal more in succeeding centuries.”
The subsurface ocean along the Greenland coast could warm as much as 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 Celsius) by 2100, the researchers reported. The warming along the coast of Antarctica would be somewhat less, they calculated, at 0.9 degree F (0.5 C).
…
WE – re: Technote 3, perhaps they’re worried that you are changing sides! 8- (
Now you only have to stop the German Government from hijacking the alarmist point of view stating sea level rise is the biggest threat we have to cope with, bigger than Iran, afghanistan or any other war.
Under German leadership the Green Agenda continues.
http://notrickszone.com/2011/07/03/kooky-german-government-views-sea-level-rise-as-more-dangerous-than-terrorism-extremism-iran-afghanistan/
Hmm, Vermeer says in http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/04/science-story-the-making-of-a-sea-level-study/
So, is this like a stock market “solution” that does great with a hindcast and poorly with a forecast? Perhaps. Vermeer does reference fitting an elephant which notes “I (Freeman Dyson) remember my friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, with four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk.”
Colorado’s new 0.3mm/year increase in sea levels makes me suspicious in their sea level measurements. They’re adding a new parameter without a compelling physical story. One thing I like about the Klotzbach/Gray seasonal hurricane forecasts is that they’re always trying to fewer things to include in their forecasts.
Willis, are the observations based on Envisat?
I don’t think Envisat is measuring sea level as much as it’s measuring gravity. According to Envisat, water is piling up exactly where GOCE says it should. 😉
In their 2008 report, they say they adjusted Envisat in the beginning to match Jason. Jason was going up, Envisat was going down. So they adjusted Envisat to go up.
Then tweeked it again in 2008, and it started going down again……….
“The Colorado folks have recently included a 0.3mm/year increase in sea levels in their results.”
Here’s what that does:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/visualizing-the-totally-bogus-gia/
And another great graph:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/07/03/hansen-vs-the-earth/
Seriously, who keeps voting these posts down? It’s simple, unequivocal evidence that the sea level models are wrong.
So having walked across the room and picked it up and brought it back you found it rather FAR fetched so to speak. Oh, I sea.
WRT Technote 1 above
“The Colorado folks have recently included a 0.3mm/year increase in sea levels in their results. They say (possibly correctly) that this is necessary to adjust for the sinking of the ocean floor with the increasing weight of sea water…”
If the Ocean floor were sinking due to the increased mass of the ocean, wouldn’t the pressure cause a lifting of the unencumbered landmasses as a type of pressure offset mechanism?
Looks like the models all assume exponential increases. If the models are wrong, that will be obvious soon, if not already (meaning with this post). The hope is to keep the hype going long enough to secure the government control the greens want.
We already know that socialist economies fail eventually. That is because people teach important lessons to their children and share information with each other. As long as we teach our kids important lessons, like the basics of right and wrong, and we can communicate with each other in fora like this, we should be fine.
Oops, maybe we have a little problem there. US Dept. of Education, indoctrination of our kids at the expense of teaching. Cybersecurity, eventual replacement of internet with powerline broadband they control, probably like China. Hate speech as a way to selectively harass and prosecute people for sharing their beliefs. UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, taking authority over our kids away from parents.
The list in fact goes on and on. Freedom will be gone unless more than just the people here start to understand the real scope of the threat and resist. There is just a little more at stake than scientific integrity. However, we do have to start with that to undermine their foundation.
Nature (as in the “mother” not the science journal) loves to falsify CO2 Climate Doomsday Rapture Prognosticators. It seems to be a joyous pastime of hers (no entity intended nor implied; mother nature is just a figure of speech).
Clearly you’re not looking at the right sources! Here’s the data from NOAA daily measurements for Neah Bay, Washington State.
Here is what IPCC 2007 says about one aspect of sea level estimates.
8.3.2.2 Simulation of Circulation Features Important for Climate Response
The MOC (meridional overturning circulation) is an important component of present-day climate and many models indicate that it will change in the future (Chapter 10). Unfortunately, many aspects of this circulation are not well observed.
It is likely that the relatively poor Southern Ocean simulation will influence the transient climate response to increasing greenhouse gases by affecting the oceanic heat uptake. When forced by increases in radiative forcing, models with too little Southern Ocean mixing will probably underestimate the ocean heat uptake; models with too much mixing will likely exaggerate it. These errors in oceanic heat uptake will also have a large impact on the reliability of the sea level rise projections.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch8s8-3-2-2.html
Here’s a copy of my note the the University of Colorado staff on their unfortunate conversion from “level” to “volume”:
The simple, unvarnished fact is that your published chart is entitled “Global Mean Sea Level”. It is not entitled “Global Mean Sea Volume”. With all the media hysteria associated the practical effects of rising sea levels (which rise has been grossly exaggerated in the news), how could you not have anticipated an uproar when you revised one of the few sources showing just what that rate of rise actually is in a way that increases the rate beyond that actually measured?
Sea volume and sea level are not one in the same and I think it disingenuous of you to pretend to think otherwise. I’ve referred to your site for years as the one place I felt ACTUAL SEA LEVELS were being reliably reported with no “agenda” fouling the data presentation. I can no longer do that now that one must read the fine print to discover that “level” is no longer actually “level”.
So, essentially, when the ocean floor sinks the sea rises even more. I can really visualize it: Mann and his schtick rising to even greater heights by the second in a pool of quicksand.
@ur momisugly John F Hultquist, If all the easy ice has already been melted, why is the angle of decline/melt still the same? http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
I don’t care about sea level rise or fall. On this 4th of July weekend I care about strawberry pie. 🙂
http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j155/43gm94l/Misc/strawberrypie.jpg