In a new analysis published in Volume 8 Issue 2 of Environmental Science Dr. Nils-Axel Morner suggests global sea levels will rise only about 5 inches by the year 2100.
Axel Morner concludes that Australian government claims of a 1 meter sea level rise by 2100 are greatly exaggerated, finding instead that sea levels are rising around Australia and globally at a rate of only 1.5 mm/year. This would imply a sea level change of only 0.13 meters or 5 inches by 2100. Dr. Morner also finds no evidence of any acceleration in sea level rise around Australia or globally.
Morner’s findings are inline with the longest running sea-level measurements recorded at Amsterdam, in the Netherlands (think of it like the England CET record) beginning in 1700. Since 1850, the rise in Amsterdam has averaged 1.5 mm/year.
Figure and link to full paper follows.
Present-to-future sea level changes: The Australian case (PDF)
Nils-Axel Morner, Albert Parker
Abstract:
We revisit available tide gauge data along the coasts of Australia, and we are able to demonstrate that the rate may vary between 0.1 and 1.5 mm/year, and that there is an absence of acceleration over the last decades. With a database of 16 stations covering only the last 17 years, the National Tidal Centre claims that sea level is rising at a rate of 5.4mm/year.We here analyse partly longer-term records from the same 16 sites as those used by the Australian Baseline Sea Level Monitoring Project (ABSLMP) and partly 70 other sites; i.e. a database of 86 stations covering a much longer time period. This database gives a mean trend in the order of 1.5 mm/year. Therefore, we challenge both the rate of sea level rise presented by the National Tidal Centre in Australia and the general claim of acceleration over the last decades.
Figure 3 : Comparison among different sea level data sets; (1) the Official Australian claim (AFGCC, 2011; ABSLMP, 2011), (2a) the Australian 39 station record, (2b) the Australian 70 station record, (2c) the Australian 86 station record, (3a) the 2059 station PSMSL (2011) average, (3b) the 159 station NOAA (2011) average, (4) the reconstruction of sea level changes by Church and White (2011), and (5) the Topex/Jason satellite altimetry record (CU, 2011). All the data are shifted for a zero MSL in January 1990. The differences are far too large not to include serious errors in some of the records. The official Australian trend (1) lies far above all the other curves, indicating a strong exaggeration. The Australian (2a-c) as well as global (3a-b) curves vary between 0.1 and 1.5 mm/year. The satellite altimetry records (5) include “calibrations” previously questioned (Morner, 2004, 2011c, 2013). The record (4) of Church and White (2011) lies between the satellite altimetry curve (5) and all the graphs representing global (3a-b) and Australian (2a-c) tide gauge records. The acceleration in curve 4 is strongly contradicted by all the other records. The same absence of acceleration is found in many other records (further discussed in the text) indicating that the concept of acceleration ought to be revised.
Conclusions:
In view of the data presented, we believe that we are justified to draw the following conclusions:
(1) The official Australian claim [2,3] of a present sea level rise in the order of 5.4mm/year is significantly exaggerated (Figure 3).
(2) The mean sea level rise from Australian tide gauges as well as global tide gauge networks is to be found within the sector of rates ranging from 0.1 to 1.5 mm/year (yellow wedge in Figure 3).
(3) The claim of a recent acceleration in the rate of sea level rise [2,3,12] cannot be validated by tide gauge records, either in Australia or globally (Figure 3). Rather, it seems strongly contradicted [19,21,24,39-41]
The practical implication of our conclusions is that there, in fact, is no reason either to fear or to prepare for any disastrous sea level flooding in the near future.
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h/t to The Hockey Schtick
Here is a table of sea level measurements from NOAA from around the world, many are negative:
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/MSL_global_trendtable.html
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From the linked site…
“The three scenarios (Modelled – my add) developed by CSIRO for sea level rise between 2030-2100 (relative to 1990) are presented below.”
It’s rubbish if the CSIRO had anything to do with it. Never mind the fact land levels also change and their resolution of a coastline as long as Australia is ridiculous. Added to that the Australasian tectonic plate is subducting under the Pacific plate, its no surprise.
It’s hard these days not to use “highly exaggerated” and “climate science” together in the same sentence…
Frank K. says:
April 26, 2013 at 8:33 am
It’s hard these days not to use “highly exaggerated” and “climate science” together in the same sentence…
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More like “laughably exaggerated”
Why is it that we seem to be constantly fighting those in the employ of the state? The only silver lining to the climate debate is the inevitable creation of more Libertarians.
Ok, I have to be a little careful here. But, what the heck, here goes.
Anyway, I was in the liquor store (formerly, one of my favorite haunts) with my sister. My older sister. She was buying a couple bottles of wine. The cashier pulled out a fold up, cardboard, bottle carrier in which she put the wine bottles. My older sister, in reference to the bottle carrier, said, “Oh, what a cute little thing.” In a stroke of genius, I looked at the cashier and said, “That’s the same thing she says to her husband.” Needless to say, my sister and the cashier…well, I won’t tell you what their reaction was.
For some inexplicable reason this story I subjected you to got me to thinking about sea level rise (perhaps an appropriate description). And I was wondering if the exaggerated claims for the height of the rise has more to do with fantasies of Eco-virility than with the true, mediocre measurement. Perhaps our Eco-warriors are really only looking at five inches. I know that might be crushing to their egos but they need not fear. It could be a “cute” five inches.
“finding instead that sea levels are rising around Australia and globally at a rate of only 1.5 mm/year.”
“The mean sea level rise from Australian tide gauges as well as global tide gauge networks is to be found within the sector of rates ranging from 0.1 to 1.5 mm/year”
“This database gives a mean trend in the order of 1.5 mm/year.”
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uh no…………………..
I am not the only one who is suspicious of ‘Rising sea levels’. Having lived on or near the south coast of Devon in the SW Peninsula of England there appears no noticeable change in levels of high tides in my liftetime — I was a child in the 1930s. High tide levels are very much influenced by strong onshore winds coinciding with Spring tides (when the sun and moon are aligned), so when this happens, that is the recorded measurement. I contacted the Ordnance Survey (who provide the basic information for all UK maps) and they confirmed that they understand there has been a 7 inch rise since 1914 but all map spot heights and contours are calculated from the mean tide level at Newlyn Harbour (West Cornwall) recorded between 1915 and 1921. I have also asked about land levels sinking as the British Isles are apparently sinking towards the South East which is why the Thames Barrier was built downstream from London in 1985 but the Warmists say it was because of Global Warming….of course.
re ” Here is a table of sea level measurements from NOAA from around the world, many are negative:” http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/MSL_global_trendtable.html
A straight average the 240 tide guage sites around the world – the MSL column (sea rise/year mm) is: 1.1425 mm/year
Max is at Fort Phrachula Chomklao/Pom Phrachun, Thailand: 20.6 mm/year
Min is at Churchill, Canada: -9.48 mm/year
This tide guage average above may be correct – usually quoted as 1.5 mm/year and I guess that includes (for some reason!) the GIA adjustment of 0.3 mm/year.
Same old story with ‘climate science’.
If it’s not scary, you don’t get funded.
So, as the only thing which matters in ‘climate science’ is employment considerations, you make it scary.
So, what other organisations, other than the Global Warming Industry, are currently in the business of producing unfounded scary forecasts and prophecies?
1. Religious cults.
2. Weird religious cults.
3. Really weird religious cults, and
4. The official North Korean News Agency.
It must make ‘climate scientists’ glow with pride to know they are in such good company.
A further interesting point is that even if the satellite record above is precisely correct, extrapolating it predicts a rise of around 10 inches, or a bit less, by the end of the century. That is not incommensurate with the tide-gauge plus satellite rise worldwide of nine inches since 1870, even before one gets around to doubting the “adjustments” made recently that (as always) seem to exaggerate warming/rise, never reduce it.
Of course in time it will not matter. The ocean is going to do what it does. Personally, using the dumbest of future predictors (that it will be like the past) it will continue at a few mm/year, a few cm (say, an inch) a decade. People who predicted meters will look pretty damn foolish in a decade as the gap between their predictions and reality become more and more impossible to ignore.
Or, of course, they will turn out to be right. It’s always possible. But so far, the data does not seem to support them, and looking for an “acceleration” in the data is wishful thinking piled on wishful thinking, unless somehow the global SLR is carefully avoiding those parts of the shore with actual tide gauges or structures where the rise would be immediately visible. There are many docks on the NC coast, for example, where I spend the summer that are 30 or 40 years old. The residents of the houses have back yards that look directly out into the Atlantic. I have asked them if they have notice the presumably four inch rise of the ocean relative to their dock or their seawall, and they just laugh. Or one can go look at the barnacle layers — a direct measure — and laugh.
Perhaps it has risen an inch or two — they might not notice that as “noise” relative to the tide. But five inches? Six? That would be hard to miss — their docks would be underwater at high tide all the time, instead barely level with the top once a year at the fullest of spring tides.
SLR is one of the greatest of scandals in all of climate science. Nowhere else have the predictions of Hansen and others been more overblown, and for good reason. Nearly 100% of the “catastrophe” they predict is sea level rise.
How anyone could look at the actual SLR DATA and see a catastrophe in it is beyond me. It just isn’t there. EVEN INCLUDING the supposed “hockey-stick” rise in temperature of the 80s and 90s, EVEN INCLUDING the general rise in temperature post LIA, the actual tide gauge record WORLDWIDE, with satellite stuff spliced onto the end that is (as noted) perhaps debateable, is still nine whole inches post 1870. 140 years, less than ten inches, at a CURRENT rate that — if correct — extrapolates to a whole ten inches more by 2100. This is not catastrophic, it is ignorable, and it wouldn’t be surprising if at least an inch of the modern era “rise” disappears as the gap between tide gauge and satellite observation widens and further adjustments are made in order to avoid losing the credibility of the latter altogether.
We’ve seen the same thing happen with GISS and HADCRUT. Every adjustment made to the datasets has exaggerated the warming, until now they are effectively hoist on the petard of the LTT satellite data. There is already a gap that is difficult to explain away, and that gap cannot be permitted to grow further or EVERYBODY will see that the temperature records have had thumbs on the scales (something for which the p-value is already very suspicious, given the improbability of N adjustments all of which make the final result move in the same direction). We are seeing the same thing happening now. There seems to be a positive flood of recent papers arguing for lower sensitivity because the gap between high sensitivity predictions and reality continues to grow.
In a way, this is good. It means that “science works”, given enough time, even when politics steps in to corrupt it for a while. Perhaps in the end, we as a species will learn something from this mistake, especially of those that made it the most vehemently, loudly, and incorrectly suffer some embarrassment and consequence for their participation.
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Whats the climatology line?
Credibility is like virginity, you only lose it once.
I guess in Climatology thats a virtue.
All scams have this commonality, if we did not scare them, they would not hand over the money.
Tom J; I bet they about peed their pants from laughter. Situational humor is the best, and you hit that one out of the park. You may be onto something there with regard to eco-warriors. They just need to know that size doesn’t matter.
We have just come out of the ‘hottest decade on the record’, heard about glacial meltdown left, right and centre, the Antarctic Peninsula ‘hotting up’, water abstraction,……………and yet no acceleration in the rate of sea level rise. WTF!
The magnitude of the exagerration is is far beyond anything that can be justified by the data you quote. Either they are using other data or they are deliberately lying to the public. Which was it?
rgbatduke I think you may enjoy this read over at No Frakking Consensus. Everyone have a look
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2013/04/26/how-climate-scientists-think/
A simple average of the rates of sea-level change at NOAA’s 2010 list of 159 LTT tide gauges yields 0.84 mm/yr. The median is 1.23 mm/yr. The average is skewed by the large number of northern stations heavily affected by postglacial rebound; in fact, about one-fourth of the stations show negative sea-level trends. Adding Peltier’s VM2 GIA adjustment changes the average to 1.62 mm/yr and the median to 1.42 mm/yr. These numbers are from the last two lines of the relevant spreadsheet on my sealevel.info site.
A simple average of the rates of sea-level change at NOAA’s 2012 list of 239 LTT tide gauges yields 1.10 mm/yr. The median is 1.37 mm/yr. With Peltier’s VM2 GIA adjustment, the average is 1.77 mm/yr and the median is 1.51 mm/yr. These numbers are from the last two lines of the relevant spreadsheet on my sealevel.info site.
About a month ago, NOAA released their updated analyses of an expanded list of 285 LTT tide gauges. A simple average of the rates of sea-level change yields 1.27 mm/yr, and the median is 1.41 mm/yr. With Peltier’s VM2 GIA adjustment, the average is 1.94 mm/yr and the median is 1.58 mm/yr. These numbers are from the last two lines of the new spreadsheet on my sealevel.info site.
Another interesting spreadsheet is the 42 NOAA-administered (U.S.) tide stations for which NOAA has data through 2011. NOAA first calculated the linear sea-level trends at those stations using data through 2006, and last year did so again using data through 2011.
The sea-level records for the 42 gauges had an average duration of 87.4 years (through 2011), and NOAA’s calculated trends had an average confidence interval of ±0.515 mm/yr.
When new (through 2011) trends were compared to the old (through 2006) trends, 23 sites showed slight declines in the rate of sea-level rise, and 19 showed slight increases. A simple, unweighted average of the 42 gauges comes to 2.025 mm/yr average rate of SLR through 2006, or 2.026 mm/yr through 2011 (a difference of one one-thousandth of a millimeter/year), or 1.286 mm/yr if you include Peltier’s VM2 GIA adjustments.
The bottom line is that, as measured by the 42 best U.S. long-term trend tide stations, the average rate of sea-level rise over the 5-year period from 2006-2011 is virtually identical to the rate for the full data record (averaging 87.4 years duration) — more proof that there’s been no acceleration in rate of sea-level rise in response to the elevation in CO2 levels which has occurred over the last approx. 2/3 century.
And here you have it. We are serially doomed. It’s all over, head for the hills!
Which is less than the 20th century rates of sea level rise.
It always peeves me as a geologist that public accounts of apparent sea level change almost never mention the fact that in many areas land elevation changes faster than sea level. Sea level isn’t falling in Southern Alaska. The land is rising faster than the sea is. To get a meaningful measurement, you have to focus on places that are (a) not tectonically active (b) were not glaciated, or near the edge of the glaciers in the last ice age, and (c) not a river delta where recent sediments are compacting. That leaves out most of western North America, eastern North America from Chesapeake Bay north, and most of the Gulf Coast.
Excellent! I propose this be posted on WUWT with permission. It really does explain the reluctance by climate scientists to look at the possibility that they might (are) be wrong.
There has been stuff in the press here in Oz recently about the integrity of science at CSIRO having degraded over recent years. They used to have an excellent reputation but have become infested with warmist apparatchiks and other low renters in the ethical sense. Whether it is some weird accumulation of like minded tossers , some strange group think or the corrupting effect of certain funding arrangements ( encouraging junk science that gets a headline etc) I don’t know.
markx wrote on April 26, 2013 at 9:24 am, “‘Here is a table of sea level measurements from NOAA from around the world, many are negative:’ http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/MSL_global_trendtable.html
A straight average the 240 tide guage sites around the world – the MSL column (sea rise/year mm) is: 1.1425 mm/year”
That table now excludes the 45 NOAA-administered U.S. LTT tide-stations (which used to be included there). Those 45 stations are listed in the “CO-OPS Data” column here:
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_global.shtml
They’re also included in the new 285-station spreadsheet on the “Data” page of my http://www.sealevel.info/ site.
Including the 45 NOAA-administered stations increases the average rate of sea-level rise slightly to 1.27 mm/yr (or 1.94 mm/yr with Peltier’s VM2 GIA adjustments).
This reminds me of another paper published in 2011 by PJ Watson on Australian sea levels (and referred to at WUWT). Looking in detail at four tide gauge records his
Morner’s paper includes a graph one of these four – at Freemantle.
Now await for the criticism. This will consist of
1. Morner is disreputable.
2. The Journal is not a quality one.
3. It can’t be right, as it disagrees with the best science.
4. Like with the Watson paper, Tamino will attempt a hatchet job – and fail miserably.
Attacks aside accounting for the difference between the 12.5inch rate per century of the satellite data and the 5 inches from Australia and Amsterdam should be an exciting project, in which we might learn some novel about the world, or about the measuring techniques. Our total understanding of sea level measurement can only be enhanced.
The variance of official records from the ones you can look at yourself or that are gathered here is astonishing. You don’t need to be a tidal expert to understand what you are looking at with the guages is hard data, but you do need to be an expert – i.e. a normal human being – to understand that the official records are adjusted, tweaked and selected for reasons that you will probably find are at least in part self-beneficial.
The US government has just said that they are going to redefine the economy GDP, which will result in additional 500 billion or so being added to the apparent economy. This makes the numbers today bigger than yesterday, and the unwary then feel things have improved. But nothing has changed in the world. The official sea-level records have a GIA added for the same reason. The number is bigger and the unwary are disturbed, but nothing has changed in the world. Al Gore’s house by the sea is still not going to be washed away in his grandchildren’s lifetime.
Just part of anoather NegativeTrenberth Event: something that is supposed to be seen but is not, so we attack the observations. Tidal guages are crap – they have no Apple processors to tweak and twiddle, and strange men and women go OUTSIDE to check their work.
How uncool is that.
Climate science is like the Stock Market . . you can not predict future events based on past performance being projected by the graph line trajectory – – Look at the Western Union Telegraph company in 1850 . . very fast growing business . . . great future ahead . . oh no that damn telephone and my graph reversed and now the business is gone.
Silly humans are suckers for a good presentation of generalized stories.
Its all rather simple actually.
Governments budget for everything. Then they overspend their budgets. So they borrow from the future to prop up the current spending.
That’s all that’s happened here. They’ve budgeted for a certain amount of sea level rise, and by golly, they are going to exceed their budget. As we speak, government administrators are trying to figure out how to borrow SLR from future centuries to add to that of the current century. There is always interest charged when you borrow from the future, and this will make the SLR even bigger.