Guest essay Steve Goreham
Originally published in The Washington Times
Sea level rise is the greatest disaster predicted by Climatism, the belief in catastrophic climate change. Today, leading scientific organizations support the idea that the ocean level is rising due to man-made emissions. Further, they claim to be able to measure ocean level to a high degree of accuracy. But a look at natural ocean variation shows that official sea level measurements are nonsense.
The theory of man-made climate change warns that human emissions of greenhouse gases will raise global temperatures and melt Earth’s icecaps, causing rising oceans and flooding coastal cities. Former Vice President Al Gore’s best-selling book, An Inconvenient Truth, showed simulated pictures of flooding in South Florida, the Netherlands, Bangladesh, and other world locations. Dr. James Hansen predicted an ocean rise of 75 feet during the next 100 years.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in 2007, “Global average sea level rose at an average rate of 1.8 mm per year over 1961 to 2003. The rate was faster over 1993 to 2003: about 3.1 mm per year.” This translates to a 100-year rise of only 7 inches and 12 inches, far below the dire predictions of the climate alarmists.
But three millimeters is about the thickness of two dimes. Can scientists really measure a change in sea level over the course of a year, averaged across the world, which is two dimes thick?
Today, sea level is measured with satellite radar altimeters. Satellites bounce radar waves off the surface of the ocean to measure the distance. Scientific organizations, such as the Sea Level Research Group at the University of Colorado (CU), use the satellite data to estimate ocean rise. The CU team estimates current ocean rise at 3.2 millimeters per year.
The organizations AVISO (Archiving, Validation, and Interpretation of Satellite Oceanographic Data) of France, CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization) of Australia, and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) of the United States agree with the University of Colorado that seas are rising three millimeters per year. Given the huge natural variation in global sea level, the three millimeter number is incredible. The fact that four different organizations have arrived at the same number is suspect.
As Dr. Willie Soon of Harvard shows, ocean level variation is large and affected by many factors. If temperatures rise, water expands, adding to sea level rise. If icecaps melt, levels rise, but if icecaps grow due to increased snowfall, levels fall. If ocean saltiness changes, the water volume will also change.
The land itself moves continuously. Some shorelines are rising and some are subsiding. The land around Hudson Bay in Canada is rising, freed of ice from the last ice age. In contrast, the area around New Orleans is sinking. Long-term movement of Earth’s tectonic plates also changes sea level.
Tides are a major source of ocean variation, primarily caused by the gravitational pull of the moon, the sun, and the rotation of the Earth. Ocean water “sloshes” from shore to shore, with tides changing as much as 38 feet per day at the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia. The global average tide range is about one meter, but this daily change is still 300 times the three-millimeter change that scientists claim to be able to measure over an entire year.
Storms and weather are major factors affecting satellite measurements. Wave heights change by meters each day, dwarfing the annual rise in ocean level. Winds also change the height of the sea. The easterly wind of a strong La Niña pushes seas at Singapore to a meter higher than in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
Satellites themselves have error bias. Satellite specifications claim a measurement accuracy of about one or two centimeters. How can scientists then measure an annual change of three millimeters, which is almost ten times smaller than the error in daily measurements? Measuring tools typically must have accuracy ten times better than the quantity to be measured, not ten times worse. Dr. Carl Wunsch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology commented on the satellite data in 2007, “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.”
Scientists add many “fudge factors” to the raw data. The same measurement taken by each of the three satellites, TOPEX, JASON-1, and JASON-2, differs by 75 millimeters and must be corrected. As a natural adjustment, researchers add 0.3 millimeters to the measured data, because ocean basins appear to be getting larger, able to hold more water, and reducing apparent ocean levels.
Tide gauges are also used to “calibrate” the satellite data. But gauge measurements are subject to errors of one or two centimeters, again many times more than the sea level rise to be measured.
Clearly, the official three millimeter sea level rise number is a product of scientific “group think.” Not only is this number far below what can be accurately measured, but all leading organizations support this nonsense number. Could it be that our leading scientists must endorse sea-level rise to support the ideology of man-made global warming?
Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Good piece – especially putting the context into everyday ‘scale’ – i.e. two dimes! (thisnis mindblowing that they can measure to this accuracy on a moving surface! LOL!)
As far as I am concerned, all the measurement claims are bulldust, especially on the short timescales too – I am currently being supplied data from surveyors monitoring a landslip/slope failure – and their inaccuracy is +/- a few mm – and that is from ‘fixed’ points measured over 100metres or less! The SLR claims are false, or at least barely demonstrable – and yes, I know that the GPS measured data is supposed to be smoothed over time to reduce errors – but I still think it is bulldust!
but… but… if you want to increase the numerical accuracy of your measurement, don’t you just have to add zeros on the far side of the decimal point? That’s all it takes, right?
Just look – if you multiply, say. 0.3 by 0.3, your answer is 0.09, so you have just increased the accuracy of your measurement by a whole order of magnitude, just using a simple mathematical operation! Right? RIght???
WELL THAT’S WHAT JAMES HANSEN TOLD ME!!!
BTW – as far as I can recall, the GRACE satellite gravity results only showed around 1.0mm annual SLR ?
As a natural adjustment, researchers add 0.3 millimeters to the measured data, because ocean basins appear to be getting larger, able to hold more water, and reducing apparent ocean levels.
If all the ocean basins are getting bigger, either the land is raising or the diameter of the earth is getting larger. Which one do these guys say it is?
One thing missing from the article as presented here.which has absolutely nothing to do with climate – water abstraction.
Here is the study.
We must act now! Let’s stop the poor people’s of the world from borehole drilling. Let them die of thirst for the sake of the planet (actually for us Greenies and our iPad lifestyles.)
Regarding the satellites, is this the whole story? For example, with the energy budget satellite measurements, I understand that it is easier to detect changes than it is to detect the actual value. Does some similar caveat apply here?
Honestly asking; I’d thought satellite measurements of sea level were more accurate than this, although I realize now that I have no particular evidence to support this notion.
Thanks in advance.
Kev-in-UK: could not agree more. GPS is a good example. Long term altitude measurements have about a 10 meter standard deviation. Not gonna get 3 mm from that. Radio waves travel at about 0.3 meters per nanosecond, so 3 mm would need 10 picosecond resolution (well, 20 if you include round trip) and knowing the satellite position to within … 3 mm. (putting the burden on the earth based measurement) Averaging helps a little, but covers a whole lot of surface as the satellite is moving right along. At something over 28,000 meters per second.
Ain’t gonna get there.
The story of satellite sea level measurements is a strory of constant adjustments, always leading in the direction of higher values. To follow these adjustments, values before 2011 can be assessed via WayBackMachine.
I made an analysis of the results of the adjustments of the ESA and Colorado Sea Level data over the years some time ago (Google translation).
Conclusion, Even though the sea level rise rate has decreased over the years, the rate of sea level rise was kept more ore less constant at above 3 mm/year by applying various “adjustments”. This year it seems, the data is being made fit for the next IPCC assessment report.
Recently we have seen an increase in the slope from 2012_4 to 2013_1. It seems to be due to two reasons. First, we seem to have a real increase in sea level after the decrease seen in 2010. Secondly, data processing of Jason-2 data has been changed from GDR Version C to D.
2013 Release 1 (2013-01-21):
Switched to Jason-2 GDR-D release for all Jason-2 cycles. Updated through cycle 160.
This change is documented on the Aviso Homepage. We learn that version D has several data adjustments such as
Absolute bias correction
Datation bias correction
Use of GOT 4.8 global tide model instead of GOT00.2
Polar tide anomaly correction
Long period non equilibrium tide anomaly correction
and some more. More interesting is the result of these corrections. Which is, as some might have guessed, an increase in sea level rise.
I have calculated the slope of 2012_4 vs. 2013_1 in OpenOffice Calc. The results are shown in this graph. The data correction has led to an increase in the slope of 0.05 mm/year in 2012 (compared 2012_4 to 2013_1), leading to an total plus of 0,25 mm from 2008 (compared 2012_4 to 2013_1).
Strange thing that. Whatever correction is being made to climate data, it always seems to lead in only one direction.
I’m a bit sceptical of this great claim by Singer, but you decide.
The story of satellite sea level measurements is a strory of constant adjustments, always leading in the direction of higher values. To follow these adjustments, values before 2011 can be assessed via WayBackMachine.
I made an analysis of the results of the adjustments of the ESA and Colorado Sea Level data over the years some time ago (Google translation).
Conclusion: Even though the sea level rise rate has decreased over the years, the rate of sea level rise was kept more ore less constant at above 3 mm/year by applying various “adjustments”. This year it seems, the data is being made fit for the next IPCC assessment report.
An example: Recently, we have seen an increase in the slope from 2012_4 to 2013_1. It seems to be due to two reasons. First, we seem to have a real increase in sea level after the decrease seen in 2010. Secondly, data processing of Jason-2 data has been changed from GDR Version C to D.
2013 Release 1 (2013-01-21):
Switched to Jason-2 GDR-D release for all Jason-2 cycles. Updated through cycle 160.
This change is documented on the Aviso Homepage. We learn that version D has several data adjustments such as
Absolute bias correction
Datation bias correction
Use of GOT 4.8 global tide model instead of GOT00.2
Polar tide anomaly correction
Long period non equilibrium tide anomaly correction
and some more. More interesting is the result of these corrections. Which is, as some might have guessed, an increase in sea level rise.
I have calculated the slope of 2012_4 vs. 2013_1 in OpenOffice Calc. The results are shown in this graph. The data correction has led to an increase in the slope of 0.05 mm/year in 2012 (compared 2012_4 to 2013_1), leading to an total plus of 0,25 mm from 2008 (compared 2012_4 to 2013_1).
Strange thing that. Whatever correction is being made to climate data, it always seems to lead in only one direction.
There has to be an acceleration in the rate of sea level rise. For over 15 years I have been told that the WAIS is melting faster, the glaciers are receding faster, the oceans are warming faster, the hottest decade on the record etc. If there is no acceleration in the rate then am I going mad? Or can someone please give me an explanation?
An interesting point is that each time the satellite altimetry measurements are recalibrated, the result is that the data are a better linear fit to a line with the same slope. It appears that the basis for the ‘recalibration’ is a long term average annual rate of sea level rise for a cherry-picked set of tide gauge stations.
Retired Engineer says:
September 20, 2013 at 3:24 pm
agreed. and another thing where I perhaps am missing something:
Tom and Jerry (grace satellites) are supposed to be able to detect the distance to each other by 10 microns over 130 miles – and they use the fact that the earths ‘local’ gravity ‘tug’ causes changes in this distance to map the gravity change (at least, that is my understanding of it). That’s ok except for one tiny little fact – what if they are both being ‘tugged’ at different amounts? How do they reconcile that? At any given time, how do they know which one is being ‘tugged’ by which amount????
Maybe it’s the dams, then maybe not.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2012GL051230/abstract
Satellites themselves have error bias.
You are confusing error and bias. Error is the inaccuracy in a single measurement. Bias is the cumulative error over a number of measurements, such as from satellite drift.
Measurement error wouldn’t affect a trend, but bias would.
According to this recent paper from the NOAA
http://ibis.grdl.noaa.gov/SAT/SeaLevelRise/documents/NOAA_NESDIS_Sea_Level_Rise_Budget_Report_2012.pdf
the total sea level rise over the last seven years has been 1.6 mm / year, with an uncertainty of .8 mm / year.
This is about half of other estimates of sea level rise, even those made by NOAA. Have I misinterpreted the above paper?
News just in: Greenland this mid September hit -40C as the Arctic continues to be the canary in the coalmine (central Arctic ocean saw record cold since 1958). This is climate change for ya. It’s actually the weather but I have been told by Warmists that the weather is now the climate.
http://www.markvoganweather.com/2013/09/16/greenland-hits-40c-remnants-humberto-help-bring-summer-back-uk/
Did you know that it is possible to get the average annual rate of SLR by taking measurements over a decade and dividing by 10?
SLR to date is largely thermal expansion, some glacier melt. Not only are the rates of these likely to rise, but at critical points new mechanisms – such as ice shelf collapse – will add their impact.
But you will keep fiddling while the planet burns, won’t you?
This paper seem to agree with the 1mm/year rise.
TIDE GAUGE LOCATION AND THE MEASUREMENT OF GLOBAL SEA LEVEL RISE
Michael Beenstock, Daniel Felsenstein, Eyal FrankYaniv Reingewertz.
Department of Economics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91905,
PDF file –
http://pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il/~msdfels/wpapers/Tide%20gauge%20location.pdf
‘Satellites themselves have error bias. Satellite specifications claim a measurement accuracy of about one or two centimeters. How can scientists then measure an annual change of three millimeters, which is almost ten times smaller than the error in daily measurements’
The ‘special magic ‘ of climate science means that their able to make measurements more accurate they the instruments they use it measures the event with , of course should these instruments show a decrease they would instantly become worthless and models would be used instead.
TIDE GAUGE LOCATION AND THE MEASUREMENT OF GLOBAL SEA LEVEL RISE
http://pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il/~msdfels/wpapers/Tide%20gauge%20location.pdf
Sea level rise is regional rather than global and is concentrated in the southern Baltic, the Ring of Fire, and the Atlantic coast of the US. By contrast the north-west Pacific coast and north-east coast of India are characterized by sea level fall. In the minority of locations where sea levels are rising
…..In the “””minority””” of locations where sea levels are rising
=====
or a much more fun way to look at it…..
http://suyts.wordpress.com/2013/09/20/vindication-for-suyts-new-tidal-gauge-sea-level-paper-out-reports-1mmyr-sea-level-rise/#comment-97149
and slap this chart along with it…and you have a slam dunk
http://suyts.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/image2.png
So apparently what we have here is an attempt to measure the significant…nay, CATASTROPHIC change in the size of a gnat’s ass that is sitting on a meandering elephant and the gnat’s ass results should make us….send money to the government? Okay.
Thanks for a great post. I have only one thing to say to the guvmnt when they ask for money.
Nuts.
Kev-in-Uk says:
September 20, 2013 at 3:18 pm
BTW – as far as I can recall, the GRACE satellite gravity results only showed around 1.0mm annual SLR ?
Actually a recent NOAA report provided the first closure of the sea level rise budget by reconciling data from Jason, Grace and Argo. They concluded that SLR from 2005 to 2012 was either 1.2 mm/yr or 1.6 mm/yr. The steric portion (melting glaciers) was 0.2 mm/yr, smaller than the measurement error.
The 3 mm/yr number is extremely suspect, especially when Envisat was giving much smaller trends of around 1 mm/yr until it ‘malfunctioned’, and its data was ad-hoc adjusted to comply with the collective.
This article is a good illustration of the logical fallacy called the Fallacy of Misplaced Precision.
I often wonder what the sediment load of the 100 largest rivers amounts to.