NASA’s updated data appears to suggest the annual rate of global polar ice loss has actually decreased
Greenland’s Riviera – their green southwest. Will another Maunder minimum
grip the region in cages of ice again, or will bells ring in the portside squares,
as they did in the 1300’s before that cooling came, and ships sailed the fiords?
(Source: NASA)
Excerpt:
Washington Post correspondant Juliet Eilperin, in her 12-26-08 report entitled “New climate change estimates more pessimistic,” dutifully surveys the latest bleak findings of the climate change community. Her primary source is a recently released survey comissioned by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program – expanding on the findings of the 2007 4th IPPC Report on Climate Change. Apparently this “new assessment suggests that earlier projections may have underestimated the climatic shifts that could take place by 2100.” One of Eilperin’s primary examples of alarming new data is reported as follows:
“In one of the reports most worrisome findings, the agency estimates that in light of recent ice sheet melting, global sea level rise could be as much as 4 feet by 2100. The IPCC had projected a sea level rise of no more than 1.5 feet by that time, but satellite data over the past two years show the world’s major ice sheets are melting much more rapidly than previously thought. The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are now losing an average of 48 cubic miles of ice a year, equivalent to twice the amount of ice that exists in the Alps.”
Three years ago what NASA quantified as an alarming loss of annual ice loss from Greenland was easily demonstrated at that time to be an insignificant loss, and today NASA’s updated data appears to suggest the annual rate of global polar ice loss has actually decreased since then.
http://ecoworld.com/blog/2008/12/26/pessimistic-reporting-optimistic-data/
I hate to point out the obvious but NASA can do simple math and they’re obviously modeling that the sea level rise will accelerate.
If 0.2C warming produces 0.2 inch / decade rises in sea level and assuming a linear response to warming then by 2100 with +2C there should be a 2.0 inch / decade rise in sea level. on average that would be a 1.0 inch / decade rise in sea level in the 21st century or 10 inch rise by 2100. this is closer to the ballpark of 1.5-4.0 feet by 2100. probably very wrong to assume a linear reponse, but less wrong than assuming a constant, unaccelerating meltrate while the globe warms.
I’m actually skeptical of the measurements, and skeptical that you can plug these in as initial conditions and model them into the future, but NASA knows how big the oceans are and can calculate the sea level rise of a constant 48 cubic miles of meltwater a year.
I see this is a tag team effort.
Lets just do a little fact checking. Sea level rise in Tuvalu is not due to land sinking. The tide gauge is GPS leveled and managed by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. The rate of sea level rise in the record in running at +7mm/year taking into account land movements. The early recordings by the University of Hawaii were poorly leveled and referenced and are not usually used as a result (the instrument is attached to a structually unsound jetty behind the government hall).
The high point in Tuvalu is 5m but the most heavily populated island of Funafuti averages less than 1m above sea level and the high point is a coral rubble on the ocean side less than 3m above sea level and uninhabitable. In truth the highest point is actually the rubbish dump on the northern end of the island. Not exactly offering the opportunity to move uphill.
Already one of the island of Tuvalu across the lagoon from Funafuti which was inhabited has disappeared. The island group has been inhabited for near 2000 years, using a fresh water lense and subsisdence agriculture. The lense of Funafuti is now brackish or saline, and the island experiences major flooding on an annual basis…. to a depth few cm’s (significant given the 20-30cm of sea level rise).
The Cateret Islands in PNG are facing similar issues with massive erosion which has been linked to rising sea level http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carteret_Islands . The University of Tasmania – Dr John Hunter – is doing work in this area. Much of the population of the outer islands have already shifted.
The Torris Strait Islands off the north of Australia are suffering repeated and historical unprecedented inudation episodes.
Much of Vanuatu is elevated – peaks well over 1500m, but that doesn’t help if you are on an atoll. This has not helped the low island of Tegua (which is rising due to geological processes) but which has experienced a net sea level rise of ~7mm/year.
With 20-30cm of sea level documented in a litany of scientific papers and a satellite record which shows 3.1mm/year how can we pretend that sea level rise is not happening, or that it cannot be driving these very obvious problems? The highest record in the satellite series (accounting for pressure and seasonal factors happened this very year – ). Add another 50cm and you have 200 million people at risk, including major cities.
Sure these people can move… but why should they? And where to?
>Australia’s maligned C.S.I.R.O. has been studying sea levels in Tuvalu for many years.
Les Francis, CSIRO is the Australian government research agency with thousands of scientists working across a broad number of fields. If there work is so flawed, perhaps you might point me to just one scientific paper that you have published which corrects their work, or even just one scientific paper by an Australian Climate Sceptic on anthropogenic climate change in a peer reviewed journal in the last decade.
The sea level data from Tuvalu does not come from CSIRO, it comes from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology through the National Tidal Centre. This centre was previously attached to Flinders University in Adelaide (again not CSIRO).
If you are going to shoot from the hip, at least do some simple fact checking.
“Sure these people can move… but why should they? ”
Because a volcanic atoll without continued volcanic activity that is only one meter above sea level will erode to under sea level in a relatively short period of time. In other words, it is doomed anyway and isn’t a sustainable place to live. That is why they should move.
david wrote:
With 20-30cm of sea level documented in a litany of scientific papers and a satellite record which shows 3.1mm/year how can we pretend that sea level rise is not happening, or that it cannot be driving these very obvious problems? The highest record in the satellite series (accounting for pressure and seasonal factors happened this very year – ). Add another 50cm and you have 200 million people at risk, including major cities.
Sure these people can move… but why should they? And where to?
What’s 3.1mm/year ~ less than an inch and a quarter in 10 years? That’s not “inundation” and it’s also a lot less than the difference between low tide and high tide levels. If they don’t want to move, they can raise their houses on piles. Three feet higher should be good for more than a hundred years by your figures. Many communities in my country build their houses that way.
NASA can do simple math
Lamont, I think there is a probe splattered on the Martian surface that might be evidence that they can’t.
David
Sure these people can move… but why should they? And where to?
Why should they? Shorelines have come up and gone down across the world over geologic time, and man has had to adjust and move any settlements that may have been inundated in the past. Why are the Tuvaluans any different? No one made them settle their island did they?
Melting sea ice will not be a problem it will actually lower sea levels (try it yourself – put an ice cube in a glass of water mark the level then let it melt the water level will fall) I do not know if this is enough to compensate for land ice melting.
I hate when republicans straightly neglect these things .. just because they want to be different with democrats in their opinions.
Yesterday i was watching Fox .. some guy plainly reused this thing saying that its all about two business group carbon based (petro) and non carbon based .. the reality is its some one else suffering from global warming .. for example a distant mountainous region in asia because of melting ice there.
Here is a 2006 report for Pacific Island sea levels from the Australian National Tidal Facility from a University in South Australia.
A long report however interesting to note for Tuvalu. The US installed a tide gauge in Tuvalu which indicates a sea level increase between 1977 and 1999 of 0.92mm. This was not considered accurate and a ” Full Data set” instrument was installed in 1993 which indicates a sea level rise of more or less 5.7mm per year (Very convenient).
The report also mentions that data sets of more than 60 years must be obtained to get a full accurate semi conclusion.
Cyclones, El Nino’s, geographic events, all have an effect on their readouts.
Tide slosh from one end of the Pacific to the other is also mentioned.
Interesting graphs in there also. Most are annotated with a statement saying that short term readings are not a true indicator of overall trends
If you have an hour or so to go through no doubt more info will come to light which seems to indicate an each way bet on results.
Cherry Picking of the data from this report is helpful to both sides of the sea level argument.
Sorry forgot to not link report
http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO60033/IDO60033.2006.pdf
swampie (14:36:00) : Wow!!!
Lamont:
“probably very wrong to assume a linear reponse”
Yes.
I’m confused (nothing new in that).
Our new friend Mr David seems to have a special interest in Tuvalu (wherever that may be, I thought it was a brand of shampoo so it’s nice to know it’s a place). Some say Tuvalu is sinking, he tells us it is not (if I understand him correctly). Fair enough, I don’t know where it is let alone whether it is sinking or rising, so let’s assume it’s doing neither.
Some say sea levels generally are increasing by a smidgen, he says the increase is “running at +7mm/year taking into account land movements” (I thought there were no land movements, but there it is). So we’ll take the figure of 7mm a year.
I have just looked at my old school ruler. Old it might be but it still has those funny foreign measurements on it as well as good sturdy feet and inches. 7mm is less than the thickness of some of my toenails.
Does Tuvalu have tides? If so I’d guess there is a difference of many times 7mm between the lowest high tide and the highest high tide. If some residents live as little as a foot above the highest high tide surely it would take about 40 years before they feel the splash of seawater on the tufted Wilton carpet (I think that’s right, 7mm = 0.3 inches, 12 inches to the foot, so 1 foot = 12 x 0.3 = 40).
What’s the fuss?
David, I doubt that all is as you believe regarding Tuvalu:
http://www.pmc.aut.ac.nz/globalwatch/2008/080401_Tuvalu.shtml
The impacts of population pressure and huge direct external interventions seem much faster acting than sea level rise.
Gerard (22:40:23) :
Melting sea ice will not be a problem it will actually lower sea levels (try it yourself – put an ice cube in a glass of water mark the level then let it melt the water level will fall) I do not know if this is enough to compensate for land ice melting.
The “Eureka” Archimedes principle. Look at the title, it is talking of sea ice.
There is a small difference between sea water and sea ice in salinity, but probably not in the first year ice that might introduce a difference.
from
tty (10:15:43) :
Density of ice at zero centigrade 0.9167
Density of seawater (average) 1.03
So 200 km^3 ice makes 178 km^3 seawater
As ” a body displaces as much water as to compensate for the the weight” and the weight of the ice is 10% less than the weight of sea water, it would displace 10% less sea water. In melting there should be an excess of 10% to accommodate the volume of melted ice. ( icebergs are 90% below sea level, if their density were the same they would be at sea level). So it should be only 17.8km**3 that need to be accounted for a sea level rise.
You had this post a while ago on cold in Siberia.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/15/northeast-siberia-braces-for-extreme-cold-of-60c/
looks like it will be even colder.
“Oymyakon, Siberia, is bracing for temps as low as minus 90 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 67.8 degrees Celsius)”
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=oymyakon-the-coldest-town
Found this interesting article.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081219180532.htm
“The scientists discovered a strong link between regional temperatures and the solar activity in the period 1250-1850, concluding that the sun was an important driver of preindustrial temperature changes in the Altai.”
“The observation that the reconstructed temperatures followed the solar forcing with a delay of 10 to 30 years is particularly interesting. ”
So we might have a few years to wait before we see the effect of current solar conditions. Problem is the politicians are making the policies now.
All this discussion on high tides and low tides. We get 7.4meters for the spring tides. Then add wave height which varies with the weather. My area of the coast can handle that with ease. I feel pretty sure that most coastal regions have taken these effects into account. 30 years of ocean warming easily accounts for the 3mm annual rise. That figure will change over the next predicted 30 year cooling cycle. We have a lot of coastal errosion around the UK. Parts of the UK are still rising from the last ice age. Other parts are tilting down. All part of the current global warming cycle known as an interglacial period. Interglacials account for only 20% of the global climate over the past 500 million years. We really should be looking at how to adapt to the next ice age. Evolution will sort it out in the long run.
I wonder if “David” is Jeff Id’s pet troll from “The Air Vent”?
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2008/08/30/global-warming-is-here-it-is-real-and-it-is-dangerous/
p.s. to my above, on whether when melting sea ice will release 10% excess in volume, or because of the change in temperature it will just fill up the volume it had displaced
ps.ps
I did an experiment. Added two soup spoons salt to a full glass of water and then three ice cubes. Wiped the overflow and waited for the cubes to melt. Level the same.
So it seems to me that melting ice sheets, i.e. sea ice, will not change the levels of the oceans.
This in principle should be true of the antarctic, because it is under water mostly.
A bit more info for david re tuvalu, other western Pacific islands…
The issue isn’t sea level, it’s land distribution and population. Quite frankly, there are very few jobs or services in these islands, and their societies have very specific cultural methods of land distribution and ownership under polynesian and melanesian laws.
The Cook Islands, for example, are mostly sea-level coral attolls with a couple of larger volcanic islands as the main population centres. The resident population is about 17,000, living through subsistence farming and tourism, while about 50,000 islanders live and work in New Zealand and Australia. The same general rule can be applied to Tonga, Samoa, Tuvalu and other small island nations. In fact, one-third of New Zealand’s population lives outside the borders, mainly in Australia.
This has been so for much of the past 3 decades. It’s economic, not environmental.
UK winter weather not matching Met Office September 08 predictions for being “as mild or milder” than previous years. Thank goodness my log load will arrive today. It has been bitterly cold then last few days. Went for a walk on Boxing Day with the family up to a local hill fort. The only things enjoying that biting east wind were the sheep, but they the slight advantage of having a woolly coat on them!
Patrick Henry:-) Met Office didn’t see this one coming did they with only a weeks notice given?
I suspect Neils Axel Morner was right, there is no change in rate of sea-level rise unless you manipulate the data!
Happy New Year everyone, & put another nob of coal on the fire Mr Cratchet, brrrr!
Anna V:
It isn’t sea ice we’re talking about, it is g-l-a-c-i-e-r-s.
Melting sea Ice, including shelf ice have zero effect on sea-level, since it is already floating. As a matter of fact even the effect of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) melting is frequently overstated, since a lot of people don’t seem to realize that only the part of the ice above sea-level will affect ocean levels (and not all of that, because of the higher density of water).
Is it possible to imagine the temperature from satellite.Ice can change the level of sea.Its totally depends the melting of ice.