Sea Level Data In Monthly Format
Guest post by Bob Tisdale
In this post I have also provided comparisons to scaled NINO3.4 SST anomalies. As could be expected, some of the rises and falls are related to ENSO events. The step changes also appear to be direct responses to El Nino events. I am not, however, implying that Sea Level variability is only impacted by ENSO.GLOBAL SEA LEVEL
The monthly Global Sea Level data from December 1992 to March 2009 is illustrated in Figure 1. The late 1995 spike in the sea level data stands out similarly to the way the 1997/98 El Nino stands out in global temperature data.
http://i31.tinypic.com/op5nw1.png
Figure 1
Figure 2 compares Global Sea Level to scaled NINO3.4 SST anomalies. The peak in late 2005 is not directly related to an El Nino. The impacts of the 1997/98 and the 2002/03 El Nino events, however, can be seen in the Global Sea Level data.
http://i31.tinypic.com/2mrgo5x.png
Figure 2
MONTHLY SEA LEVEL FOR THE ATLANTIC, INDIAN, AND PACIFIC OCEANS
As preliminary notes, the annual variability in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean Sea Level data can be clearly seen in the monthly data. The Pacific data is noisier, which masks an annual signal.
Note how the smoothed Atlantic Sea Level data, Figure 3, appears to rise in steps. The first step is in 1995. This should be a rebound from the Mount Pinatubo aerosol effects.
http://i27.tinypic.com/zs4m0.png
Figure 3
The scaled NINO3.4 SST anomaly data has been added in Figure 4. The smoothed Atlantic Sea Level data rises again in 1997, which should be a response to the 1997/98 El Nino. Are the rises in 2003 and 2005 also responses to the 2003/04 and 2004/05 El Nino events?
http://i32.tinypic.com/t8nrch.png
Figure 4
The raw and smoothed Indian Ocean Sea Level data, Figure 5, show a major step change in 1998 and a curious increase in trend in 2004.
http://i31.tinypic.com/25qzrdi.png
Figure 5
The 1998 upward step in the smoothed Indian Ocean Sea Level data appears to be a lagged response to the 1997/98 El Nino. Refer to Figure 6. The 2004 change in trend does not appear to be ENSO related. Was there a shift in Indian Ocean cloud cover in 2004?
http://i31.tinypic.com/1415glt.png
Figure 6
Following the significant increase from 1998 to 2002, the Pacific Ocean Sea Level, Figure 7, has been relatively flat since 2002. The rise in Pacific Sea Level slowed after 2002, and Pacific Sea Level has declined since 2006.
http://i31.tinypic.com/hsta3q.png
Figure 7
In the comparison with NINO3.4 SST anomalies, Figure 8, note how the Pacific Ocean Sea Level surged upward in mid-1996, one year before the 1997/98 El Nino. Does this indicate that there was a sudden rise in ocean heat content in the year leading up to that El Nino? Does this confirm the findings in my post “Did A Decrease In Total Cloud Amount Fuel The 1997/98 El Nino?” It does seem to show that the 1997/98 El Nino was fueled by a short-term change (one year) in the ocean heat content of the Pacific.
http://i28.tinypic.com/2enn4lk.png
Figure 8
ATLANTIC, INDIAN, AND PACIFIC OCEAN COMPARISONS
Figure 9 is a comparison of Sea Levels for the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans. Note how one dataset always appears to be out of phase with the variations of the other two. Rarely do the sea levels of all three oceans rise or fall in unison.
http://i30.tinypic.com/2wh2k9f.png
Figure 9
The SST anomalies for the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans are illustrated in Figure 10. There are significant differences between the SST and Sea Level curves. (I can’t see any reason to compare the individual ocean sea level and SST data.)
http://i32.tinypic.com/2gxl5ja.png
Figure 10
SOURCE
Sea Level data is available through the University of Colorado at Boulder webpage:http://sealevel.colorado.edu/index.php
Specifically:http://sealevel.colorado.edu/results.php
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Very interesting work, thank you!
How many homes/properties have been reported damaged/destroyed with rising sea levels as direct cause in the past 20 years?
I know that some areas in the world for varying reasons are very prone to flooding (Bangladesh for example), but is it very common that property is damaged from rising sea levels specifically?
Heated water expands. Cooled water contracts. Sea level appears to be a lagging indicator of global temperature trends.
Is there really anything other than that going on here?
A question for Bob-any idea why sea level apparently continued to rise after 1998 but sea surface temps didn’t? Apart from a large trend the data seem to behave similar to sea surface temps. Does that mean that a rather large forcing is being applied to the system but has lead to only a very minimal change in temps as yet? if so that would seem to me to be a very important result!
Patrik (09:11:16) : I doubt that 60 something millimeters of sea level rise damaged anyone’s property.
Hurricane Storm surges on the other hand, have done huge damage in the last twenty years, and are several orders of magnitude greater and come in a matter of hours, rather than centuries or millennia.
And in case your worried about THAT increasing from AGW, your concern is misplaced. There is an issue of increasing storm damages, but entirely from rising coastal population and inflation (mostly the former, surprisingly).
Very timely, Mr. Tisdale. Fascinating work, well done!
Thursday and Friday of this week (July 23 and 24) are expected to show coastal flooding along Southern California beaches, per the National Weather Service.
The cause is astronomical high tide coupled with some 4 to 7 foot (roughly 2 meter) waves that originated in the central South Pacific. see http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/lox/
I expect the AGW crowd will make much of this, if any flooding actually occurs.
a link to the Coastal Flood statement:
http://forecast.weather.gov/wwamap/wwatxtget.php?cwa=lox&wwa=coastal%20flood%20statement
Thanks Bob,
Interesting work.
If you have time, please plot seasonal (monthly) sea level vs the seasonal CO2 sawtooth data, and let us know what you find.
Suggest you use Mauna Loa CO2 and Pacific Ocean.
Regards, Allan
That’s an interesting observation about the sea level changes in the three basins being in phase for only two of them at a time. The time series is too short to deduce a sequence pattern, though. By eye there doesn’t seem to be a relationship to the SST anomaly patterns. Any speculations?
RE: ” wws (09:11:35) :
Heated water expands. Cooled water contracts. Sea level appears to be a lagging indicator of global temperature trends.
Is there really anything other than that going on here?
=================
There is also the long trailing edge of the general rise following the great melt 10K years ago. There is still water in high latitude bogs / muskeg, from that event, slowly filtering into river systems or directly into ocean basins as ground water.
The science is in. On Teevee they showed this.
Actually it was explicitely presented at the whitehouse a few weeks ago.
timetochooseagain: You asked, “any idea why sea level apparently continued to rise after 1998 but sea surface temps didn’t?”
There is much more to sea level than SST anomalies. Sea level captures temperature and salinity variations for the entire column of water where the SST data only captures the surface temperature. Sea level also captures water exchanges from glaciers, and it is also impacted by post-galacial rebound.
With regards to the last item, the AVISO website will allow you to create graphs of Sea Level with or without Glacial Isostatic Adjustment. That adjustment represents about 10% of the trend since 1992.
http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/en/news/ocean-indicators/mean-sea-level/altimetry-data-and-images/index.html
That image of Florida reminds me of the cartoon … uh, I mean “simulation”, in Al Gore’s movie, where Florida is inundated from 20′ sea-level rise by the end of the 21st century. Which, at the time, reminded me of the old Anacin commercial with the animated arrow showing how Anacin “gets to your headache” 40% faster than Bufferin. The guy in the white lab coat, clipboard and pointer made it all very “authoritative”.
Both used the same “methodology” to prove a point.
I think you have correlation so far, but not causality.
The alternative explanation would be that the ENSO cycle is driven primarily by internal dynamics, and when you get an El Nino it clears up the cloud cover over the equatorial pacific, which increases heat absorption by the pacific and increases sea level rise and OHC. There could obviously be coupled positive feedback effects (ENSO -> cloud cover -> SSTs -> ENSO) that makes distinguishing cause and effect difficult and would produce the correlation.
Why can we regard the ocean basin as being a constant volume? There are plates pulling apart, plates subducting, volcanic islands growing (do they lower the sea-floor locally?), silt inflow &c.
Are they all ignorable?
The Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans are of very different sizes. Can you do a weighted average rise of the three?
It looks like something happened with earths albedo the years before the 97/98 El Nino. There where a rapid decrese of earths albedo 2-3 years before 97/98 El Nino event and it stayed low until 2002 and then seemed to rapidly increase again.
See http://www.bbso.njit.edu/science_may28.html
With a 5 year smoothing on RSS data there is a step increase in temperature that follows this rapid change in albedo.
Whe know the sealevel is rising slow trough the century. It hassen’t speed up scince co2 levels rise. But if it doese no worry’s It won’t happen verry rapid. My hous is -1,25 Meters below sealevel. I can perfectly trust our water system.
Everything I know about what things can affect sea level is summed up here:
” ”
That being said, did the seafloor uplift during the 2004-12 Indian Ocean earthquake have any measurable long term affect on sea level, local or otherwise?
O/T a little but not really.I live in the northern foothills of N.C.. Last night on the local weather ,Van Denton at fox8,showed ther last 3 summers comparisons on tems.In 2007 he showed we had already had 63 days above 90 in Greensboro N.C. last summer os of july 21st we had had 36 days.This year there has been ONLY 6 as of july21st which is the mid piont of summer.Like Isaid I live in the northern foothills of N.C. and we have had maybe 3 or 4 tops.It truly has been like spring all summer so far.My wife and Iwere on the Blue Ridge PArkway last weekend near Mayberry Mill and the temps got into the 40’s on sat night.People were in coast which is odd to me in july. My point is the cool weather isn’t just in the northeast this summer as the media or weather channel would have you believe.Right now it is 79 degrees outside and it will probably get to low 80’s which is what we have had most of the summer or cooler .I just checked accuweather for next 10 days and it more of the same 70′ and 80’s.
Very interesting data. If nothing else, everyone is learning about the earth and sun everyday with regards to the AGW studies.
Has someone did a study on just the increase of CO2 due to population increases and exhaling of CO2? Maybe some Government will release the Swine Flu or something to reduce the population. Oh, did I say that? Ouch!
Jerker Andersson (10:23:52) : “It looks like something happened with earth’s albedo the years before the 97/98 El Nino….”
Plankton?
I’m thinking the circle of the Earth has a certain radius.
The temperatures a few thousandths of a radius up into the atmosphere are very, very cold, and the temperatures a few thousandths of a radius down into the depths are very, very hot.
I’m also thinking the Earth rotates about its axis once a day, revolves around the Sun once a year, and the Moon revolves around the Earth about once a month, thereby causing huge, and variable, energy transfer — at least radiative and gravitational.
I’m also thinking that way down deep in the Earth are currents of molten material at very high temperatures, conducting huge, and variable, energy up out of those depths.
I’ve read about satellite measurements of land areas rising and sinking. And I’m figuring the sea-bottom must also have a similar sort of variable, flexing motion, though maybe it’s constrained a bit by pressure from the sea weight.
And then I read of sea-levels rising a few billionths of an Earth’s radius, maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less.
To me, that any global warming, cooling, rising, or sinking is so incredibly constant over centuries or millennia is simply astounding.
Also. The Sun (about a million Earths in size) belches out its huge energy a mere 24000 Earth radii away.
That we survive in the relative width of a human hair on an 8-inch Earth is (to me) even more astounding.
In ages past we learned about the virtue of humility. We also learned that political/philosophical/religious arrogance could result in staggering misery, suffering, and the destruction of life and property.
What we never learned — or even dreamed of — was that the arrogance of the supposed intelligentsia would cost premeditated, self-extorted trillions. Not to mention the death of science, and truth as once known.
Not just temperature changes sea level. There is also the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, amount of water exchange with that on land – rivers, lakes, snow, ice; gravity. And don’t forget that the oceans are just a giant bath tub of water sloshing around a very complex shape.
AH, forgot. Also, tectonic plate and land mass movements, verticallly and horizontally.
Lamont: You wrote, “The alternative explanation would be that the ENSO cycle is driven primarily by internal dynamics, and when you get an El Nino it clears up the cloud cover over the equatorial pacific, which increases heat absorption by the pacific and increases sea level rise and OHC.”
The cloud cover/cloud amount follows the warm water. During La Nina and ENSO neutral periods, the cloud cover and precipitation are highest over the Pacific Warm Pool. During El Nino events, when the warm water sloshes east, the clouds and precipitation follow. This causes significant decreases in “normal” total cloud amount over the Pacific Warm Pool, which would help “recharge” the warm water there. The warm water also sloshes back toward the Pacific Warm Pool during the subsequent La Nina. Some of the water that had travelled east during the El Nino is redistributed around the surface of the Western Pacific and Eastern Indian Oceans by surface currents. This causes step changes in SST. But I haven’t studied how it impacts sea level or OHC.
Regards