New predictions for sea level rise
Sea level graph from the University of Colorado is shown below:
University of Bristol Press release issued 26 July 2009
Fossil coral data and temperature records derived from ice-core measurements have been used to place better constraints on future sea level rise, and to test sea level projections.
The results are published today in Nature Geoscience and predict that the amount of sea level rise by the end of this century will be between 7- 82 cm (0.22 to 2.69 feet)
– depending on the amount of warming that occurs – a figure similar to that projected by the IPCC report of 2007.
Placing limits on the amount of sea level rise over the next century is one of the most pressing challenges for climate scientists. The uncertainties around different methods to achieve accurate predictions are highly contentious because the response of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets to warming is not well understood.
Dr Mark Siddall from the Earth Sciences Department at the University of Bristol, together with colleagues from Switzerland and the US, used fossil coral data and temperature records derived from ice-core measurements to reconstruct sea level fluctuations in response to changing climate for the past 22,000 years, a period that covers the transition from glacial maximum to the warm Holocene interglacial period.
By considering how sea level has responded to temperature since the end of the last glacial period, Siddall and colleagues predict that the amount of sea level rise by the end of this century will be similar to that projected by the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Dr Siddall said: “Given that the two approaches are entirely independent of each other, this result strengthens the confidence with which one may interpret the IPCC results. It is of vital importance that this semi-empirical result, based on a wealth of data from fossil corals, converges so closely with the IPCC estimates.
“Furthermore, as the time constant of the sea level response is 2,900 years, our model indicates that the impact of twentieth-century warming on sea level will continue for many centuries into the future. It will therefore constitute an important component of climate change in the future.”
The IPCC used sophisticated climate models to carry out their analysis, whereas Siddall and colleagues used a simple, conceptual model which is trained to match the sea level changes that have occurred since the end of the last ice age.
The new model explains much of the variability observed over the past 22,000 years and, in response to the minimum (1.1 oC) and maximum (6.4 oC) warming projected for AD 2100 by the IPCC model, this new model predicts, respectively, 7 and 82 cm of sea-level rise by the end of this century. The IPCC model predicted a slightly narrower range of sea level rise – between 18 and 76 cm.
The researchers emphasise that because we will be at least 200 years into a perturbed climate state by the end of this century, the lessons of long-term change in the past may be key to understanding future change.
Please contact Cherry Lewis for further information.
Further information:
The paper: Constraints on future sea-level rise from past sea-level reconstructions. Mark Siddall, Thomas F. Stocker and Peter U. Clark. Nature Geoscience .
Anthony
With this sort of precision from the well funded climate industry now becoming the norm, you can work within the same high quality parameters and will never get a weather forecast wrong again (not that you do of course!)
“Tomorrow the high will be between 20 degrees and 100 degrees F, there will be between nil and 15 inches of rain and there will be anything from no cloud at all to heavy overcast skies….”
Tonyb
do i have to be climate scientist to draw linear extrapolation 90 years ahead? honest reply should be “we have no clue”.
I like announcements like “if Greenland ice sheet melts, sea level rise will be..” as some IPCC author let himself heard recently. We have similar joke “if the dog does not sh*t, he will crack”.
“Furthermore, as the time constant of the sea level response is 2,900 years, our model indicates that the impact of twentieth-century warming on sea level will continue for many centuries into the future. It will therefore constitute an important component of climate change in the future.”
I smell a big dirty rat in this argument. Can I assume this effect works retroactively and that the climate three millenia ago (Roman hot period) is impacting sea level now? If this is the case then we should be looking at past climate (pre ‘anthropogenic’) rather than current climate as a significant contributor to the current sea level trends (increasing or declining).
And then there is the big picture. Milankovitch described orbital cycles influencing the earth’s climate. These cycles are observed in the 3.6 billion year geological record as workdwide synchronised progradational and retrogradational sediment depositional patterns in response to sea level fluctuations of 1cm to 100’s of metres. Deciphering the current sea level trend with a few years of data is akin to describing the shape of a building by examining a single molecule of its fabric. Its a small part of a much bigger picture.
This report, if taken seriously by the Dutch Government, would save them approx. 50 billion Euro planned for the adaption coastal and river defenses able to withstand a sea level rise of 7 meters by 2050.
Read about the latest “New Bluff” in Climate Alarmism here:
Jul 30, 2009
The New Bluff in Climate Alarmism
By Dr. David Evans
http://www.icecap.us (third column)
It is normal that kind of changes in climate and nature. But this changement is made by human being. It is unrecerseble and dangerous
Did they forget the minus sign before the eight?
Did they forget the minus sign before the seven? (mixing up my digits)
“Between 7- 82 cm” – Wow, a variance of over 1000%. Imagine trying to figure out your monthly budget if your boss told you you were getting paid between $7 and $7000… Let alone allocate decades worth of “preventative” spending to avert climate catastrophe.
Reply: The math in your example is a bit off. Do you mean between 7 and 70 dollars? Or 700 and 7000?~ charles the moderator
82cm is not a big deal. And that’s probaly not even going to happen.
Are they using the Wheel.. Of … Oceanrise? Lemme guess then ran the simulation 78 times and it never hit the same level twice… Brilliant!
Archaeologists Discover Roman Coastline – Two Miles Inland
I was looking for a famous roman harbour built in an english city two millennia ago at the mouth of a river and nowadays is about 1 or 2 miles inland, and I found that. I don’t know if it is the same city. Any help?
More well meaning BS. “In response to the minimum (1.1 °C) and maximum (6.4 °C) warming projected for AD 2100 by the IPCC models………..” So that’s a pretty big assumption right there, but gives them an easy out.
Predicting the future is dicey at best. Certainly their is no penalty for failure, no followup statement by the media for wild statements that so frequently miss their mark.
Simultaneously brash predictions are the stuff that makes headlines.
PS: Also, since most Americans don’t know the difference between a centimeter and carrot, here’s the translation: 2.75″ to 32.28″ .
So the more heat you give the more melting you’ll get.
With deep thoughts like that I’m going to need a long lie down in a darkened room
I want to know how they can claim that a worse estimate than the previous IPCC one is supposed to actually be useful in any way.
With computer model produced accuracy like that, we’d better forget heading back to the moon anytime too soon! Perspective:- The sea level @ur momisugly Exmouth docks rises far more than this in a single day! Twice! Even more in a Spring tide. Another thing, I didn’t know the IPCC actually carried out any research of its own, but relied purely on GCMs. This guy implies they do by his language. Surely a computer model plugged withh the same faulty data, using the same faulty assumptions, will produce a similar answer? If I’ve said it before I apologise, but in engineering, if you get the wrong design approach at the start, no amount of computing power/reinforcement/steel,/concrete/masonry, will solve the problem. That’s why good consultants have a check stage part way through a design solution, just to make sure the designer is on the right track! How is this done for this type of research?
How daft people are to live of low level islands in the middle of the Pacific ocean, one sub-terrainian earthquake driven Tsunami & it’s all over! One tropical storm surge would be enough I would have thought.
Another thing, if all this crap is true, why do prices of sea-front properties remain so high? Did not one A. Gore recently spend a few of his hard earned squillions on such a property? If so, he clearly doesn’t believe in it. So why should we?
(I also heard that aerodynamically it is impossible for bees to fly).
One of the biggest casualties (and deservedly so) of the AGW mythology, is the sacred pig of “peer review”. Other than covering the editor’s derriere, it never meant anything, it still doesn’t, and the more crap that gets by, the more stupid its “authority” becomes. Oddly, the warmalarmists keep claiming Anthony is never “peer reviewed”… Apparently they don’t get what happens in every hour of every day on this blog. The warministas “peer review” process should be as thorough.
What if it gets colder?
Can someone please send this to chief alarmist James Hansen so he can retract his silly statements like this,
“Despite uncertainties in reserve sizes, it is clear that if we burn all the fossil fuels, or even half of the remaining reserves, we will send the planet toward an ice-free state with sea level about 250 feet higher than today. It would take time for complete ice sheet disintegration to occur, but a chaotic situation would be created with changes occurring out of control of future generations.
from here http://solveclimate.com/blog/20090715/james-hansen-climate-tipping-points-and-political-leadership
Independent: but not so
“Dr Siddall said: “Given that the two approaches are entirely independent of each other, this result strengthens the confidence with which one may interpret the IPCC results. It is of vital importance that this semi-empirical result, based on a wealth of data from fossil corals, converges so closely with the IPCC estimates”
https://www.bris.ac.uk/iris/publications/details/person_key$XoQfstn0O6ulBYA9LdZ70VNazTiamC/personPublications
111049 Hansen, J, Sato, M, Kerecha, P, Russel, G, Lea, DW & Siddall, M. ‘Climate change and trace gases’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 365 (1856), (pp. 1925-1954), 2007. ISSN: 1364-503X 10.1098/rsta.2007.2052
the egg and chicken
HarryG (00:11:06) :
“Does that mean if there is cooling that the level will fall by between 7-82 cm?”
– they don’t say anything about that senario
“Is another way to express it 37.5 cm plus or minus 30.5cm or therabouts?”
– no, another way to express it 44.5cm +/- 37.5cm
I remember Hansen’s AGU presentation where he stated the CO2 climate sensitivity was “nailed” at 3.0C per doubling based on the ice age temperature changes.
I’ve been doing some experimenting and it turns out Albedo changes alone are capable of explaining all the temperature change during the ice ages. Based on the estimated increase of ice and snow during the ice ages, enough sunlight would have been reflected, rather than absorbed, to drop temperatures by 6C. Milankovitch cycles kick-off and pull-back the ice-Albedo feedback and that is all that is needed.
I’m sure some climate model could then build in a reduction in clouds to offset some of the ice-Albedo affect and then GHGs could be brought back into the picture but, again, all the “nailing” would have to be done by a climate model.
Sea level models based on climate models based on theoritical global warming models based on adjusted data models. Nice circle.
Latest University of Colorado sea level time series:
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_noib_ns_global.jpg