From this article in The Hindu: (h/t to WUWT reader Adam Gallon)
“In the 20th century, sea-level rise was recorded at an average of 17 centimetres. If the sea-level was significantly lower, clearly the same tsunami would have had a less devastating effect. Therefore, sea-level rise is a kind of multiplier of the kinds of threats and negative impacts that will take place anyway,”
It seems to me that clearly Dr. Pachauri can’t mentally manage the concept of scale. Here’s the NOAA wave height graphic that was flashed around the world on news media shortly after the Tsunami Warning was issued, while the tsunami was still traveling across the Pacific:
Source: NOAA Center for Tsunami Research and NOAA Scientific Visualization Lab
Note the inset I added, now here’s that inset area magnified with the color key added and the 17cm Pachauri mentions marked:
Hmmm, for the people of Japan in the hardest hit areas, I don’t think it would matter much. But let’s compare the numbers and find out.
We can describe it another way in the scale of familiar human experience. Wiki gives this 2006 value for the average height of the Japanese people, the left figure is male, the right is female:
| Japan | 1.715 m (5 ft 7 1⁄2 in) | 1.580 m (5 ft 2 in) |
Let’s look at some other things:
Bonsai trees reach an average height of two feet (61cm)
Read more: Why Is the Bonsai Tree Passed Down Within the Family? | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/facts_6744566_bonsai-passed-down-within-family_.html#ixzz1HR1GULDU
From Wiki, the height of the sea wall at the Fukushima reactor site:
“The plant was protected by a sea wall and designed to withstand a tsunami of 5.7 [570cm] meters…”
The actual height of the Tsunami wave there:
…but the tsunami had a height of about 14 meters [1400 cm] and topped this sea wall
OK let’s make some scale imagery to help visualize these values:
Now let’s insert the image above into the image which shows the height of the Tsunami as reported at the Fukushima reactor complex:
Click the above image to present it at the actual 1 pixel = 1 centimeter scale on your monitor.
That 17 centimeters that Dr. Pachauri speaks of makes all the difference, doesn’t it?
Note to other bloggers: feel free to use these graphics under “fair use” terms, but please provide a link back to this article at:
UPDATE: I had noted the actual sea level trend near the north coast of Japan as measured by satellites, but figured I need not mention it since the story stood well enough on its own.
Commenter “Skip” however seemed to think otherwise, so I had to bring it up. See below:
Works out negative with the correction applied too: http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_ib.jpg
Note the negative trend in sea level for Japan’s north coast, which makes Pachy’s 17cm worries totally pointless. Doesn’t he have Internet access?
UPDATE2: This report of sea level trends in Japan from the Japan Meteorological agency shows the current SL lower than in 1950 by about 20mm. That certainly doesn’t square with AGW theory well, and again makes Pachy’s 17cm value for the area pointless. See: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/10897163/National-Report-of-Japan
h/t to WUWT reader “An Inquirer” for the report
Bonsai trees reach an average height of two feet
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Anthony
Please do not give any of his ravings any credibility. Pleaase just consign them to internet hell. [snip – ad hom,]
As others have said, the exact value of sea level has no effect on wave height above the immediate sea level, or the mass of the wave above sea level, since the size of the wave is determined by the energy and nature of the seismic disturbance and local topography. The argument that a higher sea level makes a tsunami bigger makes no sense, implying as it does that a 17 meter tsunami couldn’t hurt a neolithic beachcomber back when sea levels were 17 meters lower – because the wave height would be zero. Physics doesn’t work like that.
Dr. Pachaui is going to be in poor standing with the Climate Science Rapid Response Team™. If only he had consulted with them first, they could have referred him to the proper scientist/publicist. They certainly would have insisted on using units matched to the resolution of the satellites currently in orbit.
Any marketing guy could have told him to say 170 mm. It sounds so much larger in a sound bite than a mere 17 cm. One hundred, seventy. It even has more syllables.
It is simply amazing to see skip beat his head against reality until it bleeds. A glib and shallow understanding of things appears to be a trait among AGW hysterics. It used to be sadly humorous to look back at the ignorant and superstitious ways of our ancestors. Wee Skippy demonstrates plainly how that pitiful ignorance is making a comeback.
peter_dtm says:
March 23, 2011 at 2:51 pm
“If some one has a Japan Pilot kicking around; perhaps they could see at what state of tide the tsunami hit?”
Nearby tide gauges show that the tsunami hit very near low tide. Otherwise, it could have been considerably worse insofar as run-up elevations are concerned.
BTW, run-up is usually measured from tidal datum level, whereas wave height is trough to crest. Many here confuse the two measures.
[[[roger says: (to Skip)
March 23, 2011 at 1:46 pm
Not only are you a boorish and gratuitously rude fellow, you are also stupid enough not to have read over your childish, vituperative and ill considered rant before posting.
There is an old motto ” manners makyth the man”. Quite what the tenor of your post makes of you, I will leave you to consider. ]]]
I love the gifted way the British have of putting English words together… well done, Roger. After all, the language is from England. They have had more practice.
Btw, apparently the 14m estimate was very conservative. At least one field survey now puts it at 23.5m: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/03/23/height-estimate-japans-tsunami-wave-tops-70-feet/
*I would expect the height of the wave to be the height above the sea level at the time.* –Jerome!
Wow! So would I. What is “sea level” relative *to*, Jerome? The *land*. A greater volume of water will hit any given land location *more* so if sea level is higher. Massively more so—even if its only 17 cm higher now than in 1900. AW cannot see this simple fact and its appalling that neither can any of you! Any coastal location that has not migrated the appropriate distance up hill (which would vary by topography of course) will *get more water*–massively more. Do you deny that?
The key point here is that AW is trying to argue that 17 cm is not a whole lot relative to the height of a Japanese person or a water barrier, when the issue is the increased *volume* and thus mass of water when you multiply (to certainly oversimplify; wave dynamics are probably quite complex) that 17 cm times the crucial area of the tsunami–which can have a wavelength of up to 500 km.
*A completely academic question.* –RWakefield.
Richard! You remember me. I’m charmed. Hey, have you shared your T-test analysis with the boys at WUWT yet? Want me to? Have you told the Wattslings about your ideas about the Weather Channel? How about your email conversations with Judith Curry?
And you’re right, it is an academic question—and as such is probably beyond your grasp
*Are you saying that if the ocean was -17cm there would be no tsunami???*
Where for the love of God did you get this inference from my statements?
*You seem to think that the width of the wave has nothing to do with its height, which of course it does.* –Troll
What? When did I say that? The height is what it is—and in this case its 17 cm higher what it was in 1900—however its width affects it. That is a massive volume of additional water to strike any fixed coastal location.
*But you have already been told a number of times that sea level around Japan has been falling for a considerable time.* –Dave Andrews
Where? As calculated how? That’s crucial. Upward shifts of submarine plates do not count as “falling sea level”.
But the bottom line, guys, is this: I want you all to throw in your vote. I want to give everyone a chance to really weigh in on this. I really want to see this.
Who thinks the raw additional *height* (17 cm), relative to the height of barrier walls, trees, and people, of the tsunami, is the crucial detail in determining how a 17 cm total sea level rise would affect the destructive power of a tsunami? Come on now, don’t be shy!
Everybody vote. Who agrees with AW that that is the right way to respond to Pauchari?
REPLY: Skip, this is my website, you don’t get to choose what I write here or how I do it. You also don’t get to run your own voting campaigns here. And you’ve missed the point, again. You may want to stick to playing cops and robbers, more your speed. – Anthony
You distort we deride says:
March 23, 2011 at 12:42 pm
“[snip]
Seventeen centimeters is often enough to make the difference between drowning and survival.
Especially when the victims are children.”
How does a difference of 17 cm affect children in a different way than grown-ups? For instance, if you are a 1.58 m high man standing next to a 1.75m high woman, that’s the same difference than between a 0.87m high girl next to a 1.04m high boy. Could you elaborate?
Can we clarify this with a few questions?
What does he mean by ’17cm sea level rise’ is that an absolute i.e measure earths diameter between two points that are both at ocean surface; was x, is now (x+34cm)?
Or is he claiming that the net result at the Japanese coast of subsidence, land heave, volcanic activity, other tectonic changes and land reclamation activities is equivalent to a sea level rise of 17cm?
How significant should this be regarded in comparison to other known variabilities like the twice daily tidal changes, wind force and direction, shape and gradient of ocean floor, apogee of the moon etc etc…
Let’s be honest this was an event of cataclysmic power that moved the planet on its axis, shifted the whole country a few feet to the left, shortened the planetary day. Do we seriously consider that a nominal difference of 6+3/4 inches makes that much difference, particularly when we haven’t indicated what that means concerning the actual relationship between sea-level and coastline in Japan
Skip;
I don’t think that it was the 17 km or water that caused the problem, I think that it was the nuclear reactor.
You see nuclear reactors create a lot of energy all in one place, and as we all know from E=MC2 an increase in energy caused an increase in mass equal to the amount of energy times C, which is the speed of light. C it 300,000 meters/second so at 1 GW the rector was placing point load onto the earth of nearly 3 quadrillion tons.
It was this point loading of the tectonic plate that caused the earthquake in the first place. The mass created by the concentrated energy of the reactors in Japan pushed down and flipped the middle of the pacific plate up, simple.
If they had used windmills and solar cells evenly distributed throughout the country then the weight created by the mass caused by the energy creation would have been properly distributed and the quake would never have happened.
So Skip, keep this in mind when you next post.
1. Nuclear reactors create energy.
2. Mass (weight) is equal to the energy created times the speed of light.
3. Generating a lot of energy in a single location puts a sever point load on the earth.
4. Nuclear reactors cause earthquakes.
Have a nice day
I think I missed something…
..what is that sex God talking about?
I thought sea levels had fallen in Japan?
Skip
That 17 cm was accumulated over one century. I am going to guess that most of the buildings destroyed were less than 50 years old. Did they move farther back up hill as the 85 mm (50 year’s worth) encroached? Nope ’cause no one seven noticed. (As others have already said the relative sea level is actually lower in that part of the world.)
Please please pray tell what difference 17 cm would have made to the souls being washed away in these photos? None.
http://dailyaperture.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/japan-tsunami21.jpg
And here…
http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2011-03/60246626.jpg
You piously act as if you and your ilk could have saved these poor souls. Shame on you!
skip says:
March 23, 2011 at 12:18 pm
Mr. Watts:
This is simply a silly response …
‘Nuff said.
🙂
TEPCO now indicates wave was 14 meters!
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_Fukushima_faced_14-metre_tsunami_2303113.html
Or should I say 13.983 meters without agw?
This is beyond stupid. What do you think would happen if sea levels were 14 metres lower? There would be no tsunami? The sea level is totally irrelevant – even if it had risen
This kind of scare mongering should illegal
I suppose I really should go and do some math, but time and motive are in short supply, but I wonder…..
“World shipping fleet grows by 10.1% in deadweight tonnage during 2010”
“According to a new research from N.Cotzias Shipping Group, the world’s shipping fleet in service has grown by 10.1% in terms of carrying capacity, and amounts 1.39 billion tones compared to 1.26 billion tones in 2009.”
http://www.shippingonline.cn/news/newsContent.asp?id=18361
Has Dr. Pachauri bought a yacht? Could account for 0.0000… about the same effect as 17cm in a century or a super moon? Or super Moonie? Voodoo Science is getting warmer, moved from ice to water.
re: skip’s 17cm, to 17in, to 1.7m all in one post.
Do I detect super-exponentially accelerating sea-level rise here?
Hey Skip, write a quick “draft” report & submit it to Romm. He’ll swallow anything and is sure to blog it without any fact-checking since sounds so alarming.
Video footage of the tsunami that hit Japan this month makes it clear: This was no ordinary wave. And now there are initial estimates for just how high it reached — nearly 80 feet in at least one place.
A field survey from the country’s Port and Airport Research Institute put the height of a tsunami wave that struck a coastal city in Japan’s Iwate Prefecture on March 11 at 77.4 feet high.
But even at that height, the wave in Ofunato was lower than Japan’s domestic record of 125 feet, measured in the 1896 Meiji Sanriku Earthquake Tsunami, which killed 27,000 on the Japanese island of Honshu.
Kazuhiko Toda, a researcher at the institute, told Kyodo News the height of the recent tsunami was measured where counter-tsunami facilities and breakwaters were set up. He added that the location of the reading may have given an artificially lower power recording than the tsunami in 1896.
A 2004 magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra generated a 114.5 foot wave that killed 230,000 in a dozen countries surrounding the Indian Ocean.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/03/23/height-estimate-japans-tsunami-wave-tops-70-feet/
skip says:
March 23, 2011 at 4:12 pm
much more blathering.
============================
Skip, do yourself a favor and read the posts. If you still don’t understand, read them again. If you still don’t yet understand how you are indeed oversimplifying the question, making assertions that can’t possibly be known, and then asking a question based on the previously mentioned fallacies, then simply ask for a differently worded explanation. The people here, are generally of more grace, but, you start by attacking your host. I don’t care where you’re at, it is bad form. And, as you can see, by engaging in such form and continuing to do so, you’re simply serving the blog equivalent of a chew toy.
Its been explained. A 14m tsunami, regardless of sea level is 14m. It has been shown that the area hit has experienced sea level decrease. Scroll to the top. It has also been touched upon that the 17cm is a highly questionable number to come to with any degree of certainty. Here’s a poll to take back to wherever you came from, how many of them would agree that as a representative of the IPCC, that Pachy should have considered these questions before making his sweeping and overgeneralized statement?
sky says:
March 23, 2011 at 3:53 pm
peter_dtm says:
March 23, 2011 at 2:51 pm
“If some one has a Japan Pilot kicking around; perhaps they could see at what state of tide the tsunami hit?”
Nearby tide gauges show that the tsunami hit very near low tide. Otherwise, it could have been considerably worse insofar as run-up elevations are concerned.
So very near low tide would be almost 1.7 m below High Tide.
So with the daily tidal range plus17cm (0.17m) – nope; sorry can’t see much difference; however being near low tide surely made a large(r) difference. Time of day is more important than any supposed sea level rise.
Shore lines are normally derived from High Water (Mean Spring High Water IIRC for England; Spring High Water for Wales and I think Scotland is Mean High Water. Japan no doubt measures start of land from some variant of the High Water Mark). However people build where their planning authorities let them – using 100 year highs as the normal precautionary line to stay above if you want to stay dry. A twentieth century rise of a whole 17cm (0.17m/170mm) seems pretty damn irrelevant – that’s what some 68mm (0.068m/6.8cm) rise since 1970 – compared to a daily tidal range of 1.7 m – please it is like AGW should be – an irrelevance!
Yeah sure. My point was about credit being given where it’s due. A topic it seems you are keen to support.
Wiki is an impressive piece of software that does not deserve to have its name misappropriated for refering to Wikipedia, which after all is just one on thousands of sites that use it.
Wiki is Wiki not Wikipedia. 😉
The energy and momentum of the wave in deep water is set by the movement of the earthquake, not by the depth of the water. Any difference in sea level as measured at a coast merely determines where the wave runs up on land and breaks… if the sea bottom slope is 1:10, this moves the break point (drumroll) about 170 cm seaward.
has anyone calculated the plus or minus effect of storm surges from typhoons in the area over the years.
it seems as though those would be enough change in depth over a large enough area to do the kind of weight change effects you guys are talking about.
C
skip says:
March 23, 2011 at 1:49 pm
“Let me ask you a direct question, Mac: Do you agree, as AW argues, that the hypothetical 17 cm increase in height of the tsunami is the crucial factor in determining whether sea level rise exacerbates tsunami damage?
Again, please consider that a direct question.”
Ahhh Skippy,
To quote you, “Straw man and red herring!” Yet, I personally cannot bring myself to use that lame evasion so here’s my direct answer anyway, Skip!
A purported 17 cm (0.17M) change in sea level over a century of time has no bearing on the unproven hypothesis of Man Made Global Warming. Nor does it have any bearing on Pachuri’s and your claim that it adds ‘something special’ to a tsunami.
Changes in sea level are natural events. Sea level is always changing, over centuries or aeons. Gradual crustal rebound and subsidence are natural events, continually altering perceived sea levels. Earth quakes are natural events, with attendant sudden crust upthrusts and drops that affect local perceived sea levels. Tsunamis are natural events, caused by those sea bed upthrusts or drops.
In addition, the destructive forces of tsunamis are greatly influenced by the height of the local tide, the sea bed slope approach to the local shore, the concavity or convexity of the local shore line, the local winds driving water ‘onshore’ or ‘offshore’, and a host of other natural influences and constraints. Claiming that 0.17M (6.8 inches) more or less of natural average water height had paramount significance to a cataclysmic natural event like the tsunami that hit Japan is a fools fevered fantasy, given all of the other naturally contributing variables of equal and far greater potential. Further claiming that man had any significant ‘sea level’ contribution to these natural events is unsupported, despicable machiavellian alarmism. A fool may be pitied but willful deceit should never be tolerated.
Forgive my following sarcasm, but it mirrors your previous dismissive derision:
Fourth graders can understand this. Why can’t you?
Consider that a rhetorical question…….