The paper is currently in press at the Journal of Coastal Research and is provided with open access to the full publication. The results are stunning for their contradiction to AGW theories which suggest global warming would accelerate sea level rise during the last century.
“Our first analysis determined the acceleration, a2, for each of the 57 records with results tabulated in Table 1 and shown in Figure 4. There is almost a balance with 30 gauge records showing deceleration and 27 showing acceleration, clustering around 0.0 mm/y2.”
…
The near balance of accelerations and decelerations is mirrored in worldwidegauge records as shown in Miller and Douglas (2006)
Abstract:
Sea-Level Acceleration Based on U.S. Tide Gauges and Extensions of Previous Global-Gauge Analyses
J. R. Houston† and R. G. Dean‡ †Director Emeritus, Engineer Research and Development Center, Corps of Engineers, 3909 Halls Ferry Road, Vicksburg, MS 39180, U.S.A. james.r.houston@usace.army.mil
‡Professor Emeritus, Department of Civil and Coastal Civil Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, U.S.A. dean@coastal.ufl.edu
Without sea-level acceleration, the 20th-century sea-level trend of 1.7 mm/y would produce a rise of only approximately 0.15 m from 2010 to 2100; therefore, sea-level acceleration is a critical component of projected sea-level rise. To determine this acceleration, we analyze monthly-averaged records for 57 U.S. tide gauges in the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) data base that have lengths of 60–156 years. Least-squares quadratic analysis of each of the 57 records are performed to quantify accelerations, and 25 gauge records having data spanning from 1930 to 2010 are analyzed. In both cases we obtain small average sea-level decelerations. To compare these results with worldwide data, we extend the analysis of Douglas (1992) by an additional 25 years and analyze revised data of Church and White (2006) from 1930 to 2007 and also obtain small sea-level decelerations similar to those we obtain from U.S. gauge records.
Received: October 5, 2010; Accepted: November 26, 2010; Published Online: February 23, 2011
Sea-Level Acceleration Based on U.S. Tide Gauges and Extensions of Previous Global-Gauge Analyses, J. R. Houston and R. G. Dean
Discussion: (excerpt)
We analyzed the complete records of 57 U.S. tide gauges that had average record lengths of 82 years and records from1930 to 2010 for 25 gauges, and we obtained small decelerations of 20.0014 and20.0123 mm/y2, respectively. We obtained similar decelerations using worldwide-gauge records in the original data set of Church andWhite (2006) and a 2009 revision (for the periods of 1930–2001 and 1930–2007) and by extending Douglas’s (1992) analyses of worldwide gauges by 25 years.
The extension of the Douglas (1992) data from 1905 to 1985 for 25 years to 2010 included the period from 1993 to 2010 when satellite altimeters recorded a sea-level trend greater than that of the 20th century, yet the addition of the 25 years resulted in a slightly greater deceleration.
Conclusion:
Our analyses do not indicate acceleration in sea level in U.S. tide gauge records during the 20th century. Instead, for each time period we consider, the records show small decelerations that are consistent with a number of earlier studies of worldwide-gauge records. The decelerations that we obtain are opposite in sign and one to two orders of magnitude less than the +0.07 to +0.28 mm/y2 accelerations that are required to reach sea levels predicted for 2100 by Vermeer and Rahmsdorf (2009), Jevrejeva, Moore, and Grinsted (2010), and Grinsted, Moore, and Jevrejeva (2010). Bindoff et al. (2007) note an increase in worldwide temperature from 1906 to 2005 of 0.74uC.
It is essential that investigations continue to address why this worldwide-temperature increase has not produced acceleration of global sea level over the past 100 years, and indeed why global sea level has possibly decelerated for at least the last 80 years.
Full paper available online here
WUWT download (faster) here: jcoastres-d-10-00157.1
h/t to John Droz and to Dr. Willem de Lange
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ANOTHER SHOCKER!
The IPCC admits that it has “no evidence for any acceleration of sea level rise” yet I bet they found evidence pointing the other way. It’s simply is not going to plan. AGW made projections and some of the evidence seems to be pointing the other way.
Temperature rise over the last decade has also stalled.
Small correction:
In my last comment the last paragraph is not from the IPCC but from Simon Holgate, Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory, Liverpool. The first paragraph is from the IPCC.
Why is this a surprise? Anyone who has ever looked at this chart http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Recent_Sea_Level_Rise.png knows that sea level change has been nearly constant for over a century and if there was any acceleration at all, it was slight and took place in the 1920s.
It is this, along with the failure of tropical cyclone activity to increase as predicted http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/ and the fact that ice core temperature/CO2 data doesn’t support a high sensitivity of temperature to CO2 concentration that cause me to believe that the climate models simply can not be correct. That seems too many negatives for what is, after all, just a theory, to overcome.
It looks like a good study. However concerns of future sea level rise aren’t based on the current rate or acceleration but the possible melting of glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica. There is little doubt major melting on these glaciers would rise sea levels.
The acceleration estimates depend on the time window used. See:
http://www.glaciology.net/Home/PDFs/Announcements/Recent-global-sea-level-acceleration-started-over-200-years-ago-
And which tide gauges are used.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2005GL024826.shtml
Allegedly due to the recent 9.0 Japan Quake much of the coast affected not just moved up to 8ft – 12ft sideways towards the USA but also subsided up to 1 to 2 meters downwards which helped to defeat some of their tsunami sea walls in some locations and enabled the tsunami to encroach further inland than otherwise would have been expected.
Information alleged in the new documentary “Japan’s Tsunami, How It Happened 2011” (http://www.freshwap.net/documentaries/625490-channel-4-japans-tsunami-how-it-happened-2011-ws.html). Definitely worth watching. Excellent first ever close up live footage of earthquake cracks forming and ground moving back and forth due to liquefaction of the ground with liquid emerging from the cracks.
So Japan or parts of it sinking is a sea level issue that will have to be properly adjusted for and well documented with new 3d survey data, not to mention new GPS location data. It will be interesting to see a 3d deformation map of the entire region as a result of the earthquake and the tsunami (which may have also scraped soil or deposited new surface material in various places complicating these computations).
Since tax dollars are highly involved here the US Senate should investigate but it will take better people in the senate to have a real investigation.
I searched for the “Journal of Coastal Research” at Google and got 173,000 results.
Journalseek.net has it listed here.
The University of Ulster has referenced it here.
A US government agency has it listed here.
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has referenced it here.
The journal’s articles are peer-reviewed and encompasses all subjects relevant to natural and engineered environments. Its archive prior to 2004 are available at JSTOR. JSTOR has been going strong sice 1993.
It is not April Fools day yet my friend. This journal seems Kosher.
@marchesarosa
My understanding is the same as yours.
Sealevels have been rising for hundreds of years without anyobody really noticing. It is such a slow effect that periodic renewal of sea defences has been sufficient to render it a nuisance rather than a catastrophe.
AGW catastrophists require the rate of rise to increase (accelerate), because otherwise there will be a collective vast shrug…if we could happly handle the current rate of rise in say 1750, why shoudl we not be able to in 2050 – with all the advances in enegineering and technology since then.
So the fact that the rate of rise is not increasing, but decreasing, is yet another blow to the catatstrophist case. If sealevel rise is not something to metaphorically wet one’s knickers about, there isn’t much else left to scare people with.
Does anybody know how much continental drift / expansion of our globes diameted impact the sea level?
It’s great that a study has come out to confirm this.
But it’ll be fairly easy for the warmists to argue that it doesn’t disprove anything. Afterall, the most catastrophic predictions are not so much about gradual sea level rises, but about step changes to sea level rises. For example, the Greenland icesheet melting into the ocean; or the WAIS melting. Those events would produce a step change.
All this study does is show that those events haven’t happened yet. Therefore sea level continues to rise at a fairly un-alarming rate.
I’m not sure it’s a bombshell either way.
Dont worry a new result properly hemogonised and adjusted to show what’s really going on will be a long in a moment, the IPCC and team thank you for your patience /sarc
marchesarosa
See this graph showing post glacial sea level rise decelerating then flattening.
That would be +0.00 mm/y2 and definitely not -0.00 mm/y2.
Do I need a /sarc here?
What will the Fiddlestick Team over at Unreal Climate make of it?
Either “We know this already and it doesn’t change anything.”
Or ” It is much worse than we thought not only are the seas turning acid but they are also evaporating away and we can’t account for where all the heat has gone”
Oh dear! Another bombshell!
Dr David Evans
I have said before that AGW is the biggest scientific financial SCAM ever perpetrated on the human race.
Now I cannot remember where I read this but the gist of the argument is as follows: the deceleration in the rise below that anticipated by the modelers is because we have built large numbers of damns, reservoirs and other devices for storing large quantities of water thus masking the true effect. When we stop building damns, reservoirs and other devices those of us without buoyancy aids had better watch out!
REPLY: Yes water retention was mentioned, saying it have about 0.54 mm/yr negative effect IIRC. See the link to the full paper – Anthony
Ps: I may have offended any pedants out there. The correct spelling is dam.
pwl says:
March 28, 2011 at 4:33 am
I find that report hilarious. 8 to 12 feet toward the USA? How about how far away from Australia? Or Timbuktu?
There is a perfectly acceptable and usable metric that works wherever you happen to be, and it is in common usage: North, South, East and West!
Re the last pot, the report is not hilarious, my apologies. The fact that The reporters believe everything has to ‘relate’ to the USA is, however. Sounds a bit like my mother.
As usual, there will be no mention of this study anywhere in the MSM.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Mike says:
March 28, 2011 at 4:31 am
It looks like a good study. However concerns of future sea level rise aren’t based on the current rate or acceleration but the possible melting of glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica. There is little doubt major melting on these glaciers would rise sea levels.
The acceleration estimates depend on the time window used. See:
http://www.glaciology.net/Home/PDFs/Announcements/Recent-global-sea-level-acceleration-started-over-200-years-ago-
And which tide gauges are used.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2005GL024826.shtml
_________________
That’s true, Mike. What you might remember is that 200 yrs ago we were just coming out of the ‘Little Ice Age”, as is clearly shown on the graph you presented.
Never mind that most of the propagandists have tried to make the LIA disappear in their data manipulations elsewhere…
Danish meteorological institute has measured the water level since 1890
and have measured only small fluctuations…
Text from their page:
DMI’s calculation of the mean sea level around Denmark during the past 115 years.
It appears from the data series, that the mean water level fluctuates up and down over 115 annual average, and that we are currently in a highwatermode, where the mean sea level for 2004 is 5.6 cm. above the 115 year average.
Average water level was nearly 8 cm. above the 115 annual average in 1989, 1983 and 1967 – while it was 8 cm below in 1996 and 1941.
No measurements since 2004 on their site – click on link to view the form.
http://www.dmi.dk/dmi/index/klima/klimaet_indtil_nu/vind_og_vandstand_i_danmark.htm
For those looking for updated sea level data Aviso has a file here
SeaLevel
It is a sad reflection on modern science, but I guess the political landscape is changing and so a scientist wishing to make his/her name now counters the orthodoxy.
Can we accurately determine a worldwide trend in sea level changes from gauges in one country?
It isn’t just that one country doesn’t necessarily determine what is happening worldwide, but also that countries can have different rates of either rise or decline of coastlines. Louisiana has lost large amounts of coastline because the Mississippi no longer replenishes much of it with new silt, for example (because the river has been channelized by levees and now spills its silt only in the delta, rather than overflowing its banks as in the past).
A gauge on the Louisiana coast, 100 to 200 miles west of the Mississippi delta, would show sea level rise of around 5 feet in less than 100 years.
Contrast that with Bangladesh, where the huge rivers there continue to deposit so much silt from the Himilayas that the land mass in the delta is actually growing. A gauge there would say that sea levels are shrinking (relative to land elevation).
Some parts of Scandanavia are still rising, rebounding from the weight of ice on them 15,000 years ago.
Therefore, wouldn’t the best way to look at sea level trends be the U Colo sea level compilation from satellites? This methodology looks at actual world wide sea levels in absolute terms, rather than in comparison to various shorelines which may be rising or sinking for various reasons.