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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Is this another “travesty” ?
Anyone who lives by the sea already knows this. Yet, many of them deny what they see with their own eyes.
Hi Bob,
There is another counter effect that you may have missed last year.
@John
‘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’
Wel up to a point Lord Copper.
But whether the absolute depth of the ocean is 35,143 feet and 3 inches or 35,145 feet and 9 inches isn’t of much practical importance to Joe Public. The whole scare is supposed to be about that last 2’6″ and how it relates to the land.
Personally I think its all a load of scaremongering BS.
I walk across the River Thames in Central London every day to the sandwich shop, and see the tide go up and down about 14′ every 6 hours. If the peak is a couple of feet higher in 100 years, there are plenty of opportunities to put another three or four bricks in the river wall between now and then. One brick every twenty-five years doesn’t seem an insurmountable practical problem to me.
The oceans are huge heat sinks. Their heat content regulates both sea levels and air temperatures. Has this not been obvious for years already? — John M Reynolds
The problem is they used US tide gauges…
..and we all know that it only happens in countries that the UN says “do not pay”
like the Maldives, who are so scared of flooding that they are building a new airport at sea level
Which also explains all of the ancient sea ports in Europe that are 100’s of feet above mean high tide…………
For some reason there is a disproportional number of people with no common sense that have gravitated to the field of climate science.
…and never make the connection that archaeologists have to go miles inland in order to excavate an ancient seaport.
Even if this will help debunk the AGW theory, the EPA is still bent on enforcing new carbon rules on the US industries and this just proves they are out only for control and money. Until these fools are voted out, the US will continue to suffer from the changes they are enforcing.
It’s not a bombshell to the AGW crowd. Anything contrary to their religion is ignored. Same with any ‘landmark’, ‘bombshell’, ‘seminal’, ‘key’, or any such agrandising adjective paper.
My favorite sea level gauge is Syndey, Australia
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_global_station.shtml?stnid=680-140
I think the actual numbers go back much farther than what is listed, but got cropped for some reason…
Why are people so good in one area seemingly bad in others?
If they know enough science to study sea level changes and write cogently about it, why are they unable to grasp that we do not have a net warming over the last 100 years, with now being warmer?
As the temperature peak was in the 1930’s and we are cooler than then now, it stands to reason that the main or most rapid sea level rise occurred back then and now is less rapid.
As the world gets warmer, it expands, and hence has a higher surface area over which to spread all the oceans, and this precisely cancels out the expected sea level rise acceleration!
(places head back in sand)
Latitude says:
“For some reason there is a disproportional number of people with no common sense that have gravitated to the field of climate science.
…and never make the connection that archaeologists have to go miles inland in order to excavate an ancient seaport.”
It’s the wonderful, huge, luxurious funding! They are rolling in dough! Anybody wonder why studying climate takes billions when other sciences are nearly all in the single digit millions? This is not politicized science, this is purchased science.
“You cannot trust a person whose livelihood and the welfare of his family depends on him agreeing with his boss.”
This is a very interesting paper! Thanks for posting it here. I have often wondered why the alarmists tend to stay away from providing any current data to support their claims for rising sea levels — they stopped measuring it when it went against the narrative. 7 years and counting… I can only imagine the panic among the hysterics as time and again the planet continues to prove them wrong.
Cheers!
Jimbo says:
Even methane rise seems to be flattening.
Shouldn’t that be flatulent?
Does anyone have a link for the paper with color?
REPLY:I doubt there is a color version. They probably blew their meager funds on open access costs. Not not all papers at JCR are open access, you actually have to pay for that. This was an unfunded work – Anthony
Melting glaciers will raise sea levels and warming temperatures will cause the water to expand, so sea levels will rise if the earth’s temperature increases. It’s like a giant thermometer that measures earth’s temperature. Maybe the thermometer is telling us the earth isn’t warming as fast as the warmers say it is.
Many thanks Anthony – got the paper downloaded, spotted the point and, I must say this looks a very tidy piece of empirical work.
Wrong answer! They need to waterboard the tide gauges. Bring in the interrogators/numbe-crunchers from the Brisbane flood:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/operator-of-dam-invented-rain-data/story-e6frg6nf-1226028379093
BarryW: Thanks for the link. Could you please explain what units the figures are in?
Thanks
Professor Bob Ryan says:
March 28, 2011 at 5:26 am
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.
====================================================
Bob, if you have 5 gallons a minute going in, after you build the dam and it’s full, don’t you still have 5 gallons a minute going out…………..
Do they have a spaghetti plot where they show whether the gauges are high or low during various periods? In other words, are some gauges showing consistent acceleration/decelleration, or, is the acceleration normally distributed even within each gauge over 10 year periods?
Confirms Morner’s work no?…
Probably because there hasn’t been a “worldwide” temperature increase. Temp has certainly increased in cities and near AC exhaust outlets, but rurally, not outside the error bands.
The assertion in the article that sea level rise acceleration isn’t happening despite a ‘global temperature’ rise is inaccurate, as the ‘global’ temperature rise simply can’t be supported by the evidence.
I wrote this article with Verity Jones last year, illustrating that a proportion of areas have been cooling for a statistically meaningful period of at least 30 years.
Add in UHI- which blights a proportion of other records- and the overall temperature rise-where observed – is very gentle and can be traced back to 1607.
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2010/09/01/in-search-of-cooling-trends/
I also communicated personal;ly with Simon Holgate of Proudman Observatory regarding his paper, in which he observed that the rate of sea level rise in the second part of the 20th Century was less than the rise in the first half.
He agreed this was correct but asked me to point out that statistically there was no difference. In other words there is no sign of acceleration throughout the 20th Century and this latest article updates those observations.
Tonyb
Thanks for finding this Anthony. Aside from the stable sea level, I am glad someone put a number on irrigation. I calculated a number from UN estmates of irrigation, probably inflated, and came up with ~2mm/yr. Even 0.8mm/yr is a significant dent in the ‘catastrophic’ sea level increase. One of the most absurd aspects of the catastrophic argument, from my perspective, is that tenacity to hold onto the catastrophic view in spite of no acceleration. Year after year this perspective became more absurd because each year it continued thus, meant that the coming acceleration would have to be more extreme to catch up with the failed prognosis.