Things are changing with global sea level data reporting. As I mentioned in my post April 6th:
What’s delaying UC sea level data from being updated?
As you can see in the graph above, the data has not been updated since mid 2010. Normally an update would appear sometime in Feb 2011 based on their previous update schedules.
I had sent email queries, and they went unanswered. So I made a phone call. I got an answer, described here:
An answer to the question about why UC’s sea level data has not been updated since mid 2010
The answer from the chief researcher, Dr. R. Steven Nerem, was:
“We are updating our web page to a new design, and that is the reason for the delay.”
I replied with: “OK I understand, but the SL data hasn’t been updated since mid 2010, and people are asking questions about it.”
“Well we only update a couple times per year anyway. Sea level changes pretty slowly you know.”
I said: “Yes, but in looking at your previous release schedules, you would have been due for an update in February 2011, and that hasn’t happened. “
To which he replied:
“This new website design won’t work with our current format, so if you can just be patient and wait a couple of weeks we’ll have it online.”
During the same post, in comments, Peter Miller found what might be the “new” website and commented:
Anthony, here are the updated figures – you may be using a redundant site.
A little scary as you can see ‘this new improved version’ shows a greater rate of sea level rise than previously, but most important and ominously it is clearly obvious a whole heap of data points on the chart have been/changed/manipulated/strangled.
But why?
That website had some updated “look and feel” and an updated graph, which matched the presentation of the SL graph on the http://sealevel.colorado.edu website, but the data for the graph still ended in mid 2010 even though it had a 2011_rel1 stamp on it.
I figured: “OK, they are making a new website on another server, and they are going to switch it over and redirect the DNS pointer to the new server at some point. I didn’t even bother to make a screencap of the new website since I figured it would be updated soon.
In the meantime, WUWT and CA regular, stats guy RomanM got impatient and decided to find out for himself what the most recent data looked like. He was able to locate that JASON data and plot this ensemble. Note the slight downtrend in the last year.
While that in itself doesn’t prove anything, since we have had slight short downtrends before in the satellite SL data, it was interesting in that it appears this one has been going on a bit longer.
Today I got an email from a colleague wondering “what’s going on with sea level” and saying that he too was not getting any response from Dr. Nerem regarding his email inquiries. That prompted me to check http://crozon.colorado.edu/ again, and to my suprise, I found it “forbidden”, blocked at the server:
And the main website still isn’t updated: http://sealevel.colorado.edu
But they do have this message:
2011-04-25: We are currently making improvements to this site, and a new site and sea level estimate will be released shortly. Thanks for your patience.
So, we’ll watch with anticipation to see what the new website and data might look like.
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Lonnie E. Schubert says:
April 25, 2011 at 9:51 am
That’s quite the link.
The graph at that location is something I’d not want the general public to see. If accurate it would pull the wheels out from underneath the kool-aid truck.
As frustrating as the CU sea level page is, I would caution taking a look at the UAH daily temperature site before declaring that the sea level page’s untimeliness are driven by CU’s beliefs. While I do not believe that Dr. Spencer should be blamed for the satellite problems which lead to 10 of 12 channels not functioning, I am quite frustrated that he does not explain the “Average” line in the AQUA ch05 02 screen. It obviously is not the average against which he calculates monthly anomalies — anomalies compared to this line is much lower than what he reports. Perhaps it is the average of pre-AQUA days. Or maybe it is the old twenty-year average instead the new thirty-year average. Whatever that orange average line is, it is not well explained.
So are these the only people in the world who are tracking sea level change at this level of accuracy? I find that hard to believe and if true, very scary indeed. Surely the Dutch, who have more than a passing interest in and knowledge of things oceanic are keeping score?
As for updating the web page, the issue might indeed be one of using graduate students, who after all are looking for employment. The task is neither difficult nor time consuming for the type of web site they are presenting. Your average middle-schooler could do the job as homework and still have time for TV.
BTW, the “forbidden” web page located by Lonnie shows Jason data going in the exact opposite direction of their trend. WUWT?
I’ve learned to expect incompetence in most circumstances, but you have to have a very low opinion of someone to think they aren’t competent to update a single data point on an existing chart.
Maybe my definition of evil is different from yours. I’m a scientific materialist.
If one chooses to obscure scientific reality in any way or hinders the progress of science for any reason, that is evil.
Our research center has a web site that is updated with layout changes and new content from time to time. None of the doctors, statisticians, or database administrators touch any of the code that makes up the site. Our IT folks manage any layout or content changes to the site. Any time a change is required, it is first coded and tested in a development and test server. Once the changes are made and tested, the production server is then updated. The updates are performed during the wee hours of the morning (maintenance window) and generally have the site down for no more than 10-15 minutes so most site visitors would never experience an interruption in the site’s services.
The CU is an educational institution for crying out loud. If they can’t be bothered with an IT department or contract to a web development company, you would think they could recruit some students to work on the site. I’m sure at least one of them has a laptop or the CU has a computer in their computer science department to keep the web project on. It’s really not that difficult or expensive. If a much smaller research center like ours can muster the experience and adopt modern technology to manage our web site, I’m shocked that the CU, with all of its resources, is so pitifully inept.
@Lady Life Grows says: April 25, 2011 at 9:32 am
[..]
“Tuvalu, with the famous pictures of an underwater meeting held with snorkels, is rising.”
Actually that was the Maldives. Same con trick, different bunch of SnakeOil salesmen.
They can adjust the data points until the cows come home, but it doesn’t make one bit of difference.
Anyone, and I mean ANYONE, can go down to their favorite beach and see immediately that there is no sea level rise that can be discerned.
So, who do they think they’re fooling?
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain….
Sometimes it takes time to “Fix” the data so it shows what it is supposed to.
I wish I wasn’t so suspicious and cynical, but it seems that now that Hansen has told them which way the data is supposed to go… http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/21/nasas-hansen-thinks-sea-level-rise-will-be-accelerating-i-think-not-offering-a-new-paper-and-updated-story-on-hansen-to-show-why/
Are they rushing to make the “data” fit the story? One thing is certain if the recent downtrend suddenly becomes an uptrend, retroactively. I am going to doubt the result and the people producing it. There is way too much retroactive fudging of data going on, always in one direction, for me to take any of it seriously anymore.
ew-3 says:
April 25, 2011 at 11:04 am
Lonnie E. Schubert says:
April 25, 2011 at 9:51 am
That’s quite the link.
The graph at that location is something I’d not want the general public to see. If accurate it would pull the wheels out from underneath the kool-aid truck.
————————————————————
….. and if it’s what it looks like on its face, we have the real reason the posting is delayed.
I’ve uploaded it to Imageshack, since Google probably controls Google caches:
http://img847.imageshack.us/img847/7755/jasontgcal2010rel4.jpg
Jeff Carlson says:
April 25, 2011 at 9:17 am
hide the decline … another “trick” / good scientific practice ?
charlatans and con men the lot of them …
———————————————————————————————-
REPLY: Let’s see what the new website says before passing judgment – Anthony
———————————————————————————————-
Anthony, there is already some evidence in…
1. The page has been active for years. It stopped being updated coincidentally at the same time the data became off message.
2. The excuse “We are updating the page” is lame at best. It was mentioned, correctly in my opinion, that updating the old page would cost them nothing, the old page was still up, adding a data point or two should be a matter of a moments work. After months it, choosing not to update the old page because of a page redesign is beyond belief…
These two items together lead me to think that the real reason for the lack of updates is not what we have been told. And taking their story a face value is an exercise in cognitive dissonance.
Obama was right – the Seas are retreating.
Much too much is made of sea levels as it is somewhat meaningless to construct a rather pointless ‘average’.
In some places sea level is rising rapidly, in some places falling rapidly in others it is static. Land rises and land falls complicating everything (most sea level change is caused by land movement) and all measured by a woefully inaccurate satellite that isn’t used in the real world of flood defences ( tidal gauges would invariably be used as some sort of reliable record of the immediately surrounding area)
Sea levels even within the same tidal basin-such as the North Sea can vary by up to 6cm.
tonyb
Well done, keep the pressure on Anthony!
Science should be done with data on the table. Even if the data does not fit the theory it has to be published.
Who is afraid of the sinking sea level?
Anthony,
When he said “A new site AND Sea Level Estimate”, is that at all suspicious to you? Or did I take this out of context?
I am not a fan of the Constantly adjusting and altering data, if these folks decide to adjust the data, I’d ask for an FOI immediately.
I’ve read better descriptions of tide gauge measurements, but this one at CU seems adequate. http://sealevel.colorado.edu/tidegauges.html
Yes, some measurement sites are sinking and some are rising. Yes, that’s been known for years. Measuring sea level changes precisely with a tidal gauge is enormously difficult, but the older mechanical measurements are remarkably close to more recent satellite observations of sea level.
No, the warmists seem not in the slightest concerned about the fact that a century’s worth of sea level rise measurements — tidal gauge and satellite — shows a fairly constant rise in the past century of less than a foot and no perceptable acceleration. They don’t deny it. It’s in the ARs. They seem not to feel that it’s relevant to their dogma that climate change is an enormous threat and that if we do not panic now, we are all gonna die.
I think that the technical term for that is cognitive dissonance.
If you are not suspicious and cynical, you have not been paying attention. The institutions responsible for climate related data are well known for their loyalties and biases. This ain’t science, it is politics. We must use science to find the truth.
philincalifornia says:
April 25, 2011 at 11:57 am
————————————————————
….. and if it’s what it looks like on its face, we have the real reason the posting is delayed.
—————————————–
In the spirit of honesty, that image may not be what I thought it was. It appears to be Jason only data starting in 2002. There is no data up past early 2010.
Oddly it does not match well with their final product for during those years at
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
Anyone know what kind of data massaging is done to the data?
(Lonnie E. Schubert’s graph)
I believe that’s a calibration graph (representing the relationship between sea-level measured by Jason1 and by tide-gauges); not an actual sea-level time series.
Careful, now, lads – you don’t want to give Tamino material to work with.
It’s the new scientific method. Form a hypothesis, test the hypothesis, if the data doesn’t agree with they hypothesis…the data must be wrong.
The models don’t jive with the data, so which should we throw out?
Warning: your answer to that question may land you in thermally uncomfortable Political Incorrectitude.
A landlocked university in a landlocked state has global academic primacy in measuring sea level data? That’s very funny … ocean data is being collated by an academic who lives 920 miles from the nearest ocean.
They’ve been holding their breath so long
while awaiting the prayed-for apocalyptic ‘acceleration’
that they’ve passed out,
and hence can’t answer their phones or e-mails.
To sum up:
“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
Robert M says: “The page has been active for years. It stopped being updated coincidentally at the same time the data became off message.”
The May 2008 update was 134 days after the previous update. We have currently waited 132 days for this one. The July 2009 update took 127 days.
OK, so they have more recently been updating every 70-90 days, and it is frustrating having to wait for what is expected to be turning-point of the cycle, but I don’t think that any of the accusations of bad practice (absent concrete evidence) are justified. The next update is obviously going to be scrutinised pretty carefully. I have taken a copy of the current data – 4 datasets on http://sealevel.colorado.edu/results.php.