UPDATE: The serial regurgitation has started. See the end of the article.
Somehow, I just can’t get past the picture of the guy in the beret who seems to be saying to the cameraman “Look the island! It is disappearing before our eyes!”. Red underline mine.
Now here’s the interesting part…we’ve apparently seen this sea level rising 3x faster “secret leaked report” before:
Yep, back in 2009, the same claims were made, right about the time of the Copenhagen Climate Conference. Of course it isn’t surprising to see Climate Progress leading the pack with such disinformation, it is what the blogger is paid to do. But. let’s look at the unpaid reality of the data.
From this post by Willis Eschenbach: Putting the Brakes on Acceleration he plots the satellite data up to September of 2010. If anything it looks like the trend is slightly decelerating:
And, as we’ve seen from the latest JASON-1 and JASON-2 data, plotted by RomanM, there does not seem to be any acceleration in sea level rise. In fact it seems quite linear. The data speaks for itself, with a general slight downturn in the JASON1-2 data since late 2009: 
Of course, the fact that this is old news and that when you examine the claims, they just don’t hold up. Nope that won’t stop the “secret leaked report” from being released tomorrow here at http://www.amap.no/ and a serial regurgitation by news media.
h/t to Duncan and CTM
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UPDATE: Here we go…
http://www.independentmail.com/news/2011/may/03/new-report-confirms-arctic-melt-accelerating/
Here is the list of stories from Google so far. The best thing our readers can do is visiti these links and place comments if they are allowed, showing that so far, sea level rise has not accelerated at all. – Anthony
izen says:
May 3, 2011 at 8:36 am
A continual steady rise in sea levewl over the length of available records.
However this is not as definitive a conformation of global sea level rise as might be desired.
The Netherlands are subject to isostatic rebound from the loss of the North Eurasian ice-cap at the end of the last glacial period so it is sinking relative to sea level.
Meanwhile the measurements are often taken at harbours and bridges newly built on reclaimed/drained land which also subsides as water is lost and sediment build-up weighs down the surface.
Eclipse records indicate very little possible variation in sea level for the last 6000 years certainly nothing of the magnitude of millimeters a year seen over the last century. Archeological evidence supports that. The recent rise is probably unprecedented since the end of the last glacial period and the A1 melt pulse during the Holocene optimum.
==================
Nice attempt at CYA, Izen.
Besides the isostatic rebound to the north and the corresponding subsidence of the North Sea region around Holland, please cite your evidence of the “eclipse records” and archeological evidence “supporting that”.
This “unprecedented rise” since the A1 melt pulse after the last glaciation….again….cite your evidence.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Correction when I say “supporting that” I mean Izen’s allegations per his/her quote…not the fact that isostatic rebound and the related subsidence is real, which it is.
Have a look at this tapestry of Tower of London circa 1150AD, and this photo from 2005. Notice any sea level rise?
@-savethesharks says:
May 3, 2011 at 9:37 pm
“Besides the isostatic rebound to the north and the corresponding subsidence of the North Sea region around Holland, please cite your evidence of the “eclipse records” and archeological evidence “supporting that”.”
Try this –
http://historyoftheancientworld.com/2010/10/in-search-of-lost-time-ancient-eclipses-roman-fish-tanks-and-the-enigma-of-global-sea-level-rise/
Joshua Corning says:
May 3, 2011 at 3:30 pm
“sea level rise has not accelerated at all”
Maybe they are taking the fact that a deceleration is technically an acceleration and running with it in the hopes that no one notices.
They’re just applying Mannian math, where the sign is insignificant (remember upside-down Tijander?).
🙂
Smokey.
Have a look at the graph I linked to and tell me it’s not accelerating over the last 100 years.
Figure 3a.
TonyK says:
May 3, 2011 at 11:10 am
Are you aware how tides work? They go up and down twice a day normally and in some places that can be as much as 14m such as in the Bristol channel between England and Wales.
The tidal range in Southapmton is ~3m so a change of a few centimeters since that thing was built isn’t going to stop it working just yet. Trying to suggest that that is proof that global sea levels are rising though is quite idiotic though, much like saying it was cold here today therefore global warming can’t be happening.
krazykiwi says:
May 3, 2011 at 9:47 pm
You’re just making yourself look silly now.
I’ll give you a clue… the Tower of London is on a river with a tidal range. It goes up and down.
I’ve glanced through their executive summary which is now posted to http://www.amap.no/ – and I quote from page 4:
The Arctic is warming. Surface air temperatures in the Arctic since 2005 have been higher than for any five-year period since measurements began around 1880. The increase in annual average temperature since 1980 has been twice as high over the Arctic as it has been over the rest of the world. Evidence from lake sediments, tree rings and ice cores indicates that Arctic summer temperatures have been higher in the past few decades than at any time in the past 2000 years.
First: Since when did 5-year periods become long enough to measure climate change? I guess they had to concentrate on the last 5 years to get a period that was really warmer than any equally long period from the 30s or 40s.
Second: What “evidence from lake sediments, tree rings and ice cores” (there are no references in the executive summary)? It would be interesting if they are going to present new research, but my guess is that the reference for this is Kaufman et al 2009, with all its problems (including the use of Yamal tree rings) that Steve McIntyre has pointed out.
i know that this is urinating in the holy water but has anyone given thought to the possibility that at least some of the tidal gauges are sinking rather than the sea rising.
we have seen in the temperature side of the screaming and shouting many incidences where the instruments have been exposed to air conditioner exhaust, jet blast heat, building reflection …….. that give “interesting readings”. has the instrumentation in this area been examined and calibrated………
C
SteveE says:
May 4, 2011 at 12:53 am
The tidal range in Southampton is ~3m so a change of a few centimeters since that thing was built isn’t going to stop it working just yet.
Sorry, I’m not sure what’s going on here! I posted this to show there is no appreciable relative sea level rise at this location. Over almost a thousand years it should have gone up about three metres and the mill (or at least the site on which it is built) should be inundated, even at low tide. Conclusion – no appreciable relative level rise. Of course, the land may well be rising to compensate, but given the geology I don’t think so. All around my local area is ample evidence that the sea has NOT risen in thousands of years. Can anyone show incontravertible evidence that it is rising (in an absolute sense, not just because the land is sinking) anywhere?
TonyK says:
May 4, 2011 at 7:26 am
That seems to agree that sea level has remained fairly static until resently when it can now be measured at increasing at 3mm per year.
I’m glad that this mill can be used to demonstrate that sea level must be increasing at an accelerating rate otherwise it would have been innudated by now.
Well done!
TonyK, have a look at figure 3a in the below paper on sea level rise and you’ll see that during the 19th centuary sea level was fairly static at less than 1 mm per year. This has steadily been increasing since then and at precent is ~3mm per year.
This increase is due to global warming that is melting the ice caps and causing thermal expansion of the water and is caused by mans use of fossil fuels since the industrial revolution.
http://academics.eckerd.edu/instructor/hastindw/MS1410-001_FA08/handouts/2008SLRSustain.pdf
SteveE, you conveniently ignore the fact that sea levels dropped during the little ice age, so there would have been a rebound regardless of human activites.
izen says:
May 3, 2011 at 8:36 am
That is a fascinating way to look at it, do you have a citation? Seems like it would be a useful metric.
w.
SteveE says:
May 4, 2011 at 12:43 am
It’s not accelerating over the last 100 years. The graph has improperly spliced satellite and tide gauge records, and reported the higher satellite records as an “acceleration”. You really have to be careful with AGW supporters, they’ll move the pea under the thimble when you’re not looking.
Here’s one way you can tell if sea level claims are bogus — look for the name “John Hunter” among the authors. He’s a wild-eyed AGW supporter, his presence guarantees headlines about ‘acceleration” and “dangerous” and the like.
In addition, note that (if the Church/White paper is correct) the change in the rate of seal level rise occurred about 1930, and since then the rise has been nearly linear … perhaps you’d care to explain that oddity, since Church/White didn’t discuss that.
Indeed, a close look at their figure 3a shows a straight line from about 1870 to 1910, a drop to 1930, and a straight line rise since then. Now, how does that particular change fit into the AGW scenario?
The problem is that climate scientists have forgotten how to say “we don’t know”. We don’t know why the sea level fell from 1910 to 1930. We don’t know why it started to rise again.
But one thing is clear … greenhouse gases have nothing to do with a drop in sea level in 1910 …
w.
@SteveE: the point of this article is that, contrary to the earlier well-hyped papers and forecasts, the satellite record shows no acceleration in the rise in sea levels. The satellites show, if anything, that the rise marginally decelerated as from 1994 to 2010: see figure 1 heading this article. (If there is no acceleration AGW theory effectively collapses, which is why it’s such a sensitive issue.)
It’s really no use just regurgitating the earlier papers. If Anthony and Willis are right the up-to-date data disproves them so a new theory must found to account for the data. But it’s relatively early days and at a rise of only ~12 inches/century we needn’t rush to judgement.
WUWT link used in Digg thread on this story: http://digg.com/news/science/record_arctic_warming_to_boost_sea_level_rise
Comment #12 of 13 (at this time). At 19 hours ago, this is pretty much off the news cycle for Digg.
Interesting that only 9 unique people made only 13 comments, and the last was “yawn”. People are waking up. Grats to WUWT and thanks for your contribution. Last year, AGW stories would get hundreds on comments on Digg and Fark, now: not so much.
I say their climate model . . . is drone computers that run on a loop . . . .
@Willis: re your last to izen (who I don’t think has yet responded), the “eclipse records” are referred to in the video link at the URL izen gave above (“Try this –“).
The metric seems to be that comparing medieval eclipse records against modern-day calculation produces historic values for ΔT from which accumulated delays in orbital rotation can be obtained, hence mean sea levels by conservation of orbital momentum.
BTW, Meeus’ Astronomical Algorithms (2nd Ed) already gives apparently accurate values for ΔT back to 1620, in case you are interested.
@SteveE – Thanks. I was aware of that.
I thought Archimedes principle had something about ice and water
Espen says:
May 4, 2011 at 8:33 am
And what about the MWP then?
Willis Eschenbach
The drop in rate of sea level rise associated with the late 19th/early 18th centuary link quite nicely with sun spot decrease during that time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sunspot_Numbers.png
Perhaps not to Mauder or Dalton minimum levels, but certainly a low which would explain the “drop” you mention.
It also isn’t a straight line since then as the graph in figure 3b clearly shows the 20-year trend.
It increased post ~1930 to 2mm/year then fell again to ~1.5mm/yr in the mid 20th centuary and then started rising again in the 1980’s and is continuing to a high of over 3mm/yr.
The paper describes the fall in mid centuary as being linked to an increase in explosive volcanic eruptions during this time. It doesn’t provide any graphs that show this link, but a quick search finds other papers that make this observation (figure 6):
http://www.pages.unibe.ch/products/scientific_foci/qsr_pages/zielinski.pdf
I think that covers all your points. I can’t really comment on your remark about John Hunter though, however if it’s any consolation I have similar thoughts when I see an article written by yourself.
Steve
SteveE says:
And what about the MWP then?
Yes, what about it?