From the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab
NASA Satellites Detect Pothole on Road to Higher Seas
An Update from NASA’s Sea Level Sentinels:
Like mercury in a thermometer, ocean waters expand as they warm. This, along with melting glaciers and ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, drives sea levels higher over the long term. For the past 18 years, the U.S./French Jason-1, Jason-2 and Topex/Poseidon spacecraft have been monitoring the gradual rise of the world’s ocean in response to global warming.
While the rise of the global ocean has been remarkably steady for most of this time, every once in a while, sea level rise hits a speed bump. This past year, it’s been more like a pothole: between last summer and this one, global sea level actually fell by about a quarter of an inch, or half a centimeter.
So what’s up with the down seas, and what does it mean? Climate scientist Josh Willis of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., says you can blame it on the cycle of El Niño and La Niña in the Pacific.
Willis said that while 2010 began with a sizable El Niño, by year’s end, it was replaced by one of the strongest La Niñas in recent memory. This sudden shift in the Pacific changed rainfall patterns all across the globe, bringing massive floods to places like Australia and the Amazon basin, and drought to the southern United States.
Data from the NASA/German Aerospace Center’s twin Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) spacecraft provide a clear picture of how this extra rain piled onto the continents in the early parts of 2011. “By detecting where water is on the continents, Grace shows us how water moves around the planet,” says Steve Nerem, a sea level scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
So where does all that extra water in Brazil and Australia come from? You guessed it–the ocean. Each year, huge amounts of water are evaporated from the ocean. While most of it falls right back into the ocean as rain, some of it falls over land. “This year, the continents got an extra dose of rain, so much so that global sea levels actually fell over most of the last year,” says Carmen Boening, a JPL oceanographer and climate scientist. Boening and colleagues presented these results recently at the annual Grace Science Team Meeting in Austin, Texas.
But for those who might argue that these data show us entering a long-term period of decline in global sea level, Willis cautions that sea level drops such as this one cannot last, and over the long-run, the trend remains solidly up. Water flows downhill, and the extra rain will eventually find its way back to the sea. When it does, global sea level will rise again.
“We’re heating up the planet, and in the end that means more sea level rise,” says Willis. “But El Niño and La Niña always take us on a rainfall rollercoaster, and in years like this they give us sea-level whiplash.”
For more information on NASA’s sea level monitoring satellites, visit: http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/ , http://sealevel.colorado.edu , http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/ and http://grace.jpl.nasa.gov/ .
h/t to WUWT reader “Pete”
==========================================
[UPDATE by willis]
I trust that Anthony won’t mind if I expand a bit on this question. NASA adduces the following map (Figure 2) showing where they claim the water went.
Figure 2. GRACE satellite changes in land water. Note that for all of the screaming about Greenland melting … it gained ice over the period of the year. In any case, red and blue areas are somewhere near equal, as would be more apparent if they didn’t use a Mercator projection that exaggerates the blue area in the Northern hemisphere.
The sea level was going up at about 3 mm per year. In the last year it fell about 6 mm. So that’s a change of about a centimetre of water that NASA says has fallen on land and been absorbed rather than returned to the ocean. But of course, the land is much smaller than the ocean … so for the ocean to change by a centimetre, the land has to change about 2.3 cm.
To do that, the above map would have to average a medium blue well up the scale … and it’s obvious from the map that there’s no way that’s happening. So I hate to say this, but their explanation doesn’t … hold water …
I suspected I’d find this when I looked, because in the original press release the authors just said:
“This year, the continents got an extra dose of rain, so much so that global sea levels actually fell over most of the last year,” says Carmen Boening.
When people make claims like that, with no numbers attached, my Urban Legend Detector™ goes off like crazy … and in this case, it was right.
Best to all, thanks to Anthony.
w.
“This year, the continents got an extra dose of rain, .”
I wonder how much of it fell on Antarctica as snow?
Infuriating.
It’s getting harder and harder to be warmist these days. One have to explain away:
– cooling
– decreasing sea level
– increasing global sea ice (coming soon)
– decreasing atmospheric CO2 (coming soon)
…
The post reads: “Willis said that while 2010 began with a sizable El Niño, by year’s end, it was replaced by one of the strongest La Niñas in recent memory.”
The only ENSO index showing the 2010/11 La Nina as being “the strongest La Niñas in recent memory” is the MEI. It’s not the strongest based on NINO3.4 SST anomalies or NINO3.4 Sea Level anomalies:
http://i53.tinypic.com/wi4lc0.jpg
We discussed the impacts of ENSO on Sea Level not too long ago, beating NASA to the punch on this one:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/1st-quarter-2011-sea-level-anomaly-update-and-an-initial-look-at-the-impacts-of-enso-on-global-sea-level/
And the cross post here at WUWT:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/18/tisdale-on-2011-sea-level-changes/
So, like how long does it take rain to make it back to the ocean? When it rains here in New Hampshire, the river level respond quickly, then drop over a few days. In the summer, trees suck the ground dry pretty quickly.
OTOH, how long does it take snow to make it back to the ocean? It has to melt first. Perhaps not all of the snow from last winter melted yet, it certainly took (is taking) its jolly good time in the northwest US and I hear is piling up in New Zealand.
Or perhaps I’m just having trouble wrapping my head around “sea level has hit a pothole.”
Hmm. When we were discussing the divergence between Detrended Sea Level Anomalies and the MEI…
http://i51.tinypic.com/b5l007.jpg
…on this thread…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/18/tisdale-on-2011-sea-level-changes/
…I don’t recall precipitation being discussed. That’ll give me another place to look if I ever get back to it again.
So , sea levels have dropped globally because of heavy precipitation , eh ? This sounds like the same reasoning that leads to “experts” claiming that cooling is masking the warming . Or that the Mt. Pinatubo eruption is somehow responsible for the flattening of temps over a decade after the fact .
Two points:
@ Bob Tisdale, Willis said “one of the strongest La Niñas” but you are criticizing him as if he said “the strongest La Niñas”. Surely you understand the difference.
Second point, perhaps some of this extra precipitation (which is lowering sea levels) will see fit to stay underground and help recharge the world’s aquifers — the same aquifers that have been raising sea level as we pumped them dry to run into the sea.
Doesn’t this depend on how long Willis’s memory is?
Obviously this could have nothing to do global temps flat-lining for the past 10 years. If that was the case, and all other variables equal, that could mean the sea level rise deceleration has reached a point where we’ll see no more increases for a decade or two – or even some more reductions.
“JPL oceanographer AND climate scientist”
###
I guess all it takes is staying on-message to be ranked a climate scientist.
I don’t see what all the questioning is about. Zero said he was going to lower the sea level and he did! Just sayin’.
Only some rainwater, less than 30% (according to the USGS), makes it back to the ocean, the rest goes underground or back into the sky.
http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/earthrain.html
But I guess any excuse will do for pretending that natural cycles are more important than man made models. But that’s the curse of AGM (Anthropogenic Global Modelling)…..
“We’re heating up the planet, and in the end that means more sea level rise,” says Willis.
This line pretty much sums up this mindless bit of press release pablum.
Let’s see, looks like we are headed to a double dip La Nina so if Josh is correct, we may not see the bottom of the pot hole until some time next summer. Gavin Schmidt has maintained that sea level change (which is related to total ocean heat content) is a good indicator of climate direction. This will be interesting to watch.
“Like mercury in a thermometer, ocean waters expand as they warm.”
But oceans do not warm.
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/ihadsst2gl_2001:2011a.png
“This, along with melting glaciers and ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica..”
Antarctica cools in the last decades and sea ice pack grows. What’s meting exactly there?
Josh is an as*****.
“Willis cautions that sea level drops such as this one cannot last, and over the long-run, the trend remains solidly up”
So, sea level decrease cannot happen? What about the LIttle Ice Age and all of the other evidence of changing sea level up and down over the ages? SUre the trend is upwards at the moment, but knowing that climate both warms and cools, he sure seems bent on seeing it only one way, particularly in the face of two cooling ocean cycles and a somnambulant Sun.
“We’re heating up the planet, and in the end that means more sea level rise,” says Willis.
The fact that warming has not occurred in 15 years or so does not seem to affect his world view. He reminds me of those who think that the Flintstones is a documentary.
I am getting confused again. Last year the Warmista were telling me that the floods and droughts were because of global warming. Now they need to have the floods and droughts caused by La Nina/El Nino so that they can use it to explain falling sea levels, but Global warming is still going to make the sea level rise again after its finished whatever it is off doing this year, (Alerting Aliens to our presence perhaps). I need them to get their story straight. It is enough to make one want to row to a random point in the Canadian arctic to get away from it all.
TheGoodLocust says:
August 24, 2011 at 8:25 am
lex parsimoniae is decidedly absent from the typical hysteric’s toolbox. Elegant simplicity is so yesterday… When you are the product of years of elaborate conspiracy theories and a general lack of professional accountability, it is an easy jump to the convoluted and labyrinthine “CO2 causes everything” consensus.
We’re heating up the planet, and in the end that means more sea level rise,” says Willis.
That is only partly true. I found the CO2 acts as a fertilizer, increasing vegetation.
It is the increased vegetation causing the (extra) warming
So now what?
We have to tell the greenies to stop planting trees and gardens.
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
Doesn’t La Nina reduce energy transfer from ocean to air such that ocean heat content and thus ocean volume should RISE and not fall ?
Bob Tisdale has previously referred to El Nino as a discharge of energy and La Nina as a recharge.
If that were so then the only reason for a FALL during La Nina would be a reduction of solar energy getting into the oceans sufficient to more than offset the recharge ability of the La Nina.
That puts global albedo back in the frame because it seems to have been increasing over recent years.
As regards the speculation about the missing volume having gone into more rainfall over land isn’t that effect an order of magnitude or more LESS than that required to alter total ocean volume by the amount implied from the observations ?
Pullease. Water flows down hill?
And it never gets captured in aquifers or underground streams and lakes?
My biggest problem with this cm level data here is the overall accuracy of 3 cms:
http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/technology/
So all this is basically in the noise.
Dr. Jay Cadbury, phd.
This is a little bit off topic, but I find it hysterical that Lucia who runs the Blackboard site will not post temperatures of the arctic. She is obsessed with ice melting but apparently doesn’t want to understand why the ice is melting. It is truly amazing that they scream about the northern ice cap melting but refuse to show temperatures. I guess the only answer is that global warming is affecting the wind patterns.
That’s quite a pothole for one year. Biggest drop in two decades. Even with southern New England’s oscillating freeze/thaw winters, we don’t get them that deep.
Can someone please show on that chart above when there were el nino’s and la nina’s? Then we can check whether or not the present drop is concurrent to some/all of them? It will also help to know wether each of them is causing a predictable trend (assuming of course that the ‘mean sea level’ is accurate or sensible).
The comment “…and over the long-run, the trend remains solidly up.” is borderline non-sequitur. Trends only apply to data that you already have, not the unknown future data.
Ocean mixing can also cause sea levels to fall. Thermal expansion (dV/dT) is not constant, it near 0 at 0C and increases with temp. If you mix 9 parts 0C with 1 part 30C you get a smaller volume of 3C. If wonder if climate scientist are aware of this?
It’s pretty clear what’s happening: global warming is evaporating the oceans.
Extrapolating this trend in models, I find that by 2100 there will be a sea level of zero. That’s right, no more oceans.
Maybe you denialists don’t need oceans, but there’s no reason the rest of humanity has to be dragged down with you.
Well, you can’t fake it forever I guess….
….when Envisat was launched, showed falling sea levels and they adjusted it back up to what the computer climate models said sea level rise should be……..
they can’t keep adjusting it back up forever…………….
Stay tuned next year for news of an “unprecedented rise” in sea levels (back to the trend line).
The press release is devoid of scientific content and seems aimed at what they believe are flat-earth sceptical snaggle toothed bloggers. Yeh, that be me.
NASA = HOGWASH. We need to stop funding this corrupt, bureaucratic propaganda machine.
Precipitation my a**!! I don’t believe it for a moment. More like the cooling oceans reducing the sea level.
The decline in sea level is more like 10 mms over the past 18 months.
The atmospheric water vapour level declined by about 1 mm, ie. fell as rain. So the amount that was evaporated from the oceans previously and then dropped on land over the past year (to stay there for a period of time) would just be a small fraction of that number.
That’s a huge assumption that ignores the possibility of an ensuing longer term negative ENSO phase which will tend to sustain the greater amount of rainfall.
Of course they could add yet another correction factor to their calculation to hide the decline, an ‘abnormally large rainfall correction’ to along with their isostatic land rise adjustment. (Like a Monty Python sketch, you’ll be asleep on the beach getting a nice tan and someone will wake you to declare that you are in fact drowning but just don’t know it yet. )
Somebody wake me up when they ultimately stoop to claiming sea level is dropping because snow isn’t melting fast enough which is because of ….’climate change’!
Let’s see, sea level rise is proof of Global Warming and sea level drop is move proof of global warming just wait …
Now I don’t know if I should laugh or cry…
“…sea-level whiplash.”
In your mind.
Obama said, “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow”.
It’s just as predicted. Amazing. /sarc
At least the water runoff excuse will allow time for recharge of biased press releases.
For comparison:
6mm drop is about 480 cubic miles of water while all the worlds rivers are about 509 cubic miles of water.
Although, it would constitute just less than a 2% increase in surface water (lakes, rivers, swamps).
[Sniff test] [?]
http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/earthwherewater.html
http://www.worldatlas.com/aatlas/infopage/oceans.htm
It’s just like the Global temperatures.
They’re going down now but in the near future the inevitable thermogeddon will kill us all.
In other words, we’re always right even if we’re wrong.
>>So where does all that extra water in Brazil and Australia come from?
>>You guessed it–the ocean.
And where does all that heat go, too?
How many gw or tw does that represent – turning warm oceans into cold rain or even colder snow, and radiating the difference into the atmosphere and beyond? And if we are having a double-dip la Nina, the world will soon be quite a bit colder. Yes, or no?
.
Of course the models predicted this drop./
Oh, so now they can’t find the missing water.
Absent minded folk, these climate scientists, no? Never give them your car keys.
As Steven Goddard shows:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/06/19/hiding-the-decline-in-sea-level/#more-32692
envisat is not showing any sea level rise. Maybe would be interesting to see envisat sea level plotted with sea water average temperature:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/ihadsst2gl_2001:2011a.png
looks like pretty good fit to me.
“So, like how long does it take rain to make it back to the ocean? When it rains here in New Hampshire, the river level respond quickly, then drop over a few days. In the summer, trees suck the ground dry pretty quickly.”
Out here in the west we capture the rain and it never makes it back to the sea. http://lakepowell.water-data.com/
I wondered why the data was not being updated for about 5 months. The datasets seem to always stop wben something inconvenient is happening while they cook a reason or add on a factor. Look for the pothole to be filled in. (WHat would a psychologist make of this term)
It seems sea level is falling and it is because of missing volume in the oceans. I think they should look for the missing ocean volume in the same neighborhood as Trenberth’s missing heat.
The oceans are missing some volume and it is a travesty that we cannot account for it.
Meanwhile in the real world…
http://calderup.wordpress.com/2011/08/24/cern-experiment-confirms-cosmic-ray-action/
“Ion-induced nucleation [cosmic ray action] will manifest itself as a steady production of new particles [molecular clusters] that is difficult to isolate in atmospheric observations because of other sources of variability but is nevertheless taking place and could be quite large when averaged globally over the troposphere [the lower atmosphere].”
@Dr. Jay Cadbury, phd. says:
I suggest Lucia’s site would be a better place to post this.
And btw: The arctic ice pack is affected by the winds. Even NASA admits this.
You guys are obviously looking at the raw data. The adjusted data shows sea levels rising.
Thanks – I just sprayed my monitor.
Quite a few funny remarks here (I laughed, especially JohnT and TallDave)
anyways
Stephen Wilde says
As regards the speculation about the missing volume having gone into more rainfall over land isn’t that effect an order of magnitude or more LESS than that required to alter total ocean volume by the amount implied from the observations ?
Henry@SW
I think that is true. You cannot have that much contraction unless there is much more cooling going on. Winter was especially cold here (South Africa), june-july, more than before, and august looks set to beat (cold) records as well.
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/winters-are-getting-colder-in-pretoria-bring-back-the-global-warming-please
I think the days of warming will be over…..
Sometimes I have this nagging suspicion that someone is insulting my intelligence.
Lars P-
“As Steven Goddard shows:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/06/19/hiding-the-decline-in-sea-level/#more-32692
envisat is not showing any sea level rise.”
Thanks for posting this link to Steve Goddard’s recent discussion on sea level rise. I was going to do the same, but I ran out of time this morning.
Envisat seems to be the crazy uncle that no-one among the CACC circle-singers wants to acknowledge…
Has there been any studies or series looks into the potential sea level rise from pumping ground water up for irrigation?
I’d imagine that could account for quite a lot of sea level rise over time.
Jeepers! It looks like we have about an inch of sea level rise per decade. OK…I’m 54 and if I’m fortunate I might live another 3 decades. On top of that I live in the southern Rockies at 7,000 ft above sea level. Excuse me if I choose to ignore this “threat”.
We are heading deeper into the negative Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) where La Nina events will outnumber El Nino events. So this downward trend could very well continue. Notice their line chart goes back to the 1990s when the PDO was positive/warm and we had much more/stronger El Nino episodes.
This “pothole” will become a sinkhole if this is indeed merely reflecting the PDO cycle.
Nuke
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/24/nasa-notes-sea-level-is-falling-in-press-release-but-calls-it-a-pothole-on-road-to-higher-seas/#comment-727445
Citation?
Willis say “we’re” heating up the planet? S[inc]e when? 1900? 4000 B.C.? 12,000 B.C.???
Does converting oil, coal, and methane to CO2 and H2O raise the oceans? What gravitational affect do other planets, moon, and sun have on satellite positioning and accuracy? 5 cm in 20 years; how can we possibly adapt??? Another 4 inches of asphalt!
Pothole sounds a lot like green shoots and soft patch in recently failed economic forecasts.
Just to be clear… is this the “adjusted” (plate techtonics aware) sea level we’re talking about or the real sea level as can be evidenced at the coasts?
The sea-level rise is observed at 46 mm vs modelled for 55.0 In a rise prior to the Super El Nino 1998, the level rose 10 mm in 6 months (20 mm/yr), while in a non-super El Nino phase of 2000.5 to 2002.5 it rose from 17.5 to 32.5 mm, or 7.5 mm/yr for 2.0 years. These are the two short-term rate rises to consider if a large rise to “fill the pothole” back to modelled expectations.
On the non-super-El-Nino consideration, a rise in sea-level has to begin immediately and continue for two years. The CO2 model says the oceans will rise at least 3.2 mm/yr, so that we would be at not 55 but 61.4 mm mid-2013.5. That would be 15.4 mm above this stated pothole value, and be achievable at 7.5 mm/yr. If, however, we are entering a new phase of climate cooling and sea-level drop or stability, to maintain the CAGW scare the sea-level must rise at 10 mm/yr or more beginning in 2012.
Without a super-El Nino happening in 2013, the IPCC CO2-Temperature-sea-level rise is in trouble. Any hope for a 1.0m or greater rise by 2100 will require an average of 9.0 mm/yr after 2012. In the short term sea-level rises must triple the historical average since 1979 to about 2015, and then begin a > 4 mm/yr march steadily up to >6mm/yr by 2025 (approx.). We will be, if this happens, truly in unique, extraordinary times if this happens.
It all comes down to the numbers, and not of the next decade, but almost the next week.
It is clear why the Gore-rhetoric is getting so shrill. The debate will become moot within just a few more years – one more presidential term. Either catastrophe will be looming, or those dark, hurricane-worrisome shapes on the horizon will just be clouds (weather, not climate). Gore cannot risk any delay in the world acting on his demands, as the need to do so may become as irrelevant as his alleged need for a therapeutic massage.
I’m voting for a horizon with clouds. The non-rainy type.
You can be certain somebody is working on adjusting the data right now.
“…between last summer and this one, global sea level actually fell by about a quarter of an inch, or half a centimeter.”
*sigh* There goes my beachfront property.
And I only had 180 meters to go…
AJStrata says:
August 24, 2011 at 8:59 am
My biggest problem with this cm level data here is the overall accuracy of 3 cms:
http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/technology/
So all this is basically in the noise.
My interpretation of the methodology described in the link you provided is that the 3 cm accuracy applies to individual satellite readings. As is stated in that link, “This accuracy figure [3 cm] pertains to a few-kilometer spot on the ocean surface directly beneath the satellite. By averaging the few-hundred thousand measurements collected by the satellite in the time it takes to cover the global oceans (10 days), global mean sea level can be determined with a precision of several millimeters.”
I’ll let more knowledgeable readers determine if that explanation makes sense or not, but NASA claims a precision of several millimeters in the global sea level measurement, not 3 cm.
They’ll fix this pothole with some minor post facto adjustments. Let Hansen have his way with it. It’ll be fixed real soon now.
It is about time to do another remake of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers movie. Stay in your homes and remain calm. The conversion to warmist press releases will not hurt you and all the pain and emotion will be gone. Oh and don’t forget you have no choice Miles.
Latitude says:
August 24, 2011 at 9:10 am
Well, you can’t fake it forever I guess….
….when Envisat was launched, showed falling sea levels and they adjusted it back up to what the computer climate models said sea level rise should be……..
they can’t keep adjusting it back up forever…………….
============================================================
I don’t think the ever envisioned the discussion/rejection of the CAGW hypothesis to last this long.
Henry@nuke
you’re funny too
Jokes aside though:
You do understand that this is what we are expecting:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/orssengo3.png
So some natural cooling is on its way
Anything on top of that curve shown above is due to the increase in vegetation
which has increased greatly because the greenies (wanting trees and gradens) and because the CO2 is acting as fertilizer.
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
Obama said, “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow”.
If ever there were proof that the man has magical powers, this is it. We need scientific studies of the guy to find out where he gets them.
Please inform yourself about satellite-derived sea levels:
Any report based on Topex/Poseidon sea level measurements is principally flawed because a most critical part outside 66º N and S is left out. In these areas the sea level sinks dramatically. Around Antarctica down to -2 metres! This massive dip is caused by strong W to E winds driving equally strong currents. Due to strong Coriolis forces near the poles, the water is then pushed equator-ward where it heaps up (Ekman spiral). Topex/Poseidon looks only at the heap and not at the trough, as do moored buoys (and most coastal sea level stations).
Wind strength, which can change by 25% on a decadal scale and 30% in a century, has a most determining effect on sea levels everywhere. Because of the seminal work of Dr Joseph fletcher, we can no longer ignore this.
Dr Fletcher’s lecture http://www.seafriends.org.nz/issues/global/fletcher.htm
What is normal climate change?: http://www.seafriends.org.nz/issues/global/climate7.htm
Are sea levels rising?: http://www.seafriends.org.nz/issues/global/climate4.htm#Are_sea_levels_rising
Sea temperature is simply a small variable, whereas the influence of wind is big.
Obama said on jun 3rd, 2008 in his nomination victory speech “… I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal…”
he was right. in this chart, the Sea Level change from june 2008 to present : almost zero mm.
now, if only the stupid planet will begin healing…
as for jobs, screw that. who the hell needs a stinking job. He has his.
I am so impressed.
DirkH says:
August 24, 2011 at 11:31 am
They’ll fix this pothole with some minor post facto adjustments. Let Hansen have his way with it. It’ll be fixed real soon now.
Yup, splice in a bit of model “data” and voila, sea level starts increasing from NOv 2010, almost at 3.2 mm /year
Hi
timing of the drop is also nicely synchronized with the Japan earthquake timing. So maybe the dramatic level change seen is related to reformation of the sphere, as some metres or even over ten metres shortening in circumference of the earth. Maybe the weather phenomena play some smaller role as seen in the graph trend as well?
br Markku
henry@jothi85
Obama thought the science was settled
@Nuke
I have but she either blocks the post or claims that it is not important.
Jason Calley says: @ Bob Tisdale, Willis said “one of the strongest La Niñas” but you are criticizing him as if he said “the strongest La Niñas”. Surely you understand the difference”
You’re right. I overlooked the “one of”. I should have written:
The 2010/11 La Nina may have been one of the strongest La Nina events since the start of that sea level dataset, but it was not classified as a strong La Nina by NOAA. The NOAA definition of a strong La Nina is “When Niño 3.4 region SSTs are 1.5 °C or more below the historical average, then a strong La Niña is said to be occurring. For official classification purposes, a La Niña’s strength is classified by the lowest observed three month averaged temperature in the Niño 3.4 Region.” Refer to the third paragraph in:
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/mfr/climo/update_lanina_2011.php
“[T]he lowest observed three month averaged temperature in the Niño 3.4 Region,” the Oceanic NINO Index (ONI), during the 2010/11 La Niña never reached -1.5 deg C:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml
For the 2010/11 La Nina to be considered a strong event, one would have to be referring to the Multivariate ENSO Index, which is not the official NOAA ENSO Index.
In South Australia the building rules have changed to require the installation of a minimum 1000 litre rainwater tank for all new housing (and some extensions with a toilet or laundry). Many households are installing far more than that (eg, I have 50,000 litres of storage).
Do they account for changes in water storage over the entire globe in the models if rainwater can cause so much variation in sea levels?
Where can one find the most recent GRACE data online for snow accumulation / ice loss over Greenland and Antarctica?
I’ve updated the head post.
w.
Willis – is the other Willis your nightmare Jekyll and Hyde alter ego?
chris y says:
“Envisat seems to be the crazy uncle that no-one among the CACC circle-singers wants to acknowledge…”
Correct.
In addition I saw the temperature chart posted by Juraj V. and the comment around sea temperature not rising. As envisat seems to align to the ocean temperature measurements better then the others I would think this is a validation for envisat results.
Thankyou Australia.
Aussies are saving the world from rising sea-levels
(and ensuring the employment of incompetent liars err… politicians who would otherwise be unemployable.)
Who said the Carbon Tax wouldn’t work?, see, it already is.
Cheers from Canada
Bob & Willis
Does my eyeball analysis of the sea level rise deceive me? Is there not something obviously different about the 2010 event, the pattern of the steep fall from 1998 and 2007 is repeated but, sea level has continued to fall during 2011 rather than immediately rebounding!
Is this not interesting?, curiosity and all that
Lars P says:
August 24, 2011 at 9:56 am
As Steven Goddard shows:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/06/19/hiding-the-decline-in-sea-level/#more-32692
envisat is not showing any sea level rise.
Hear hear, take a look at yet another rather striking “hide the decline” event engineered by “scientists” – specifically involving the rate of sea level rise, about zero over the last 7 years.
So where did the “lost” water go, Dr. Willis? Mark my words, the Watermelons world-wide are up to no good again!
“Note that for all of the screaming about Greenland melting … it gained ice over the period of the year.”
Willis, GRACE is measuring soil water. On their site, they have a specific caveat:
“This total water content is directly comparable to what GRACE measures over land. The Greenland values should NOT be used, the model is not valid there.”
Has anyone done a correlation between ENSO and changes in sea level trends. Just eyeballing the two graphs it appears that rate of sea level rise trends down either during or following an El Nino event; but this may just be my perception.
Warmcold, meltfreeze, floodraught, wetdry etc. all caused by CAGW. Now also: risedrop.
Can’t go wrong. And I mean CAN’t
JPL Oceanographers, that’s kind of a paradox.
Is’t any wonder that US are bleeding money when they federally fund a complete organization of 5000 plus consultants and all they can come up with is, well, corrected for propaganda purposes results? :p
Nick Stokes says:
August 24, 2011 at 2:35 pm
Nick, youll have to explain that one to me. The map I gave shows what they call GRACE anomalies. The map you cite, on the other hand, shows the output of a model called GLDAS, which is only peripherally related to GRACE. According to them, the modelled GLDAS Greenland values should not be used, as the model is not valid in Greenland … so what? The NASA folks in the citation are not using the GLDAS results anywhere, They’re using the GRACE results.
What you have done in the process of this is ignore my objection, that there is nowhere near enough water shown in their own cited GRACE results to explain the drop in sea level … care to comment on that? And if you are right and we should ignore Greenland, the situation is even worse, as that was a big area where water is supposed to be going.
w.
And this fall is even WITH their 0.3mm/yr artificial rise added in :-).
The Oceans are disappearing? We’re doomed!
Trenberth must be beside himself. The missing heat was supposed to be in the ocean and now it’s even worse than he thought. The non-missing heat appears to have gone missing as well. Where could it be hiding ….
pat says:
August 24, 2011 at 9:51 am
Of course the models predicted this drop./
They did? — wait a minute whilst I check the latest output from the Team……..
just a minute, they are adjusting their figures and data…..
and hey presto……..
oh yes, so they did!…..LOL
/sarc off
Well, since a pothole is not usually known as a good thing, they must be saying that sea level rise is a good thing.
Check another crisis off the list.
We have local ordinances which require the developer of new shopping centers to build collection ponds for rainwater runoff.
Please tell the alarmists, and the bureacrats they feed with our money, that the sea level “problem” has been mitigated.
Thank them for their concern, but we have taken care of it ourselves.
“Willis Eschenbach says: August 24, 2011 at 4:05 pm
Nick, youll have to explain that one to me.”
GLDAS is the data assimilation model, but I believe the caveat derives from the data source.
Here is the actual mass measurement page “GRACE MONTHLY MASS GRIDS – LAND” also laying it out in full caps:
“NOT SUITABLE FOR CRYOSPHERIC STUDIES
These grids are not suitable for quantitative studies of Greenland or Antarctica. In those regions one must use region-specific mass distributions and derive region-specific scaling coefficients, which is not done here. The scaling coefficients provided here were derived from a land hydrology model that does not work well in those regions. In addition, the hydrology model does not constrain trends well anywhere.”
As for the question of whether total water retained is comparable to the ocean deficit, well, the data seems to be here. It needs to be added with due allowance for latitude. I’ll do a post on that.
Erm, silly question really, but I would like to try and understand this – Isn’t a La Nina an upwelling of cold deep water leading to a surface layer of cold water over the Pacific? If so then we are not actually saying that all the oceans and the seas of the world just cooled are we? Instead we are saying that the La Nina current cooled the atmosphere (which by the way is just the same as saying that the ocean warmed up a bit). Are we then saying that the – slightly – cooled atmosphere led to such massive cooling of the rest of the oceans and seas that they shrank??? What am I missing?
Mike Abbott, accuracy and precision are not the same thing. Accuracy = closeness of measured value to true value. Precision = closeness of several measurements to each other.
Willis Eschenbach says (August 24, 2011 at 1:14 pm): “I’ve updated the head post.”
Thanks for the update, Willis. Very suspicious.
They’ll fix this pothole with some minor post facto adjustments. Let Hansen have his way with it. It’ll be fixed real soon now.
This gave me a mental image of a Josh cartoon where a cowering, comely mer-lass labeled “Sea Level Data” is trembling as Hansen rubs his hands and smiles…
Nick Stokes says:
August 24, 2011 at 5:29 pm
Thanks, Nick, much appreciated. I see you are correct, they do say “don’t trust Greenland” in the GRACE data itself. Seems goofy to include it on the map in any color but gray if it is known to be inaccurate.
I area-weighted the change from March 2010 to March 2011. I got 1.4 cm for the land average change, which converts to about half a cm for the corresponding ocean change. This (if correct) only explains about half the change in the ocean level.
The “if correct” part is crucial. I haven’t calculated the error bars on that number, but I suspect that they are rather wide.
w.
“So where does all that extra water in Brazil and Australia come from? You guessed it–the ocean. Each year, huge amounts of water are evaporated from the ocean. While most of it falls right back into the ocean as rain, some of it falls over land. “This year, the continents got an extra dose of rain, so much so that global sea levels actually fell over most of the last year,” says Carmen Boening, a JPL oceanographer and climate scientist.”
It is hard to believe that they found an adult who would utter those words. The moment I read them I said “preposterous – to the point of childishness.”
The water goes up and the water goes down
sometimes it falls on the ground
While it is running to the sea
Be sure to go and take a pee.
Thanks, Willis, for your more analytical approach to the matter.
Jason Salit says:
August 24, 2011 at 11:03 am
“Just to be clear… is this the “adjusted” (plate techtonics aware) sea level we’re talking about or the real sea level as can be evidenced at the coasts?”
Screamingly funny! You know there is no sea level at the coast.
Out of sheer curiousity, why hasn’t the sea level data at http://sealevel.colorado.edu/files/2011_rel2/sl_ns_global.txt been updated since early April? Are they trying to hide yet another decline?
Willis,
Oddly, I also got 1.397 cm, but in my case it was the average on a whole-Earth basis – I added (with cos(lat)*), and divided by sum of all cell areas. That means it is more than enough to explain the dip. But I think I should check more, though the graphs look right. I think one has to multiply by the scale factors provided, though it may not make much difference.
Magnus says:
August 24, 2011 at 3:27 pm
Warmcold, meltfreeze, floodraught, wetdry etc. all caused by CAGW. Now also: risedrop.
Can’t go wrong. And I mean CAN’t
LOL
Gras Albert says: “Does my eyeball analysis of the sea level rise deceive me?”
Nope. Keep in mind, though, that the Sea Level anomaly data lags the “real time” data like SST anomalies by a few months. The University of Colorado’s 2011_rel2 data only brings us to March 2011, while I’ve presented mid-August SST anomaly data already.
Willis,
I did go over my calcs there and found an error – I now get about 6mm difference, fairly close to yours, and also not so far from the change observed. However, I’ve looked at other ranges, and the amount that GRACE says has accumulated on land is not generally a good indicator of sea level change.
Theo Goodwin says:
The water goes up and the water goes down
sometimes it falls on the ground
While it is running to the sea
Be sure to go and take a pee.
I have to go for a pee. Really.
After all is said and speculated, Dr. Morner could be right and the Satellite trend had about 1.5mm added to it way back in the mid 80’s. Remember a recent paper claims that steric sea level rise is close to 0, goose egg, nada, zilch, well, very little anyway. That is because heat is convected up in the oceans and water close to freezing is continuously going to the bottom keeping most of the oceans a nice 1-2c with only a bit at the top warming.
Another Alarmist myth exploding along with their heads.
Anthony and Willis E., thanks again for a good post.
Willis wrote: To do that, the above map would have to average a medium blue well up the scale … and it’s obvious from the map that there’s no way that’s happening.
Is it obvious? I’d be surprised if the conversion of rainfall to equivalent mass/mm of rise/fall is exact, and it looks to me as though there is a net excess of increase over decrease. Have you computed the global mean change? If you are correct (as you might be, it just isn’t “obvious”), do you have any ideas on where the water has gone to?
If there is another La Niña, as seems more likely than not right now, should we expect more sea level decline, or should we expect them to be unrelated?
Ah, I see that Willis Eschenbach and Nick Stokes answered my question. Thanks.
Stephen Wilde wrote: Doesn’t La Nina reduce energy transfer from ocean to air such that ocean heat content and thus ocean volume should RISE and not fall ?
If I understand Willis E.’s thermostat mechanism, the La Niña is associated with increased heat transfer from water to atmosphere (evaporation) followed by increased heat transfer from clouds to upper atmosphere (rainfall.) (Or else El Niño produces the above average evaporation and La Niña produces the above average rainfall. As I understand it, the mechanisms driving El Niño and La Niña are not completely known.) It would seem to take quite a lot of energy to transfer 6mm of ocean surface water from ocean to land, then a large energy transfer to produce precipitation. Josh Willis’ comment, “But El Niño and La Niña always take us on a rainfall rollercoaster, and in years like this they give us sea-level whiplash,” looks to me like something that should prompt Josh Willis to do a lot of calculations about net heat flows.
Have you calculated the expected sea level from the measured warming of the upper 700 meters of the worldwide oceans, as reported by Levitas et al.? What was interesting about this paper was that little warming was observed below 100 meters.
Levitus S., J. I. Antonov, T. P. Boyer, R. A. Locarnini, H. E. Garcia,
and A. V. Mishonov, April 2009. Global ocean heat content 1955-2008 in light of
recently revealed instrumentation problems Geophysical Research Letters 36, L07608,
doi:10.1029/2008GL037155.
According to graphs of the Levitus data which Dr. Roy Spencer posted on his website (drroyspencer.com), Levitus reported that the top 100 meters of the ocean warmed by an average of about 0.25 degrees C and 100-700 meter depths warmed by an average of about 0.04 degrees C over the 53-year period. Levitus did not report any measurements below 700 meters
If the thermal expansion coefficient of seawater is 0.00021 per degree C, then the expansion due to the measured warming should be 100m * 0.25 * 0.0002 + 600m * 0.04 * 0.0002 = 0.01 meters.
Or about 1 centimeter. Do you agree with that calculation?
Of course, it doesn’t count any expansion below 700 meters, but the measured warming at the 700 m depth was only about 0.03 degrees C and the remaining depth of the world’s oceans averages about 2300 meters (3000 meters total.) So the deep water could not have added much more expansion.
So the sea level has fallen over the past year. If the claim is made that this is due to global warming, why hasn’t the sea level gone down prior to the last year? How long has global warming been going on? Is this too simplistic?
Just like the economy hit a pothole.
Willis writes “they do say “don’t trust Greenland” in the GRACE data itself.”
I can see how they would liketo be able to use the grace measurement along with a model to derive water on the land but surely those grace measurements will be significantly influenced by atmospheric water too?
Thank God for the Internet and Anthony Watts, Joanne Nova and Tory Aardvark, and others.
Most of us unless we read a lot would not be alerted or know about the various climatic conditions and the cause and effect factors. One thing I learned at University when studying a unit in humanities called ‘Earth In Crisis?’ in 2003 was that we are in an Interglacial but can expect one day in the not too distant future we will get colder. We are an ice planet. Spending more eons frozen than in Interglacials. Also the Northern Hemisphere experienced more severe glacial periods than the Southern Hemisphere. What we have to respect is with increasing populations we have to feed them. And the globe gets warmer (more rain) it is beneficial for crops and animal husbandry. If it gets colder this will not be so good for agriculture and we will have to adapt.
May be one of you can explain to me and if this has some truth. The Gulf Stream when it slows
does contribute to a glacial period. Melting glaciers flood the region and the fresh water pushes the warmer water down deeper. However, the Panama canal has been built and this allows some current to flow not like before between the Pacific and the Atlantic to stimulate the Gulf Stream functioning therefore maybe any more mini or full glacial periods might be moderated or less harmful to the Northern Atlantic countries. Australia didn’t suffer to badly last time the only glacial areas were high up in the Alps and also in parts of Tasmania. So ADAPT you stupid humans.
But don’t add oil to the fire by introducing toxic carbon trading a rouse and proving disasterous to countries engaged in this. You get these so called AGW scientist trying to prove by seeing a lump of sea ice break off this means global warming. It happens all the time as if you remember at school, the Arctic is not a continent or rather the North Pole isn’t unlike Antarctica. Only the Arctic circle has Green land and also Iceland that have a land base. Do you know, and Scottish
Skeptic will agree the Hebrides and some Northern Scottish Islands have a land of the Midnight sun like Norway. How can you put the same rules to this region as one does to say Australia or the Equator. I wonder if solar panels would work there eh? LOL
The Washington Post is carrry the story today, BUT they open the article with:
“The global sea level this summer is a quarter of an inch lower than last summer, according to NASA scientists, in sharp contrast to the gradual rise the ocean has experienced in recent years.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/weather-cycles-cause-a-drop-in-global-sea-level-scientists-find/2011/08/25/gIQA6IeaeJ_story.html
Gee, I guess sea level has only been rising for a few years.
My question is if this 6 mm drop already included the 3.2 mm adjustment for the ocean floor subsiding. Is this post adjustment and really a 9.2 mm drop?
…there’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza…
“If you mix 9 parts 0C with 1 part 30C you get a smaller volume of 3C. If wonder if climate scientist are aware of this?”
No, they are not very wise and educated in hard science otherwise they will not be climate ‘scientist’ (a.k.a. warmist hysteric)
The NASA PR guy hit a pothole of his own. The sea level has been rising since around 22,000 years ago and tailing off for centuries. The minuscule current rise is part of a mathematical trend to zero, and that’s been measured by floats and similar methods directly for over a century by coastguards and the like. Such a trend, even if it had been begun from scratch by CO2 warming, is so small as to be statistically irrelevant, much as a 0.8C rise in temperature over 150 years. Whichever way they have it, all of the danger they speak of hasn’t actually happened, they don’t claim it has, and expect (quite successfully) enough bloody idiots to accept their ‘models’ (much as Nostrodamus or Harold Camping used) which believe and claim to predict the long term future in an open and chaotic non-linear system. You can fool some of the people some of the time but the weight of contrary evidence in the last few years is gradually becoming noticed by the average followers of authority and wondering why the two are different. This divergence is almost guaranteed to continue until there’s nothing left to support any of their claims.
The Antarctic is getting colder, the ice there is growing. That mops up enough to guarantee a stable or falling sea level if continues, and neither ice nor sea can move in the opposite direction in response to warming. None of the 1990s predictions expected a reversal of any of the warming related phenomena, yet one by one they’ve happened and excuses are generated at a frightening speed to explain every single one away, including two of the coldest winters in living memory in the UK, the exact year the IPCC said snow would become a memory in the UK by 2010. That and the Himalayan glaciers are typical examples of how some newly rich and successful obscure researcher in the backwoods becomes a media star by using Mann’s method of keeping the message clear and not allowing any possible doubts. They got paid already, they don’t care if they were right or wrong as nearly every prediction is forgotten a year on when it doesn’t happen. They all know that so can say anything they like as if it fits the rules then it gets used.
Until the public get the point and stop voting for parties who claim to believe this nonsense nothing will ever change. Even if people start realising it’s junk they still won’t realise if they vote for most major parties they all have the same green policies so must learn exactly who’s going to support what and then vote for the others. Trust me, whatever else happens if the majority of the civilised world goes green it’ll be a depression like we’ve never seen before. No other policies will matter if all the wealth is stolen for windmills and solar panels and fuel costs so much half the poor will get hypothermia. Power rationing was planned in the Stern Report as was in recent Australian policies. Between the taxes, price hikes and energy and travel restrictions the western economy will be wrung dry while the third world will take over.
Really? Rainfall in Louisiana is down this year? I don’t think so. It is Texas that is dry, not Louisiana. They better check their master map again.
Here is the US Drought map. Compare it to the GRACE map.
Notice how the GRACE map papers over and extends the drought into Louisiana – where it is not.
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/