Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
A reader who posts under the name “tokyoboy” sent a link to a very interesting sea level record from the Japanese Meteorological Agency. It covers the period 1906–2010, and when I first saw it I thought they’d made some mistake.
So I got their data, and plotted it up. I also got the satellite records for the area. Finally, I got records of one of the sites that the Japanese used, but I obtained it from the PSMSL records. All of them agree very well, so I am forced to assume that there are no obvious errors in the Japanese records. Figure 1 shows the results:
Figure 1. Japanese sea level records. Two records marked “Japan” are from the citation above. They are averages of long-term records since 1906 (4 sites, blue line), and shorter-term records since 1960 (16 sites, red line). Satellite records (green, 1993-2010) are from the University of Colorado interactive wizard. Wajima records (purple, 1930-2010) are from the PSMSL.
You can see why I thought there was a mistake. Sea level around Japan rose steadily from 1906 to 1950. Then it dropped for fifteen years and bounced around until 1980. Since then it has risen again, but it is about 20 mm lower than it was in 1950.
Now, I can’t find anything at all wrong with the data. The satellite record agrees with the Japanese averages, as does the PSMSL record. So we have to assume it is accurate.
But it is unlike any record I’ve seen of the global average change in sea level. That global record climbs steadily over the century.
I’m happy for suggestions and comments, as I’m in mystery over this one. It’s one of the great things about the climate, always more puzzles to solve.
w.
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The Big Red Spot (http://sealevel.colorado.edu/content/map-sea-level-trends) dominates the GMSL change. Take that out of the equation and the trend is virtually nil.
What’s the reason for the BRS? I suspect under sea volcano activity causing above normal OHC in the West Pacific (http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ocean/weeklyenso/wkteq_xz.gif) expanding the water.
PANGA uses GPS, tilt and strain data to monitor a variety of natural hazards, processes, and structures throughout the Pacific Northwest. They know that the coast of Washington State is being warped or dragged down by the subsiding plate — somewhat like having a heavy person on the end of a diving board. How that changes sea level, I don’t know. When the release happens (think the diver leaving the board), all he.ll breaks loose at the surface.
These folks know a lot about seismic activity
http://www.panga.cwu.edu/
The link (upper left) is interesting reading.
The sea level at any given spot responds to primarily to changes in the prevailing wind. There is a very good paper by Boris Shirman and Yossi Melzer entitled “Mediterranean Sea Level Changes over the Period 1961 – 2000” that discusses the most important factors/corrections.
Interestingly enough, if you look at Fig. 8 in their paper (which covers 1958 – 2000) you will see a peak East Mediterranean Sea level around 1961 – 1965 followed by a steady decline to 1973 – 1976, and then a rise from 1976 to 2000.
ntesdorf said @ur momisugly January 31, 2012 at 1:39 pm
Apropos the Hobart waterfont, the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies is about to develop Prince’s Wharf No 2. This is quite surprising considering John Hunter has been warning us about the danger of rapidly rising sea level for at least a decade. Perhaps he will refuse to move there when it’s completed so he doesn’t get his feet wet 😉
Given the projected sea level rise, it also seems bizarre that the government is renovating the Royal Hobart Hospital, rather than investing in a new building on higher ground. Perhaps they don’t believe their own rhetoric…
Surely the obvious, if somewhat surprising, explanation is that between 1950 and1985 Japan was lifted at least 100mm. It is, after all, very active tectonically. Tsunami is a Japnese word.
Related to seismic activity, ocean waters will bulge or trough depending on local gravity. I would love to see a graph of gravity changes and compare them to that chart.
Is this another trap for the unwary :o]
Could it be something to do with the leaching of salt from sea ice causing the sea water beneath to become denser. Brine rejection and the resulting thermohaline circulation may have something to do with it. But this is an area I know little about.
The answer is in the following…
ENSO
North Pacific Warm Pool
Bob Tisdale
Wow, that’s pretty incredible, that you guys got a hold of all that data.
Around the baltic sea Sweden supposedly has most data, what with it being the largest country with the lengthiest coast. Supposedly it’s the most “open” socialist country in EU. Although, in reality it’s a laugh and a half for it’s completely deranged delusional state:
“Your complete identification form has been communicated by one BALTEX SSG member and has been registered at both the BALTEX Secretariat and at ODCB,
Your data request has been sent to the ODCB,
A BALTEX Data License Agreement has been signed by both you and the ODCB.”
Don’t mind that the data has been paid for by both the Swedish and EU tax payers alike, you need a “legal” interest to get the data.
What’s really odd as well is that for the Swedish Met office the official sea level stat for the baltic sea is only for 14 stations since 1886, which are the only 14 stations which agree with a constant (global warming) rise in sea level, but their reason doesn’t add up to the mid to north atlantic sea levels, nor apparently to Danish, German, Polish and Finnish, data.
But what do I know. :p
Local heating will raise sea level due to the lower density of the water. It will effectively float above the cooler average water and will not flow away, as there is no change in mass. Was the area warmed by undersea volcanic action during the higher sea level times and then cooled when the volcanic activity declined? There may be no data available to verify this, but it seems likely.
-J
“Ian W nails it. Global sea level is almost as useless as an Average Global Temperature.”
I chalk it up to natural variability. Many variables, combined effect.
Glacial rebound, subsidence, atmospheric pressure, thermal expansion, tidal variability, operator error, change relative to what?
Can we measure sea level with the lading lines on a ship? As the load increases the sea level goes up, or does the hull go down?
Hey Willis, try charting sea level against the Baltic Dry Index. See what you get.
Thank you for posting this Willis.
On the sea-level data our Meteorological Agency states as follows:
1. They selected sites (4 till 1959, 16 since 1960) where land deformation is minimal.
2. No clear long-term trend, as seen in the global data, is seen for Japan.
3. The sea level was at maximum around 1950.
4. A 20-year oscillation is evident.
5. When corrected for land deformation, the sea-level trend shows a good correlation with the trend of sea surface temperature, especially for southern oceanic areas.
They have 144 tide guges (partly defunct. Sorry all are in a bizarre language):
http://cais.gsi.go.jp/cmdc/center/annualgra.html
If you click area “VIII”, the 15th (No. 1602) is Wajima adopted in Willis’ Figure 1.
Clicking area “III”, the tenth data (No. 1304) is for Ito, which exhibits 70 cm decrease in 35 years ( 2 cm / y) due probably to continuous land uplift ( Ito is in a seismically very active area where a next giant quake is expected… Oh God!).
Once again, Willis has come up with some really interesting data that tweaks the imagination. Two significant features stand out:
(1) Most of Japan appears to be rising–thus sea level stations should appear to be lowering. However, rather than relative lowering, Willis’s data shows sea level in Japan appears to be rising over the past 25 years, just the opposite of what we should see if tectonism is affecting relative sea level measurements in Japan. Conclusion–tectonism doesn’t seem to be the answer to the Japan sea level anomaly.
(2) The Japanese sea level curve bears a remarkable resemblance to the global temperature curve over the same time period. But global sea level rise over the past century (2nd figure) doesn’t follow it at all. Why would Japanese sea level follow the global temperature curve if the global sea level doesn’t?
Conclusion–neither tectonism nor global climate make any sense. Watts up with that?
Jeremy says:
January 31, 2012 at 12:39 pm
As an inhabitant of the “ring of fire”, I understand plate tectonics in the Pacific quite well. But for plate tectonics to do that, it would have to go up, then down, then up, then down, then up again … and meanwhile the satellite record agrees very well with the tide gauges, suggesting that at present, at least, ground movement is minimal.
Like I said, it’s a mystery.
w.
Intuitively, I believe the Japanese record is representative of the global changes. The other data could be dubious. Why? The decline coincides with the post 1940 temp drops, and we now see the ocean starting to decline just when things are starting to get cold. No coincidence. This suggests that we may be starting a long downward trend in sea level, for decades.
I’m sure you know how the algor “FL will be drowned” Cry Wolf ‘Armageddon’s acomiin’ ‘disaster is ahead’ ‘The End is Nigh’ Chicken Littles will explain this away. But I don’t.
There’s nothing wrong with the climate, and CO2 has nothing to do with it. Everyone in the U.S. needs to at least see just this ~ 3 minute video on the CO2 question, which also shows algor in a fundamental deception: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK_WyvfcJyg
mkelly says:
January 31, 2012 at 11:05 am
Sloshing.
====================
and Eftone says:
That has my vote :). May I propose an addition? Global Sloshing. I just need a grant now…
======================================================================
Atmospheric bomb testing (Bikini is in the middle of the Pacific) during the 1950s …
Imagine the size of the ripples!
Then the bomb testing went underground …
Willis:
It really isn’t a mystery at all.
The population of Japan recovered during the time that sea levels around it dropped. The reason they dropped is because of the over fishing or the area.
There is correlation there…..as the young population grew, the consumption grew and deprived the surrounding sea of a large mass of fish that if left uncaught, would have allowed the oceans to continue to rise in the area.
Note how as the population aged, sea level started rising again.
Cause and effect….now wasn’t that easy?
(It worked for co2 didn’t it?)
What about the impact of industrialisation on poorly compacted sediments. The 1950-1980- decline coincides with Japan’s industrialisation. Any de-watering of the ground or reduction of recharge from rainfall due to hard surfaces combined with increased loads from buildings could cause settlement . A similar example would be settlement in the centre of Mexico City . Post 1980, there is tectonic uplift.
Charlie says: January 31, 2012 at 5:38 pm
“The 1950-1980- decline coincides with Japan’s industrialisation.”
I feel industrialization leads to local sea-level rise, due to aquifer depletion and ground lowering by increase of heavy buildings.
A good example is Osaka, the second largest city, that can be reached by scrolling down the following link (6th graph, No.2415):
http://cais.gsi.go.jp/cmdc/center/graph/kaiiki5.html
You see Osaka’s sea level has risen (actually the ground has lowered) by as much as 2.6 m, mostly in periods of industrialization before and after WW-II, and stays fairly constant after 1980s, most probably reflecting near-saturation of urbanization.
The Japanese record makes sense. We know the Arctic was almost free of ice in 1926 [airship flight to pole], and in 1950 [US Nuclear sub at pole], in 1970 here in the UK was a panicky program about how Earth was facing a new ice age. Not sure about the dip in the eighties. I remember reading about one expert who had been measuring sea levels for 50 years declaring that sealevels had not risen appreciably, and certainly not by the amounts claimed.
The question is whether the ‘official’ graph has any basis in reality. Is this just another ‘hockey stick’? In the past WUWT has shown that the whole web can be ‘edited’ [not just Wikipedia!] and only by looking at articles printed in the past could the original data be seen. If the ‘official’ rise in sea level was so steep during the 20th century when did anyone express alarm? I would have thought Holland at least would have had some concerns.
Or is this just a 21st century phenomenon, which no-one ‘noticed’ before the IPCC ‘drew it’ to our attention!
tokyoboy says:
January 31, 2012 at 4:15 pm
Thank you for the tip. Do you have a link to information on
1. Names of the four and the sixteen sites.
2. Known vertical movements at the sites.
I speak four languages. Japanese is not among them. I tried studying it when I was in high school. It didn’t seem bizarre, but it had rules I couldn’t wrap my head around. As I recall there were different forms depending on what you are talking about (a round object, a hollow object, a dog, your friend, your boss) as well as who you are talking to (your dog, your friend, your boss).
But that may just be my hazy memory. In any case, it would be great if you could see what you can find out about vertical land movements.
w.
While the sea level data are very interesting, my question is this: Is sea level rise a problem? Answer: No. If there are any issues with sea levels rising over decades (and that’s a BIG if), don’t you think people will adapt as they always have (and always will)? Climate “scientists” appear to believe the population is too stupid to adapt, hence their need to drum up scare stories about global warming induced sea level change. Of course, scare stories also have the effect of increasing their take of the billions of dollars in government climate ca$h(tm). Whenever you see a climate-related scare stories, always follow the money…
No brainer. The whole damned island rises and falls at the drop of a hat. Kinda like measuring jello perched on a jack hammer.
Willis Eschenbach says: January 31, 2012 at 6:37 pm
“Do you have a link to information on
1. Names of the four and the sixteen sites.”
The (recent) 16 sites are as follows:
*Wakkanai, Oshoro, and Hakodate (Hokkaido Island)
*Fukaura, Hachinohe, Kashiwazaki, Wajima, Tokyo, Uchiura, Wakayama, and Hamada (Honshu Main Island)
*Matsuyama and Tosa-shimizu (Shikoku Island)
*Nagasaki, Aburatsu, and Makurazaki (Kyushu Island)
And the (former) 4 sites are:
Oshoro (Hokkaido), Wajima and Hamada (Honshu), and Hososhima (Kyushu)
“2. Known vertical movements at the sites.”
I’m not sure about this, but some relevant information may be obtained at our Geospatial Information Authority site:
http://www.gsi.go.jp/ENGLISH/index.html
I’ve just opened their page for the first time now, and will see if land movement data are available there. But please do not expect a soon posting: I don’t have much free time because of imminent retirement (end of March).
“I speak four languages. ”
It’s also four in my case (Japanese + English, German, French), though the level of refinement depends heavily from a language to another.
Dave Wendt says:
January 31, 2012 at 12:24 pm
This merely illustrates a point I have tried to make quite a number of times in comments here. Most post and comment discussions on this topic are derailed from the start because they are based on the implicit fallacy that the seas are actually level i.e. that the massive waters of the world’s ocean’s will respond like a cake pan filled with water on your kitchen counter.
Just curious, where do you live (not stalking, just curious, and region will do) and at what altitude
(and what reference is used to determine your altitude)?
And your longitude is…?
Many reference points are, As you state, “completely artificial and abstract approximations…” They still serve a purpose because everyone can use them.