Guest post by David Archibald
The background to this is that, in 2009, evil environmentalists in the New South Wales Government made a regulation that councils in that state would have to base their building permits on an expected sea level rise of 900 mm by 2100. This had the effect of wiping billions of dollars off the value of coastal properties, as well as ruining peoples’ lives etc. By comparison, sea level rose 200 mm in the 20th Century.
The NSW Govt. regulation was gleefully enforced by Lake Macquarie Council to the detriment of its residents. Lake Macquarie is 140 km north of Sydney. In response, a local property developer, Mr Jeff McCloy, organised a public meeting at which Professor Ian Plimer, Professor Bob Carter and myself spoke. 400 people attended on four days’ notice. The subject of the public meeting was sea level rise.
Before we go on to the oceans, let’s start with a smaller body of water first – Lake Victoria in East Africa. It was known back in the 1920s that the level of Lake Victoria went up and down with the solar cycle. This is the data on the level of Lake Victoria from 1896 to 2005:
The relationship with solar activity broke down in the 1930’s and resumed in the 1970’s. There was also a very rapid rise in the 1960’s. Taking out the period of the solar relationship breakdown and detrending the data from 1968, this is what the relationship looks like (data courtesy of Dr Peter Mason):
There is no doubt about the relationship between solar activity and the level of Lake Victoria, which also means that East Africa has about 30 years of drought ahead of it based on what is going to happen to solar activity.
Some may remember this post from 2009: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/07/archibald-on-sea-level-rise-and-solar-cycles/
which contained this graph:
That has now been updated as:
The good correlation between sea level rise and solar activity is evident. What is very interesting is that during four solar minima over the 20th Century, sea level fell during those minima. That means that during prolonged low solar activity, sea level can be expected to continue falling. That relationship is quantified in this graph:
Using the period of best fit from 1948 to 1987, the relationship between solar activity and sea level is found to be 0.045 mm per unit of sunspot number. The threshold between rising and falling seal level is a sunspot amplitude of 40. Below 40, sea level falls. Above that, it rises. We can now combine that with Livingston and Penn’s estimate of Solar Cycle 25 amplitude of 7 to derive this graph of seal level rise from 1870 with a projection to 2040:
Sea level has a few more mm of rise to the maximum of Solar Cycle 24 in 2013 and then will fall 40 mm to 2040 taking us back to levels of the early 1990s.
Now back to the subject of Lake Macquarie: the nearest high quality sea level data is from Fort Denison in Sydney Harbour. This is the record from 1915 to 2009:
The rise over the 20th Century has been slight, so slight that it can be compared to human hair which on average is 0.1 mm thick. The rise has been an average of 5 human hair widths per annum, with most of that over 60 years ago. Let’s compare that with what the NSW Govt and Lake Macquarie Council are projecting for the 21st Century:
I have called sea level rise the second last refuge of the global warming scoundrel, with ocean acidification being the last refuge. It no longer provides any refuge now that the relationship with solar activity has been quantified.
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Quantified, and explained:
http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2012/02/jpls-josh-willis-looks-ahead-to-continuing-sea-level-rise/
It’s pretty funny to see folks here who, apparently, believe in IPCC models but won’t accept the graphs demonstrating correlations between sun spot number/solar cycles and lake and sea level, even though the consistency between those phenomena is tighter than anything ever observed between IPCC climate models and reality (and not a Michael Mann sort of reality). As far as a mechanism between sunspot activity and changes in sea level goes, it may be, given the recent results from CERN, that reduced cosmic ray flux with increased sunspot activity results in reduced cloud cover leading to increased ice melting and sea level increase and vice versa. This doesn’t explain what’s going on in Lake Victoria unless there are changes in weather patterns from these changes in cosmic ray flux that could increase or decrease the lengths of the rainy seasons. As far as Replicant’s claim that the Lake Victoria graph is missing 40 years ” to get somekind of fit”: ha ha ha, come on, man, think a little. If you have to eliminate something to “get somekind of fit” you’d have to eliminate part of one data set or part of another to move either into “somekind of fit” with the other. The graph is focussing on the two periods of greatest variability in lake levels as indicated in the graph labels.
Erm, apples and oranges.
Lake Victoria is a freshwater body more than a kilometre above sea level, and orders of magnitude smaller than a sea or an ocean contiguous with the unrestricted marine environment.
Do people here really not understand why this difference matters?!
Reblogged this on lisparc.
Bernard J. says:
February 5, 2012 at 5:58 am
Erm, apples and oranges.
Do people here really not understand why this difference matters?!
=========================================================
You do know what river Lake Victoria feeds and where it ends up?
Inigo Jones was a well known long range forecaster who lived in the late 1800s and early 1900s in Australia. He produced almanacs for farmers which were amazingly accurate even for decades ahead and even for after his death.
His methodology was heavily based on sunspot cycles and other climate cycles which he used long before regular forecasters even bothered to study cycles. Thus, he was derided by the regular weather forecasting establishment of the day.
He was unable to properly train an apprentice, Lennox Walker, who failed miserabley in his forecasts. So the ideas and genius of Jones was lost, but perhaps, now, after almost 100 years the ‘sunspot’ aspect of climate may be revived.
As for reasons why sunspots may affect climate they are no more scarce than the reasons why CO2 is said to cause change. It may be that the effects of solar sunflare/magnetic/proton storms are as much to blame.
“You do know what river Lake Victoria feeds and where it ends up?”
The White Nile? The Mediterranean Sea?
TomB (February 4, 2012 at 11:19 pm):
How many times have I read on this site that “correlation is not causation.”
That doesn’t necessarily matter for prediction if the correlation is stable over time and there are no significant changes to conditions.
Sorry Mr Archibald, but without a mechanism you can’t prove causation. This is from Dr. Simon Holgate whose data you use:
“Many people have tried to link climate variations to sunspot cycles. My own feeling is that they both happen to exhibit variability on the same timescales without being causal. No one has yet shown a mechanism you understand. There is also no trend in the sunspot cycle so that can’t explain the overall rise in sea levels even if it could explain the variability. If someone can come up with a mechanism then I’d be open to that possibility but at present it doesn’t look likely to me.
If you’re interested in solar cycles and sea level, you might look at a paper written by my boss a few years back: Woodworth, P.L. “A world-wide search for the 11-yr solar cycle in mean sea-level records.” Geophysical Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society. 80(3) pp743-755
You’ll appreciate that this is a well-trodden path. My own feeling is that it’s not the determining factor in sea level rise, or even accounts for the trend, but there may be something in the variability. I’m just surprised that if there is, it hasn’t been clearly shown yet.”
And “Taking out the period of the solar relationship breakdown” to prove a solar relationship not only makes one laugh but suggests you are no closer than anyone else to proving a relationship. It is much more likely that none exists David.
Matthew W:
So, you obviously do not understand the difference, or why it matters.
Quod erat demonstrandum.
Sea-siders Suffer from Erosive Coastal Plan
Some bureaucrats in the state capital have consulted giant computers fed by discredited UN climate models to draw up a Grand Plan which will dictate who can live where and do what, all along the Queensland coast.
These Big Nannies say they will save sea-siders from the dangers of inundation and erosion caused when global warming melts the ice caps and causes sea levels to rise. To cope with this vague future threat to property values, they have caused certain destruction of property values now with their anti-development plans.
There are risks and attractions attached to any property, and those features are reflected in the property’s value.
Most towns and cities are located on or near flood plains. These plains, formed by past floods, will be inundated by some future flood. That risk is far more certain than those generated by manipulated models of future climate.
All land is subject to some risks which may include dangers from bushfire, cyclone, drought, erosion, earthquake, tsunami, plagues and pests, all of which will affect more properties within the lifetime of anyone living today than will be damaged by rising sea levels.
Queensland’s Coastal Management Plan is not a protection for sea-side properties – it is land sterilisation that will immediately erode the value of all such properties.
Every land owner has to balance risks vs attractions for any piece of land. Some will win, some lose. Some will be stupid and pay the price of stupidity; some will insure and relax; others will knowingly accept the risks in return for lower purchase price.
With the coastal management plan, all sea-siders will suffer and have no choice in the matter.
Bureaucrats should butt out and concentrate on ensuring that any government infrastructure like roads, railways, water supply, airports and electricity can withstand inevitable risks such as floods, fires and giant waves.
Nick Kermode says:
February 6, 2012 at 1:13 am
For a moment there, I thought that Mr Kermode was saying that I am a better scientist than the great Professor Woodworth, because I could find the solar – sea level relationshipo when he couldn’t. But it is best to go back to the source document. In Professor Woodworth’s own words from 1985, coming up on 30 years ago,”At the highest European latitudes the MSL solar cycle is in antiphase to the sunspot cycle while at mid-latitudes it changes to being approximately in phase.” So, Professor Woodworth did find the solar signal, which means that I haven’t made a discovery. We are simply rediscovering things that were done in climate science many years ago before the field got corrupted.
And what portion of this sea level rise is due to thermal expansiondue to warming oceans?
Charles S. Opalek, PE says:
February 6, 2012 at 3:09 pm
Simon Holgate of the Proudman Oceanographic Institute says, for the 20th Century, 70% thermal with the balance being melting of ice.
And explained again:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Global-Sea-Level-Rise-Pothole-To-Speed-Bump.html
Mr Archibald, you did leave out the last line of the abstract you quoted. That being,
” Elsewhere in the world there is no convincing evidence for an 11-yr component in MSL records.”
This however does not address my point and neither does the paper. Without a mechanism it is correlation only. Maybe even coincidence, which would certainly explain the data disagreeing with your theory over 50% of the time and the whole rest of the world showing no similarities at all. If you are a skeptical person surely this must intrigue you and make you ask questions of yourself and the science.
So, correct me if I am wrong, you are basing your theory from a graph that leaves out the last 13 years of data ( which completely disproves your theory ), completely cuts out and ignores 40 years or 40% of the historical data and does not explain the increasing sea level TREND? Then you come back to comments on your article merely with quote mined statements from thirty years ago that don’t address the points made. I don’t know your background but this seems like terrible science to me.
Why is it that now since when you stopped your graph in 1999 (why????) sea level has been rising and the solar cycle falling? With no trend upwards in solar cycles why is the sea level trend going up? Why are you relying on thirty year old papers in a field that has advanced so much? Why are you leaving out half the available data? Why are you leaving out the most recent, most accurate data? Why are you leaving out caveats from people you quote? Why do you not mention Prof Woodworths more recent work, views and avenues of research? Why do you feel the need to quote mine?
Lots of questions I know but if you could just find the time to answer my question about leaving out 53 years of 111 years data it would be helpful to me understanding where you are coming from.
To those here agreeing with Mr Archibald I ask, if this was James Hansen presenting you with a theory he “proves” by ignoring more data than he includes what would your response be? You would tear him to shreds. Wouldn’t you?
Nick Kermode says:
February 6, 2012 at 7:02 pm
There are none so blind as those who will not see. There are four solar minima in the 20th century during which sea level rise went negative. It did not go negative any other time. That is all that is needed to be known. So Professor Woodworth, and most likely others, found a solar signal in sea level rise before me. But I figured out the relationship of 0.045 mm per sunspot number and was able to go into prediction mode. I have advanced our understanding of the World we live in. I feel a peer-reviewed paper coming on.
Certainty in something so complex is absurd Mr Archibald. You can’t ignore as many data and observations as you do and be certain you can explain it all. Your theory explains virtually none of the long term observations. If it IS the sun why are there so many periods where observations go in opposite directions? With no underlying trend in solar cycles why is there an underlying long term sea level trend? These are just some genuine questions that wont just go away because you believe you know “all that is needed to be known”. Certitude is not certainty. Thank you for your replies.
David Archibald.
As you are currently knocking about on this thread, perhaps you could answer a few questions.
You said:
1) Your last two graphs, depicting sea level at Fort Denison, have y axes scaled upward from 6800 (only one graph indicates that the units are millimetres). Given that Fort Denison has an elevation of 1.41m above the Australian Height Datum, and that “[t]he highest recorded water level at
Fort Denison (since 1914) was 1.475m AHD on 25 May 1974, some 65mm higher than the
current entry point to the Fort”, to what measurement(s) are your scales referring?
2) You say the Fort Denison rise is 0.5 mm per annum. Mitchell et al calculate it as 0.86 mm per year. Why the difference?
3) The “rise over the 20th Century” was essentially linear, whether considering global sea level rise or Pacific Ocean rise, and in either case there is no discernible rise “most[ly]” occurring “over 60 years ago” – to what phenomenon are you referring?
4) Fort Denison is located in Sydney Harbour several kilometres inland from the Pacific Ocean. How have you determined that its change in sea level reflects the broader oceanic change?
5) More importantly, Lake Macquarie is approximately 100 km from Fort Denison, whilst Newcastle Harbour, which has had for over three decades a tide gauge only several hundred metres from the ocean, is about 20 km away. Mitchell et al note that sea level rise at Newcastle averages 1.18 mm/yr – should you not have used the closer, more relevant gauge?
Further, according to Church et al (2006):
Should you not account in your figuring for eustatic changes that affect recorded sea level rise values at a rate of 0.3 mm/yr, especially when non-accounting may influence how you calculate future rates of sea level rise?
6) The IPCC (AR4) estimated global average eustatic sea level rise over the period from 1961 to 2003 (similar to the Newcastle recording period) at 1.8 ± 0.5 mm/yr. Do you consider that future local rise will proportionately mirror global rise?
7) If you answer “yes” to (5), do you accept that warming is accelerating, and thus that previous rise will be less compared with future rise, and indeed that the current rate of rise is greater than the 1961-2003 rate of rise?
8) Assuming that the Lake Macquarie City Council’s model of sea level rise simply reflects the median rise indicated by the IPCC (0.59 m to 2100), with account for local rise due to a warming East Australian Current (0.12 m) and consideration of potential further ice melt (0.20 m), what part of the modelling do you specifically take umbrage with?
9) If you answer “no” to (5), do you completely discount the influence of global warming on sea level rise?
10) Do you understand that Lake Macquarie is a coastal lake with a surface area of 110 km2, and that it is connected to the Pacific Ocean via the shallow Swansea Channel (white on the map), which is approximately 380 m wide and 2 km long? Do you realise that during very heavy rains the Lake’s level can for days rise to well over half a metre or more over the usual high tide level, especially at the northern end of the Lake? Do you realise that even with the best case scenarios fromthe IPCC, a combination of unusual surging storms, flooding and warming-induced sea level rise could cause flooding even over the Council’s forward planning?
I have a lot more questions, but I will stop at a neat ten for now.
As someone who lived a stone’s throw fromthe lake for 30 years, I find it bizarre that you choose to write a piece such as this, and that you used Lake Macquarie as a case study. I can only surmise that your interest in this area stems from a desire to resist the Council’s revision of future development policy. If so, I would suggest that such resistance is misguided. Take for example the area at the northern end of the lake – there suburbs such as Marmong Point, Fennel Bay or Fassifern (just for examples) where even today a big flood on top of a king tide would threaten houses.
If there is even the chance of only the optimistic increases in future sea level, then Lake Macquarie City Council’s planning revision is wise indeed.
Bernard J. says:
February 7, 2012 at 4:51 am
The warmers come out one by one. Anyone who uses the discredited IPCC AR4 as an information source is also a discredited element, to use a term from the Marxist lexicon. What you should be doing is examining the difference in rate of rise of sea level between the Jason satellite as determined by CU at Boulder and the Envisat satellite run by the Europeans. It is said that “One interesting aspect of the mission is the low rate of global mean sea level rise which it (Envisat) has measured over the first eight years of the mission: just 0.5 mm/year, which is about 1/4 the rate of GMSL rise measured over the same period by the Jason-1 satellite.” Envisat has been going for 8 years, so the difference now is 1.4 cm. Nobody around the world has seen 1.4 cm in the last 8 years. So, either one party or the other is either unable to read their instrument properly or is cooking the books. Guess who is cooking the books – the one reporting a rate of sea level rise that is four times the other.
But, going to the CU site, here’s a very interesting graph:
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/content/2011rel2-gmsl-and-multivariate-enso-index
Apart from the 1998 and 2010 El ninos, the blue line is following the shape of the solar cycle exactly! I am talking about the proton flux maximum in 2003/04. Still going down with the Ap Index and solar wind flow pressure. Beautiful confirmation! CU’s pothole is turning into a chasm.
OK David Archibald, I will take your refusal to answer my questions as a simple unwillingness and/or inability to do so.
Perhaps, then, you will answer some others…
1) What information in AR4 is “discredited”? Who discredited it? Does such discreditation – if it actually exists – discredit the rest of AR4? Are you not employing the logical fallacies of both poisoning the well and of guilt by association?
2) Are these really the only two alternatives that you can think of?
3) And do you have evidence of this?
4) Have you compared the two rates to independent surface gauge readings in order to confirm which is closer to reality?
5) Erm, on the graph to which you linked the “blue line” – or global mean sea level – is tracking the Multivariate ENSO Index, which is not a measure (nor is it a proxy) for “solar cycle”. Are you saying that it is?
6) I’m sure that you think you are, but you are presenting no statistical or other mathematical analysis to support your contention. What scientific analysis do you have that provides “[b]eautiful confirmation”?
And back to your original post:
7) In your “updated” graph the rate of sea level rise precedes an increase in “solar cycle” (sunspot numbers, by the looks of it) 4 out of 9 times. What mechanism accounts for this if “solar cycles” are the causative factor?
8) The rate of sea level rise is high when “solar cycles” are low, on three nadirs of “solar cycle”. What mechanism accounts for this if “solar cycles” are the causative factor?
9) Why are you considering the rate of sea level rise, which is after all a derivative function? It is entirely plausible for the “consensus” physics of global warming to be directly increasing sea level over time whatever spurious comparison might be imagined in the astrology of sunspots, and there is no acknowledgement of this in your arcane focus. A graph of sunspot number versus absolute sea level is easily constructed and demonstrates that point well, to anyone who has the cerebral competence to think it through.
10) I’m also curious about the method you employed to construct your graphs, and how you analysed statistically any ‘correlation’ that you perceive. You have no reference to primary data sources, and also a couple of your graphs lack units or are otherwise ambiguous about the nature of the parameters depicted. You make much of the apparent relationship between “solar cycles” and sea levels, but it seems to be eyecrometer measurement – hardly a mathematical analysis, especially when there are underlying discordances that would seem to contradict a casual eyeballing assumption of correlation.
I have tried to replicate your graphs, and I find that your “rate of sea level rise” trajectory appears to be smoothed to at least several years, a manipulation which removes many of the discordances between changes in that parameter and in sunspot numbers over time – a result that would seem to refute your thesis if properly accounted for. Further, I am curious about the nature of your smoothing methods, as the ones I use give me somewhat different trajectories.
Do you have a publication-level methodology available for replication purposes?
Finally, I have not yet done more than very abstractly hint at the rather involved statistics that are required to properly identify correlations between a response variable and periodic phenomena – statistics that you don’t seem to have presented. This link might help to tweak a thought or two about the problem:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/sunspots-and-water-levels.htm
In case it has previously escaped your attention, your propensity to assume that correlation equates with causation was dissected here:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/david-archibald-exaggerates-solar-influence-on-future-climate-change.html
and as a public service I’ll note that a proper consideration of causal relationships should account for some of the factors mentioned here:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/fooled-again/
There’s so much more that I could raise, but you seem to struggle with the basics, so I’ll leave further questioning, and presentation of data in more detailed formats, for another time.
In my previous post I should have said:
The question about which is causing what still holds…
Given the history of sea level for the last 20,000 years, is there any reason to expect a significant increase? From any cause?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png
Yes, of course there is – humans are emitting fossil carbon dioxide, which is warming the planet over the relatively stable mean of the period following the last glacial-maximum. This will cause the sea level to rise, in a manner similar to when alterations in orbital forcing brought the planet out of the the last glacial-maximum in the first place.
And as your strawman graph shows, that warming increased the sea level too.
Your question is predicated on the assumption that all forcings have remained essentially constant since the last glacial-maximum. As it is trivially obvious that the concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide and other ‘greenhouse’ gases are currently and markedly increasing, your premise is incorrect.