The university of Colorado has recently updated their sea level graph from the TOPEX satellite data. The 60 day smoothed trend is still stalled and shows no rise over what was seen since the peak in mid 2010:
Data
Raw data (ASCII) | PDF | EPS
Here’s the same data with season variation retained, but the really interesting data is from ENVISAT, which shows no upward trend:
(Graph from Steve Goddard). Envisat data here: ftp://ftp.aviso.oceanobs.com/
Sea level is lower than eight years ago, and according to the graph above just passed the lowest annual peak in the Envisat record.
It’s damned inconvenient.
Where is the acceleration you are so fond of talking about over at the Guardian? What happened to all that Greenland and global glacier ice.?
By the way, the IPCC projections for sea level rise needs to get moving fast. A lot of catching up to do. ;O) Shorelines are being underwhelmed.
Good post Dorlomin. Seems many posters here forget multiple factors influence things such as climate and sea level.
It’s worth, on occasion, taking a slightly longer view, and looking at more of the available data.
See http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-5-1-figure-1.html, where the little green line represents the satellite observations through 2007. And look at the red line, data from tidal gauges, which (a) has some variation in SLR on 10-20 year timeframes, with much higher variability for year-to-year, but a pretty obvious accelerating rise over the long term.
Yes, the current (last couple of years) rate of sea level rise isn’t as high as the average over the last 20 years (tho’ the sea hasn’t stopped rising). That could be variation, also known as weather and just plain noise. The long term data, on the other hand, shows accelerating sea level rise over the last 150 years.
Trying to draw conclusions from changes over the last year and a half (since 2010) isn’t losing sight of the forest for the trees – it’s losing sight of the forest for a leaf in your face.
Perhaps images like those found on the page Merging of altimetry data: proofs from other measurements will help restore WUWT confidence in satellite altimetry?
The point being, that rational skepticism seeks in physical theory and experimental observation, to find its own cure.
The data reveals that for every satellite listed, the published figures are averages over all observations. These observations, as indicated in the maps listed for them, indicate wide variations over parts of the oceans. In every case, if you compare initial observations with final observations as listed on the maps, there are wide regions with significant declines in sea level and others with significant increases, particularly in the Pacific Ocean. The area East of the Philippines shows very large increases in sea level for three of the four satellites, and a large decrease for one of them. The variations in the Atlantic are much smaller,. decreases in some areas and increases in others.
There seems to be little observed increase or decrease near land.
I cannot understand what significance averages over this apparently extremely variable and probably quite unreliable data can have. Yet that is what is published and considered to mean something important enough to spend trillions of dollars on.
Amazing until one realizes that it is trillions of dollars of other people’s money, some of which may come to you.
The short answer is “yes”. The overall method is described in a 1998 Journal of the American Meteorological article titled “Monitoring the Stability of Satellite Altimeters with Tide Gauges”, which a Google search finds on-line. Recent data using combined satellite/tide-gauge methods is found on the CSIRO web page “Historical sea level changes: the last few hundred years”
Elevator summary: Historical tide gauge data and modern satellite data agree near-perfectly with respect to sea-level rise rates, and moreover, the satellite sea-level measurements *are* accurate to the claimed levels.
And they get to chop lots of research grant monies on the side. Have you recently checked with Hansen on his earnings and tax issues. You know, the speeches, pro-bono plane rides etc.
It’s now time to smack head first into reality.
Glenn Tamblyn says:
February 14, 2012 at 7:38 pm
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Check out the Climate Change budget for 2011. Over 2 billion dollars just for US govt. agencies. This is the real money not your Ks for research.
http://climatequotes.com/2011/01/08/how-can-climate-scientists-spend-so-much-money/
There’s silly me thinking all that rain water stays on the land.
Antonia says:
February 15, 2012 at 3:55 am
Roger wrote, “I guess what I’m stating is that there is no known sea level, there never was and there isn’t today….. we’re free to make it up as we go along, because you can be damned sure that’s exactly what CU and the rest of the lunatics are doing.”
Thank you, Roger. I’m not a scientist but a librarian who serendipituously discovered this site the night of Climategate and has been fascinated ever since by the scientific debate that goes on here. Your comment tonight resonated with me as a layman: what are scientists talking about when they talk about sea levels? Where? When? For how long? Do they accept that sinking lands or growing deltas and coral islands affect sea levels? What are they measuring?
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Heh, Roger thanks you, Antonia….. to answer your question “Do they accept that sinking lands or growing deltas and coral islands affect sea levels?” Yes, they do. …. sort of….. they understand that as glaciers are removed from land surface, the land expands a bit. They call it the “Glacial Isostatic Adjustment”. The response is to simply add 0.3mm/yr to the invented sea level. Of course this is a senseless rationalization and exposes them as being intellectually vacant and morally dishonest. It could almost be rationalized if the sea levels were derived from tidal gauges, but that’s not how the satellites get their information. The satellites are reading our “geoid” via gravity measurements. The decompression of dry land has nothing to do with it.
Coincidentally, volcanoes screw up our geoid and gravity measurements. Early satellites also had a “tailing” effect in their readings. Go here. http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/en/news/ocean-indicators/mean-sea-level/products-images/index.html
Where our greatest sea level increases are, also happen to be right there in the midst of the underwater “ring of fire”.
Reblogged this on WillowSaurus and commented:
Made me giggle
A physicist says:
February 15, 2012 at 9:37 am
“Elevator summary: Historical tide gauge data and modern satellite data agree near-perfectly with respect to sea-level rise rates, and moreover, the satellite sea-level measurements *are* accurate to the claimed levels.”
Consider this document
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/ml/ocean/J2_handbook_v1-3_no_rev.pdf
OSTM/Jason-2 Products Handbook
2.3.1. Accuracy of Sea-level Measurements
Generally speaking OSTM/Jason-2 has been specified based on the Jason-1 state of the art,
including improvements in payload technology, data processing and algorithms or ancillary data
(e.g: precise orbit determination and meteorological model accuracy). The sea-surface height shall be provided with a globally averaged RMS accuracy of 3.4 cm (1 sigma), or better, assuming 1 second averages
From Section 4 which provides an overview of how the data offered is derived
Sea Level Anomaly = Sea Surface Height – Mean Sea Surface
– Solid Earth Tide Height
– Geocentric Ocean Tide Height
– Pole Tide Height
– Inverted Barometer Height Correction
– HF Fluctuations of the Sea Surface Topography
Sea Surface Height = Altitude – Corrected Range
Corrected Range = Range + Wet Troposphere Correction
+ Dry Troposphere Correction
+ Ionosphere Correction
+ Sea State Bias Correction
Etc., etc, etc…as each of those additions and subtractions has its own similar equation. All of those correction factors are derived in large part or entirely from models and are generally annualized global means or averages which means that for any individual ranging measurement they are almost always wrong.
I don’t know if you are familiar with the work of Claude Shannon, his paper “A Mathematical Theory of Communication” established the field of Information Theory and remains the fundamental document of that field. Although aimed at the idea of communication, the principles he enumerated also apply to the electronic metrology used by these satellites. Given the 1336 km orbital height of the satellites and the 13,3 GHz frequency of the Ku Band signal that is there primary tool deriving data to a tenth of millimeter presumes the construction of a “perfect information machine”. Although such a thing is not considered the fundamental impossibility of a perpetual motion machine, it is dangerously close
When looking at the sea level rise one expects the line to change only in the future. We all look at it and ask ourselves, will the trend stay like this? It was the same end 2010 we waited and waited and the new line did not update. And then later, half a year later in May 2011 I was surprised to see the whole graph changed.
It reminds me of the story with the GISS temp of NA from 1999 which changed. When the new years came , the previous years changed suddenly.
Similar happened to the sea level trend, and some adjustment has been added:
http://members.westnet.com.au/jonas1/ColoradoUniDiff.jpg
There was some debate on the internet
http://joannenova.com.au/2011/05/10-of-sea-level-rise-is-due-to-land-rising-too-got-that/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/05/new-sea-level-page-from-university-of-colorado-now-up/
And now we all look at the new graph.
So now when we look at it and ask ourself – will the trend stay? Maybe the trend will stay, but will the previous years stay the same? Or we will suddenly see new values for the previous years?
Pardon me if I sound to cynic, but I have a “deja vu” feeling.
From the Great Melt to present, sea level (or more correctly, the mean datum geopotential surface) described an initially parabolic curve then an asymptotic one (asymptotic to some fixed mean value). I’d imagine that with the advance of time the curve ought to continue flattening out.
Silver Ralph says:
February 14, 2012 at 11:27 pm
Colder sea, lower sea level – is that hard to understand?
.
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Nope Nowhere even close. Nearly all the drop in sea level over the past few years has been due to a direct transfer of that mass of water to land areas and the dominant La Nina patterns over this period are the cause.
R. Gates says:
February 15, 2012 at 11:43 am
Silver Ralph says:
February 14, 2012 at 11:27 pm
Colder sea, lower sea level – is that hard to understand?
.
——–
Nope Nowhere even close. Nearly all the drop in sea level over the past few years has been due to a direct transfer of that mass of water to land areas and the dominant La Nina patterns over this period are the cause.
As A physicist is frequently wont to ask, do you have a cite for that?
Jer0me says:
February 14, 2012 at 1:37 pm
OK. Temperatures are not rising. Sea levels are not rising. The Great Barrier Reef is not dying. The oceans are not becoming ‘more acidic’. Storms are not increasing in frequency or severity.
What else were we supposed to be terrified about?
Aliens destroying the Earth!
“”””””” Eric (skeptic) says:
February 14, 2012 at 5:31 pm
If anyone wants to read Doug Cotton’s source, it is here: http://www.csc.kth.se/~cgjoh/blackbodyslayer.pdf The writeup proves that backradiation does not exist, but if it did exist it wouldn’t warm the surface that it hits. The writeup ignores most of the theory of quantum processes. Those can’t be directly viewed and are easy to ignore. What is not so easy to ignore is that (for example) an object appears to be darker in color from having absorbed more photons. That would be impossible to explain using temperature. “””””””
Don’t waste your time Eric. The reference given isn’t worth the time it takes to read; it’s mostly drivel couched in terms that make it seem real. So the author may be a mathematician; he’s clearly not a physicist.
The idea that a “Black body”, radiates a spectrum with some “cutoff” frequency given by some “Wien’s Law”, is pure BS. Wien’s Law relates the wavelength of the peak of the spectral radiant emittance of a black body to the Temperature, such that T x Lambda (pk) is constant, so the black body radiation spectrum is a fuction of the single variable T x Lambda (wavelength)
The black body radiation spectrum has neither a minimum nor a maximum wavelength to the emitted radiation spectrum regardless of its Temperature.
Jer0me says:
February 14, 2012 at 1:37 pm
OK. Temperatures are not rising. Sea levels are not rising. The Great Barrier Reef is not dying. The oceans are not becoming ‘more acidic’. Storms are not increasing in frequency or severity.
What else were we supposed to be terrified about?
I would suggest the possibility of a total global economic collapse, brought on by the entire developed world simultaneously running out of other people’s money, strongly aided and abetted by the strangulation of economic growth brought on by the “solutions” already implemented and other “solutions” still ardently demanded for the phantom “problem” of the “Demon Carbon”.
There is also a large extraterrestrial body out there somewhere with our name on it.
Dave, you are absolutely correct that Shannon’s theory *does* provide a solid reality check on the claimed accuracy of satellite measurements.
, so the required Shannon capacity is 
. Which is not very much channel capacity!
Namely, what Shannon channel capacity do we need to specify a 200 km satellite altitude, to an accuracy of ± one millimeter, measured once per second? Let’s see … 200 km is one part in
As several posters have noted, the main satellite altimetry challenges are associated to overall instrument stability and the overall calibration, *not* the raw measurement accuracy or channel capacity. And at the end of the day, the agreement of satellite data with tide gauge data is pretty impressive.
The high accuracy of satellite altimetry is why James Hansen and colleagues have been focusing their predictions for the coming two decades upon acceleration in the sea-level rise — their scientific strategy is make predictions that leave no wiggle-room for cherry-picking skepticism.
Needless to say, rational skepticism applauds this rational scientific strategy.
A physicist says:
February 15, 2012 at 1:16 pm
The high accuracy of satellite altimetry is why James Hansen and colleagues have been focusing their predictions for the coming two decades upon acceleration in the sea-level rise
Up to the minute with his predictions as usual, J Hansen is correct to point out that there is acceleration of sea level rise. It is however negative acceleration.
Smokey says: February 14, 2012 at 8:19 pm
This is the reason that universities like Penn State will never consider any request to remove Mann (or any other CAWG evangelist) from their employ.
A physicist says:
February 15, 2012 at 1:16 pm
“Namely, what Shannon channel capacity do we need to specify a 200 km satellite altitude, to an accuracy of ± one millimeter, measured once per second? Let’s see … 200 km is one part in , so the required Shannon capacity is . Which is not very much channel capacity!”
That would be correct except for the fact that the T/P JASON sats orbit at 1336 km, which is 1.336 Billion mms on a ranging signal of 13.3 GHz for KuBand. You are probably famaliar with Von Neumann’s famous quote about fudge factors and curve fits. The number of fudges, corrections, estimates, etc, in the GMSL anomaly is equivalent to Von N. to the power of Von N. to the power of Von N. But if you’re determined to be convinced by the technological rationalizations, dconsider for a moment the simple raw logic.
GMSL is a measure of height. In order to measure the change in height of something over time requires a known and fixed reference to base the measurements from. Can you name anything from the actual planet that has been known and fixed at the millimeter level for the last thirty years?
Dave Wendt says:
February 15, 2012 at 12:06 pm
R. Gates says:
February 15, 2012 at 11:43 am
Silver Ralph says:
February 14, 2012 at 11:27 pm
Colder sea, lower sea level – is that hard to understand?
.
——–
Nope Nowhere even close. Nearly all the drop in sea level over the past few years has been due to a direct transfer of that mass of water to land areas and the dominant La Nina patterns over this period are the cause.
As A physicist is frequently wont to ask, do you have a cite for that?
——–
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-nasa-satellites-pothole-road-higher.html
Grace satellite data and ground observations from flooding in the areas Grace has identified as gaining mass from water is pretty solid confirmatory evidence. The oceans aren’t falling cause they are getting cooler, but rather, because so much of that ocean water has evaporated and fallen back on land rather than back on the ocean.
R. Gates says:
February 15, 2012 at 4:39 pm
“http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-nasa-satellites-pothole-road-higher.html
Grace satellite data and ground observations from flooding in the areas Grace has identified as gaining mass from water is pretty solid confirmatory evidence. The oceans aren’t falling cause they are getting cooler, but rather, because so much of that ocean water has evaporated and fallen back on land rather than back on the ocean.”
After a brief scan I can see several problems with this speculation. The areas on their map showing water gains appear to be, at least to my eye, somewhat larger than the areas that show a loss, but given the rather small excesses, the difference doesn’t seem capable of affecting the vastly greater surface area of the world’s oceans. Given that this is basically a one year graph. we have no basis of comparison as to what a similar map would have looked like in previous years, to gauge what the year to year change normally looks like. The map shows the north part of Greenland as one of the higher gain locations, but this site
http://tinyurl.com/drought-monitor
shows the same area as continually under severe to exceptional drought for the last three years.
There are some other things, but hose are my main problems so far.