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.
“””””” Pierre-Normand says:
February 15, 2012 at 11:42 pm
@george E. Smith,
Causes and effects can be concurrent. Speaking through a microphone can cause my voice to be heard louder than is would be if I were speaking without any amplifying device. In this case the cause — the operation of the amplifying device — is operating over the whole duration of the effect. Likewise, clothes or a blanket can cause a body to radiate heath away at a lower rate than it would without them (it also reduces convection). The effect (the lower cooling rate) also is present for the whole period over which the cause operates (e.g. while the blanket covering the body). The case of a cause occurring wholly before its effect is just a special mode of causation. My having smoked cigarettes in the past may be the cause of the present appearance of a disease. But it may also cause my shortness of breath and chronic cough while I am smoking regularly and only for as long as I am.
Clouds or water vapour can cause the Earth to cool down (through radiating heath away) at a lower rate than it would without either of them. Because the cooling rate is reduced, from the very same initial temperature at sunset, the surface temperature could be higher at sunrise after a cloudy night than it would be after a cloudless night. If you are going to dismiss this possibility on the basis of the principle that causes must occur wholly before their effects, then you would need to also contest the possibility of the first two causal processes I mentioned above.
Well Pierre, If you are available for work as a circuit designer, I might have a job for you.
You may be the first person; and I’m sorry I don’t have your credentials in front of me, to be able to design a circuit having zero propagation delay (from cause to effect).
Given that all of the really interesting things in Archeo-Physics happened in the first 10 ^ (-43) seconds after the big bang, I take that as being the upper limit of “simultaneity”.
For ANY RESULT that happens later than 10 ^ (-43) seconds AFTER THE CAUSE; it remains true that CAUSE comes BEFORE RESULT.
So the big bang STARTED some 15 billion years ago, and is ongoing so astronomers tell us. Just when would you expect the big bang to finish, so that some of the things it may cause can start to happen ?
“”””” Because the cooling rate is reduced, from the very same initial temperature at sunset, the surface temperature could be higher at sunrise after a cloudy night than it would be after a cloudless night. “””””
Nowhere have I ever contested such an assertion; so you erect a strawman to try to make some point.
Axiom # 1 says:- It is warmer on cloudy nights, than it is on cloudless nights. Or are you waffling on that too ?
Axiom # 2 says the sun is not above the horizon AT NIGHT. A corollary to that says that CLOUDY NIGHTS start with both CLOUDS, and NO SUN.
As a result of Axioms 1 and 2, your strawman scenario of both a CLOUDY NIGHT and a CLOUDLESS NIGHT starting at THE SAME TEMPERATURE, is prohibited. It directly contavenes Axiom #1.
The prevailing meteorological assertion is that THE CLOUDS CAUSE THE WARMER NIGHTS. Thet extbooks go on to say that THE HIGHER THE CLOUDS AT NIGHT, THE WARMER THEY MAKE THE NIGHT.
Well they draw graphs showing that clouds at a certain height, neither warm nor cool the surface; clouds below that neutral height cool the surface; clouds above the neutral height warm the surface.
The distinction is crystal clear Pierre:-
Either the PRE_NIGHT surface conditions CAUSE the CLOUDS and the WARMER NIGHT surface conditions, or the Night time CLOUDS CAUSE the WARMER NIGHT surface conditions, and the daytime surface conditions have no effect.
Now I know it is fashionable in climatism to have rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere cause the Surface Temperature to rise about 800 years earlier, as shown by the graphs in Al Gore’s book on climate science; but today, ANY 4-H club member can observe whether it is warmer during the day before a balmy warm cloudy night, or whether it is colder before such an event, and cloud or no cloud, they also know it will be colder before sunup than it was at sundown.
I want to know two things: what is so significant about 2 inches of rise (50mm) and what is this level referenced to? I know I am only a geologist and study much greater sea level rises but what is the reference? The graph only shows 1994 to present, does this mean that the world began in 1994 or what? Sorry for the plug, but this is junk science.
Werner Brozek says:
February 16, 2012 at 2:09 pm
R. Gates says:
February 16, 2012 at 11:50 am
The contraction through the ocean cooling of the La Ninas over the past few years would be nowhere close to enough to account for the large drop in ocean level.
R. Gates says:
February 15, 2012 at 4:39 pm
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-nasa-satellites-pothole-road-higher.html
So approximately what percentage of ocean contraction of 6 mm over the past year on the above site that you quoted earlier do you attribute to cooler temperatures?
How dry had Australia been previous to the sudden influx of moisture? That will dictate how much of the moisture will go toward replenishing ground water supplies
This raises an interesting question since you say but this winter, we’ve seen another round of flooding in Australia so I can understand that a lot of moisture went into the ground water the first year of flooding. But if we have two years of flooding in a row for Australia, or anywhere else in the world for that matter, the second year would have much less water being retained as ground water. So for all those dark blue areas on your map, how many were also dark blue last year?
______
A very interesting question which I have not really researched. I agree that Australias land areas should be saturated more this year than before the floods last winter, so one might expect sea levels to rise faster after this winter of flooding is over, as more water ought to run off a bit faster. This would be true of course only to the percentage that the flooding in Australia represents as a percentage of the overall transfer of water from ocean to land globally. Still, six months from now, it will be interesting to check this conjecture.
Joachim Seifert says:
February 16, 2012 at 12:10 pm
To R.Gates:
Why dont you join the geoengineering climate doctors and engage in pumping
ocean water onto Australia’s surface in order to lower the menacing increasing
ocean levels…?
All the water will disappear into the big black hole below Australia, all water will
fit in “down under”, no doubt……..
and we have resolved Hansen’s ocean level scare…..
JS
_____
Someday, when fusion power is a reality, exactly this kind of thing might happen because the cost in terms of energy will be meaningless. We will be able to transform the world into exactly what we want…using the wisdom and knowledge gained from studying the most minute details of how the climate, biosphere, atmosphere, hydropshere, magnetosphere, ionosphere, all interact to create a world fit for life in abundance. A true “domesticated” planet, geoengineered to the smallest detail for human comfort. We domesticated animals…why not a whole planet? Just imagine such a world…
Or…give me something wild, unpredicatable, untamed…and yes, even dangerous. I’ll chose the later, thanks.
@george E. Smith
You charge me of constructing a straw-man when I say that “Because the cooling rate is reduced, from the very same initial temperature at sunset, the surface temperature could be higher at sunrise after a cloudy night than it would be after a cloudless night.”
You say that you never denied such an assertion. But, in the message I was responding to, you had claimed that “Regardless of the presence or absence of clouds, and regardless of the altitude that the clouds are at, or the altitude at which they are not, it WILL cool down after sunset, and be cooler still just prior to sunrise the next morning. … It follows that it MUST be warmer just before sunset on a warmer cloudy night than it is just before sunset on a cooler cloudless night.”
But your inference is a non sequitur. The temperature just before sunset depends on very many things. Where I live the temperature just before sunset in mid-October may be 10 degrees Celsius on a cloudy day, or on clear sky day. Mere knowledge of the temperature at that time (and date) will not enable me to infer the cloudiness of the sky. It depends on what occurred before in the surrounding meteorological system. You conclusion also denies the possibility of the antecedent of my conditional statement. Your claim entails that the temperature could not have been the same just before sunset on a warmer cloudy night than it is just before sunset on a cooler cloudless night. But this stipulation is absurd.
As for your insistence that causes must occur before their effects, you now retort to my counterexample that the underlying process exhibits the temporal sequencing your are insisting on. But I can grand that when an ongoing condition (e.g. the presence of an amplifying device) is the cause of a concurrent cause (e.g. my voice being amplified), the fine-grained underlying mechanistic explanation of the dynamic process can have a sequential causal structure. You can indeed trace the history of finite segments of the signal across successive transduction events within components of the device. This only shows the temporal structure of some causal process to be relative to the level of description. But these considerations actually help my argument and undermine yours. You were suggesting that clouds during the night can’t cause surface temperatures to be higher at the end of the night because the real cause must rather occur before the effect, hence during the previous day. But the cause you are looking for can be found at the lower level of analysis where many photons of the dowelling radiation are traced to back to photons of the upwelling radiation that have been re-emitted back from the absorbing clouds. This explanation does not contradict the coarse grained dynamical-system level explanation in terms of a cause acting in concert with its effect. The consistency of both explanations make unnecessary your absurd suggestion that a warmer morning in a cloudy morning must necessarily be the result of the previous day having been warmer irrespective of the effects of clouds during the night.
Will Nitschke said “Why don’t we see this same pattern of sea level drop during every La Nina event then?”
We would only expect this only if every La Nina event had very similar durations and intensity, and resulted in similar geographic distribution of excess rain events, and, finally, if the ENSO cycle was the only significant determinant of ocean temperature changes. But we know that La Nina events tend to warm up the oceans and increase rainfalls. And we have direct evidence that the oceans did warm up over the last La Nina. This is sufficient to make it more plausible to attribute the drop in sea levels to increased precipitations (and land retention) rather than to thermal contraction.
Jack said: “The graph only shows 1994 to present, does this mean that the world began in 1994 or what? Sorry for the plug, but this is junk science.”
The graph doesn’t go further back because the satellite record only goes that far back. To go further back you must incorporate data from the tide gauge record. This has weaker geographical coverage and is subject to different sorts of corrections.
George E. Smith said: “Either the PRE_NIGHT surface conditions CAUSE the CLOUDS and the WARMER NIGHT surface conditions, or the Night time CLOUDS CAUSE the WARMER NIGHT surface conditions, and the daytime surface conditions have no effect.”
This is also another non sequitur. You rely on some unjustified notion of causal exclusion. It is entirely possible for two (either partly or completely) independent antecedent condition to effect the later state of a unique parameter. My wife may deposit some amount in our joint bank account during the day and I may make some withdrawal during the night. While only my wife’s action effects the account balance just before sunset, both occurrences will effect the account balance in the morning.
@ur momisugly Pierre-Normand
“”””” You were suggesting that clouds during the night can’t cause surface temperatures to be higher at the end of the night because the real cause must rather occur before the effect, “””””
Please don’t put YOUR words into MY mouth. I have made NO such “suggestion” either directly or by inference.
If it will ease your angst, I fully agree; without reservation, that clouds at night REGARDLESS OF THEIR HEIGHT, WILL slow the escape rate of outgoing radiant emissions AT ANY WAVELENGTH.
For the exact same reason, those same clouds in the daytime, will also slow the escape rate of the outgoing radiant emissions (which will be different from the night time emissions (because of higher surface Temperatures in daytime), and they will also SLOW THE WARMING OF THE SURFACE in the daytime, by reflecting/scattering/absorbing/Stokes shifting/radiating incoming solar spectrum radiant energy, so it fails to reach the surface of the deep oceans, where it will propagate to the depths, and so be removed from a prompt response to that energy input; which MUST lead to a cooler earth.
We are concerned with CLIMATE; not last night’s WEATHER, and any increase in cloud cover (area/density/persistance time/whatever) that lasts over climatically meaningful times (why not 30 years) results in a cooler earth.
Feedback controls usually control the ORIGINAL input signal; which in the climate case is THE SUN’S TSI input of solar spectrum energy; not some minor leakage path at the output.
The reason climate models can’t properly represent cloud effects, to generate positive feedback (more clouds = more surface heating), is because there is no such positive feedback.
“”””” Pierre-Normand says:
February 16, 2012 at 5:11 pm
@george E. Smith “””””
You seem to be a master at cooking up “stone soup”. Does the concept of changing one parameter at a time to compare results escape you ?
The comparison was between “cloudy warmer nights”, and “cloudless cooler nights”. The presumption was that we are NOT comparing a midsummer cloudy night to a midwinter cloudless night; how about two consecutive nights. Reasonably then a “warmer” night as predicted on the 6pm weather report, would have a higher Temperature, than the same meteorologist’s prediction of a cooler night would have; regardless of what (s)he says about the cloud conditions, on those two nights. Then absent an instantaneous Temperature drop to equality at the moment of sunset (along with the green flash) for the cloudless night, the day Temperature before sundown would necessarily be higher, for the day that has the warmer night.
Yes if you like the cloudy night is likely to cool more slowly, I’ve never implied or asserted it won’t.
I’m simply saying it was the surface conditions that produced both the warmer night and the clouds, and NOT the clouds that produced the warner surface conditions.
Your position requires a belief that the higher a cloud layer is; therefore in a less dense cooler air mass, containing a lower density of water (in ANY phase), will return more surface emitted LWIR energy, than a lower denser higher water content cloud layer, despite the inverse fourth power of cloud height attenuation of that surface emitted energy. So we are to believe that it is those noctilucent clouds that really warm the earth at night.
In more than half a century of observation, I have never observed it to warm up in the shadow zone, when a cloud passes in front of the sun. I plan on living another half century just on the off chance that such a thing occurs.
I’ve also never observed something to happen before the cause of it happens, whether time resolved events or overlapping events, and all physical processes exhibit time lags between cause and effect.
But you are welcome to believe whatever you like. In the end, the observations will overrule the computer models, which can’t even replicate the data that is used to construct them.
Pierre-Normand says:
February 16, 2012 at 5:33 pm
“This is sufficient to make it more plausible to attribute the drop in sea levels to increased precipitations (and land retention) rather than to thermal contraction.”
—–
Exactly what the satellite data and direct observation have shown.
@george E. Smith,
You had said earlier that : “The high clouds ARE NOT the CAUSE of the WARM NIGHT, the prior WARM DAY is the CAUSE of both the WARM NIGHT and the HIGH CLOUDS, and the WARMER THE DAY, then the WARMER THE NIGHT and also the HIGHER THE CLOUDS.”
But now you are insisting on the negative feedback effect of the clouds during the day and seem to be assuming that this effect will be stronger than the positive feedback effect around the clock. But these two arguments don’t cohere. If the clouds cause the day to be colder that it would have been without them (i.e. the negative feedback dominates), then you can’t at the same time claim that the true cause of the a warmer night when the sky is cloudy is the fact that the clouds also caused the previous day to be warmer and thus the temperature to already be higher at sunset.
George E. Smith wrote: “The comparison was between “cloudy warmer nights”, and “cloudless cooler nights”. The presumption was that we are NOT comparing a midsummer cloudy night to a midwinter cloudless night; how about two consecutive nights. Reasonably then a “warmer” night as predicted on the 6pm weather report, would have a higher Temperature, than the same meteorologist’s prediction of a cooler night would have; regardless of what (s)he says about the cloud conditions, on those two nights. Then absent an instantaneous Temperature drop to equality at the moment of sunset (along with the green flash) for the cloudless night, the day Temperature before sundown would necessarily be higher, for the day that has the warmer night.”
I can’t quite make sense of this argument. Why should the day temperature before sundown be necessarily higher before the warmer night? There need be no instantaneous drop at the moment of sunset for this to be the case. Even if the day-time temperatures were the same until sunset, the lower rate of cooling after sunset (the possibility of which you don’t deny) is quite sufficient to explain why the night will be warmer, either on average or at any given time before the next sunrise.
Pierre-Normand says:
February 16, 2012 at 5:33 pm
And we have direct evidence that the oceans did warm up over the last La Nina.
You are obviously NOT talking about the sea surface temperatures. See the 2008 and 2011 La Nina:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1980/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/trend
For the last ten years, the slope = -0.00903442 per year.
George E. Smith wrote: “Your position requires a belief that the higher a cloud layer is; therefore in a less dense cooler air mass, containing a lower density of water (in ANY phase), will return more surface emitted LWIR energy, than a lower denser higher water content cloud layer, despite the inverse fourth power of cloud height attenuation of that surface emitted energy. So we are to believe that it is those noctilucent clouds that really warm the earth at night.”
I don’t think my position requires this since I made no claim regarding the balance of positive and negative cloud feedback effects.
However the fourth power law seems irrelevant here. While cloud cover altitude may effect the strength of the cloud warming effect, this has nothing to do with the fourth power law of attenuation. The warming caused by enhanced down-welling radiation depends mostly on cloud cover percentage (assuming constant cloud density and thickness). Roughly, full cloud cover will have twice the effect of half cloud cover, irrespective of altitude. That’s because it isn’t dependent on the amount of radiation emitted back from some given bit of cloud cover to some given bit of ground. The effect must be doubly integrated over the whole surface and the whole cloud cover. This double integration cancels out the fourth power attenuation.
This is intuitively obvious when you think of it the right way. It is true that some *individual* overcast cloud only reflects back towards you some amount of the radiation *you* emit towards it that is inversely proportional to the fourth power of its altitude. Yet, altitude has no effect on the fraction of up-welling radiation emitted back towards the *whole* surface by the *whole* cloud canopy. If the could cover is 25%, say, then it absorbs 25% of the up-welling radiation and emits half of it (12.5%) back towards the ground. 100% of the down-welling radiation reaches the ground. These figures — 12.5% and 100% — result from integrations that each cancel a double square law.
Werner Brozek says:
February 16, 2012 at 7:10 pm
Pierre-Normand says:
February 16, 2012 at 5:33 pm
And we have direct evidence that the oceans did warm up over the last La Nina.
You are obviously NOT talking about the sea surface temperatures. See the 2008 and 2011 La Nina:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1980/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/trend
For the last ten years, the slope = -0.00903442 per year.
_____
Apparently not understanding that the ocean heat content is different ocean surface temperatures, which actually is just measuring how much heat is leaving the ocean. That negative slope simply means less heat has been leaving the ocean, while of course, during the same period in question, ocean heat content has gone up. Pierre-Normand is exactly right– the oceans have gained energy during the past few La Nina’s (and this is typical during most La Ninas). Usually this heat would be released during the next El Nino, and some is, but more heat is being retained during La Nina’s, and hence, ocean heat content has been going up.
Oh, the millimeters of it all.
Magic millimeters, able to leap tall trend lines in a single bound.
Egads.
Sounds good, but … prove it. Show the measurements of warmed ocean water, and give volumes and locations. Report in Degrees Kevin, if necessary.
Werner Brozek wrote: You are obviously NOT talking about the sea surface temperatures.
No, of course not. I am taking about ocean heath content. When there is a strong La Nina, there is a stronger upwelling or cold water in the tropical Pacific. This circulation effect yields a drop in sea surface temperature. This drop in sea surface temperature cause the oceans to lose less heat (or gain more heath, depending on latitude) to space and the atmosphere. It causes them to warm up (i.e. gain heath). El Nino conditions, conversely, cause higher sea surface temperature and therefore increase the loss of heath of oceans to space and the rest of the troposphere.
So, paradoxically, in the case ENSO variations, oceans with colder surfaces are warming up more rapidly. That’s because the cause of the warming up is endogenous, in a sense. The local circulation pattern may be partly atmosphere driven but the drive is mechanical rather than thermal. If the cause the higher sea surface temperature was directly driven by air surface temperature, then the more intuitive causal relationship would hold. But that isn’t how ENSO works.
wine spit on puter!!!! I prefer using Degrees Bobs, if necessary.
Ya know, the ever-wise, intellectual, and alarmed comments from AGWists over changes in sea level reminds me of the concern expressed by my grandmother when I was sewing my own clothes. She suggested I buy material with the stripes going up and down so I would look taller. At 4′ 11″, just how much taller would I look?????
Nevertheless, please continue measuring the change in size of the hair on a gnat’s ass. It is ever so intertaining. Especially after a glass (or two) of sherry. Why sherry? Because I felt so guilty letting CO2 escape from my brew last night. Tonight I am being a good girl.
Sherry sure makes it hard to tell whether or not “intertaining” looks more right than “entertaining”. Would someone please tell me the correct spelling of entertwined?
Obviously my tease earlier about “heath” didn’t get thru. Look it up. It does not mean “heat”. One “h” only. Heat. Heat. Heat
h.Sorry, there is no correct spelling of that, because it’s not a word in English. Maybe in franglais, I’m not sure. 😉
Thanks Brian H.
French is my first language. I indeed didn’t understand the tease. I appreciate the correction. I’ll remember it now: ‘Heat’. (I guess I also used to mispronounce the word as ‘heath’.)