I’ve been watching with interest and concern some of Steve Goddard’s postings on Envisat on the abrupt changes in their recent sea level data. To me, something didn’t seem quite right, and I expressed concerns privately along those lines that I didn’t know the causes of what appear to be recent unexplained “adjustments” in the recent data. It seems ENVISAT has given up the ghost. So, it is possible it has been sending faulty data and they have not noticed. Here, he shows this graph which seems quite problematic:
This is like what has happened with the AQUA AMSRE failure and the failure that we had to point out to NSIDC (where Dr. Walt Meier famously exclaimed it “wasn’t worth blogging about” only to have to later issue corrections themselves) that the DMSP satellite they were using had issues. Whether this is permanent or not remains to be seen. After 10 years of service, Envisat has stopped sending data to Earth. ESA’s mission control is working to re-establish contact with the satellite.
Via our friend Ecotretas :
I read in the news today that connections have been lost with the Envisat satellite. ESA has already confirmed it too, but reading the latest Mission Operations News, it seems it would be predicted for a satellite that had only been planned for a five year mission.
So I ran to see how the sea level graphs had finished, and to my biggest surprise, the graph from AVISO had changed dramatically! I recall seeing it about a week ago, with totally different values! From an historical perspective, several older graphs can be seen in a post 9 months ago (in Portuguese), or compared with other satellite measurements in this WUWT post. Please compare the graph 9 months ago on the left, and the more recent one on the right (click to zoom):
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Notice that the slope has gone up from 0.76 mm/year to 2.33 mm/year! This manipulation, which has no other name, has been justified by Aviso with the following notes:
- Envisat time series extended before 2004 starting from May 2002.
- Envisat V2.1 GDR reprocessed data used. The new standards are also detailed in the table “Processing and corrections”.
- Instrumental correction sign corrected (impact of around +2mm/year). The error detection and impact on data is detailed in:
- Envisat 2011 yearly report, A. Ollivier & M. Guibbaud, soon on the Aviso website
- Envisat Reprocessing impact on ocean data, A.Ollivier & M. Guibbaud, soon on the Aviso website
- A.Ollivier et al. 2012, Envisat ocean altimeter becoming relevant for mean sea level long term studies? (submitted in Marine Geodesy)
- new NetCDF CF format in the products and images selection interface
Now, this looks like a small part of the Envisat mystery. Please check that the older graph starts in 2004, but the newer graph starts in mid 2002! Notice that in the newer graph, the 2002 and 2003 values were much higher that those of 2004, and that the highest values of 2003 were not surprassed till late 2008. Now imagine why they were not there in the older graphs, and how being there would create a trend probably very near to ZERO!
The last image, the above one on the right, that’s on the AVISO site is dated “Tue, 10 Apr 2012 09:14:03 GMT”, so clearly has been put there after the satellite failed, which occurred last Sunday. No doubt that the hiding the decline was already planned, but probably was executed swiftly after the fail. Strangely, the last color image taken by the satellite was above Portugal, which is obviously a coincidence. But it looks like it’s mysteries have only started…
A high end Zeiss CMM has a linear accuracy of .0015mm. Mine is .003, which is still quite good. I chuckle at many claimed accuracies by climate scientists of their measurements, The same for the error bars. 25 years in the Metrology business has taught me uncertainity is not a law no matter how convincing the math may look.
Hey, if sea levels have risen that much, I guess bangladesh and Holland have gone altogether. Funny though I have heard nothing to that effect in the news.
Bernie Schreiver says:
April 13, 2012 at 5:58 am
“LT is correct — another name is “adjustment”. The Occam’s Razor explanation for the accelerating convergence of such adjustments is the following chain of scientific reasoning:”
Occam’s razor tells me that the simplest explanation for the international scientific misconduct in CAGW climate scientist circles are covert operations by somebody who has a lot of natgas to sell.
Although the X-axis is aligned on the overlaid graphs from realscience, not having the y-axis to scale bothered me. I notice the the ealier plot I overlaid here, from the above article, is not the same plot Steve Goddard used from Nov. 2011. None-the-less, it makes it easy to see how the y-axis is radically changed.
http://i41.tinypic.com/2061wtl.jpg
How can such things happen without people actively conspiring to make it so. If people (scientists and technicians) are conspiring to alter historical data… Isn’t that a conspiracy??
Isn’t it about time someone took a serious look at the ideology that motivates such conspiracy, or is George Orwell’s book 1984 sufficient? GK
http://ilikai.soest.hawaii.edu/uhslc/wocestc.html
Having a quick scan around this site it is hard to see how the MSL is supposed to be going up a 3mm/yr.
Many have been flat for last 25years, many in Scandinavia and Alaska go down and only few go up. Even allowing for some regions rising the avereage would seem to be about half the 3mm/y figure.
It needs evaluating more precisely but my guess is that most of this difference will be due to _supposed_ rise in land levels , this being added to the *measured* SL rise. Once again, unverified computer models based of crude, back of envelop, guesses at mantel rebound are being used to frig the data.
At least they got the graph right in time for AR5.
Stephen Wilde says:
April 12, 2012 at 11:47 pm
“I’m becoming increasingly concerned about the nature and extent of ALL so called ‘adjustments’ to the whole range of available empirical data including proxy data.”
I fear Stephen has valid points. I got very mixed feelings when I tried to compute backwards the sea level rise.
The idea was to use the data as published in each year at UC and compute the total rise from begging 1993 – to the year when it was published based on the number of years and the communicated sea level rise.
Based on some older links from Ecotreras and WUWT I was able to go back to 2004:
http://suyts.wordpress.com/2012/04/10/sea-level-rises-to-new-lows/#comment-8489
Here are the values:
2012 – is shown to be same as 2011 = 50.4 it goes below the line
2011 = 50.4
2010 = 52.7
2009 = 51.2
2008 = 49.5
2007 = 49
so pretty stable since 2007
2006 = 41.6
2005 = 37.2
2004 = 33
Now what is more disturbing here is that the 2006-2008 period is shown as a very stable period in 2008 sea level with almost the same value 2006, 2007 and 2008.
If 8 mm increase would have been measured in that year there should have been a communication about it and not shown as same level.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/06/sea-level-graphs-from-uc-and-some-perspectives/
Thus the 7.4 mm increase in 2007 is highly suspect to me. Could it be resulting from an adjustment to the whole data 1993-2007? I could not clearly define where does it come from, maybe will find the answer later.
And then the stupid question comes, if this was an adjustment, how many such adjustments which increased the rise have been done before in this sea level rise satellite graph?
What everybody needs to understand is that the satallites are actually causing the sea levels to rise. Maybe its a gravitational thing, but I think it is a conspiracy. Coastal cities are doomed unless NASA can be stopped
See the proof here…
http://climatesanity.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/deception-from-nasa-satellites-are-true-cause-of-sea-level-rise/
Given the status and rather unreliable nature of satellites, I think we should simply revert to only tide gauges for increase/decrease in sea levels. Afterall, the only important metric is how sea level is changing relative to the land. GIA is a bogus correction when correcting for relative land/sea level changes. Im sure the fish in the ocean could care less about whether their swimming pool is getting shallower or deeper by up to 3mm per year.
TIde gauges are showing way less than 3mm/yr sea level rise. They were much more in line with the orginal Envisat data, prior to these recent data “corrections”.
Some uncritical mind posted:
• sea level really is rising, and moreover
• the rise-rate really is increasing, which
Oh, you mean really, really rising? Gosh, we know Tuvalu is doomed, let’s see how long they have left:
ftp://ilikai.soest.hawaii.edu/woce/gifd/m0025w.gif
Odd. Apart from a serious *dip* their sea level has barely moved until recently and it’s now falling quick enough to leave fish stranded on the now bare coral beaches.
So it seems uncritical mind was kinda right. Sea level rise rate is increasing, it now has a much larger *magnitude* that it did five years ago.
But maybe that’s a freak, or cherry picking, let’s try Scotland:
ftp://ilikai.soest.hawaii.edu/woce/gifd/m0293w.gif
or Alaska
ftp://ilikai.soest.hawaii.edu/woce/gifd/m0039w.gif
or ‘Frisco
ftp://ilikai.soest.hawaii.edu/woce/gifd/m0551w.gif
or Singapore
ftp://ilikai.soest.hawaii.edu/woce/gifd/m0699w.gif
or Sweden
ftp://ilikai.soest.hawaii.edu/woce/gifd/m0826w.gif
or the Falkland Islands
ftp://ilikai.soest.hawaii.edu/woce/gifd/m0088w.gif
ftp://ilikai.soest.hawaii.edu/woce/gifd/m0290w.gif
or S. Carolina
ftp://ilikai.soest.hawaii.edu/woce/gifd/m0261w.gif
or Washington
ftp://ilikai.soest.hawaii.edu/woce/gifd/m0558w.gif
or Florida
ftp://ilikai.soest.hawaii.edu/woce/gifd/m0242w.gif
or Spain
ftp://ilikai.soest.hawaii.edu/woce/gifd/m0207w.gif
or Panama
ftp://ilikai.soest.hawaii.edu/woce/gifd/m0302w.gif Hey! Bingo! I found some catastrophic global warming, ice sheet melting, accelerating sea level rise.
Check this out , maybe 6cm in 26 years, Jeezus, that must be 2.4mm/yr Why that’s almost as much as the *global average* , bad karma down there in Panama.
Chile’s sea level is retreating tho’
ftp://ilikai.soest.hawaii.edu/woce/gifd/m0088w.gif
How about Oz?
Townsville
ftp://ilikai.soest.hawaii.edu/woce/gifd/m0334w.gif
Freeo
ftp://ilikai.soest.hawaii.edu/woce/gifd/m0175w.gif
Brisbane
ftp://ilikai.soest.hawaii.edu/woce/gifd/m0331w.gif
Darwin
ftp://ilikai.soest.hawaii.edu/woce/gifd/m0168w.gif yeah, I’ll give that 5 or 6 cm since the record begins
France ?
ftp://ilikai.soest.hawaii.edu/woce/gifd/m0822w.gif . Nope.
How about Japan, maybe not a good example of a stable geology right now but …
Nagasaki?
ftp://ilikai.soest.hawaii.edu/woce/gifd/m0362w.gif
Toyama?
ftp://ilikai.soest.hawaii.edu/woce/gifd/m0349w.gif
Kushiro?
ftp://ilikai.soest.hawaii.edu/woce/gifd/m0350w.gif
And we have a winner !!! 20cm/25yr = 8mm/yr
Well I’ve just about done the rounds there and the only site that get’s to show more than an adjusted satellite rise in sea level is one in just about the most unstable geological region in the world, the Pacific ring of fire.
Someone needs to have a much closer look at where the sea is actually rising. Even the one extreme case I found has been dropping since 2004.
My impression from this quick world tour survey is that the only way they can get the sort of MSL sea rise they are presenting is but adding a sack load of GAIA adjustment to the data.
Degradation in data collection could have been happening slowly over time. I fried my mother board on my laptop. But it took a year to fry it. Kept getting slower and slower, then one day it just went *. I would not blindly trust this data past the first 5 years.
2.33 mm/year? Big deal. Anybody thinks we’re all going to drown in 20 cm additional seawater by 2100?
Here I really rather believe it’s because of better re-evaluation of satellite’s orbital parameters than due to any evil intentions.
Do you care to set some sort of time frame? You don’t fool me with free beer tomorrow. 😉
Sea levels have been rising since the end of the ice age and are currently decelerating. The IPCC have said there is no evidence of significant acceleration.
Now where is that thermal expansion you were promised?
From last year a peer reviewed paper.
Acceleration or lack thereof is the keyword here.
Bernie Schreiver
check this graph out as it shows you visually the post glacial rise in sea levels.
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/1/1d/Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png
Just finished my taxes! Had to “reprocess” the income and expense data but I think I got it.
Here is another satellite mystery.
and now…..
It’s worse than we thought! Adjusters are you ready, steady, go.
Same shock Warmists had with rising coral atolls where most had risen with sea level rise and even grown. Ditto Bangladesh gaining landmass over the past 30 years.
I forgot to H/T Climate Depot for the penguin story.
http://www.climatedepot.com/
The AGW dogma REQUIRES there to be potential for catastrophic increases in sea level. There cannot be a situation where data shows sea levels not rising. With all the money on the AGW side, there should be no surprise about these kind of ‘corrections’. Corruption is now at the heart of almost ALL scientific institutes. In the end it will come crashing down, but by then the damage to ‘science’ will have been done and the damage for future generations is incalculable.
Jimbo says: Acceleration or lack thereof is the keyword here.
That’s a very good point. An acceleration may be concordant with an additional forcing in the system. Steady rise or decelerating rise shows settling to a new equilibrium after a change in conditions.
It is clear that the latest adjustments are just another desperate attempt to “deny” the fact that the late 20th c. rise was cyclic and we are now on the down side of that hump.
SST shows it, sea level shows it, arctic ice cover shows. Yet the more the data shows what is happening the more previously unaccounted for “biases” are found and “corrected”.
They are just hoping to maintain the fallacy long enough to enslave the western world their $100bn PER YEAR funding for UN and World Bank
That’s like what US treasury gave to bail out the banks, but each year every year from 2020 onwards.
If we want to worry about the world our children will inherit that’s what we should be looking at.
Even if the entire Envisat data is suspect I cannot understand how the Aviso organization can extract millimeter precision or accuracy from satellite altimetry data. The best error budget for precise altitude determination has to be on the order of centimeters. To claim that they can
provide sea level accuracy to a millimeter or so implies that they can determine the altitude of
each satellite to a similar precision. Other satellite systems are more closely monitored than the
altimetry mission systems [gps for instance]. The precise altitude of a gps satellite is not known to millimeter precision.
Until I can see the complete error budget of the satellites Aviso uses to determine sea surface height to millimeter precision, I will have a hard time believing the precision or accuracy of any of their data.
I blame a handful of relativistic Fe nuclei.
DirkH says:
April 12, 2012 at 10:53 pm
Remember our warmist friends explaining to everyone that Envisat shows dropping sea levels because La Nina causes precipitation, storing all the water in the Amazons etc?
I suspect some frantic rewriting at Skeptical Science right now… Dana, you know what to do…
Now you remind me – what has happened to our friend R Gates? (Maybe he knows something about what has happened to this dataset that has shaken his faith?)
All the more reason, he should continue to post here. Where else can he go??