From the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) another Stephan Rahmstorf scare projection, so important they couldn’t even wait for it to be put on the NCC website before sending off this press release to Eurekalert (see weblink at end of story which is DOA as of 10PM PST 6/24).
Significant sea-level rise in a 2-degree warming world
Sea levels around the world can be expected to rise by several meters in coming centuries, if global warming carries on
The study is the first to give a comprehensive projection for this long perspective, based on observed sea-level rise over the past millennium, as well as on scenarios for future greenhouse-gas emissions.
“Sea-level rise is a hard to quantify, yet critical risk of climate change,” says Michiel Schaeffer of Climate Analytics and Wageningen University, lead author of the study. “Due to the long time it takes for the world’s ice and water masses to react to global warming, our emissions today determine sea levels for centuries to come.”
Limiting global warming could considerably reduce sea-level rise
While the findings suggest that even at relatively low levels of global warming the world will have to face significant sea-level rise, the study also demonstrates the benefits of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Limiting global warming to below 1.5 degrees Celsius and subsequent temperature reductions could halve sea-level rise by 2300, compared to a 2-degree scenario. If temperatures are allowed to rise by 3 degrees, the expected sea-level rise could range between 2 and 5 metres, with the best estimate being at 3.5 metres.
The potential impacts are significant. “As an example, for New York City it has been shown that one metre of sea level rise could raise the frequency of severe flooding from once per century to once every three years,” says Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, co-author of the study. Also, low lying deltaic countries like Bangladesh and many small island states are likely to be severely affected.
Sea-level rise rate defines the time for adaptation
The scientists further assessed the rate of sea-level rise. The warmer the climate gets, the faster the sea level climbs. “Coastal communities have less time to adapt if sea-levels rise faster,” Rahmstorf says.
“In our projections, a constant level of 2-degree warming will sustain rates of sea-level rise twice as high as observed today, until well after 2300,” adds Schaeffer, “but much deeper emission reductions seem able to achieve a strong slow-down, or even a stabilization of sea level over that time frame.”
Building on data from the past
Previous multi-century projections of sea-level rise reviewed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were limited to the rise caused by thermal expansion of the ocean water as it heats up, which the IPCC found could reach up to a metre by 2300. However, this estimate did not include the potentially larger effect of melting ice, and research exploring this effect has considerably advanced in the last few years. The new study is using a complementary approach, called semi-empirical, that is based on using the connection between observed temperature and sea level during past centuries in order to estimate sea-level rise for scenarios of future global warming.
“Of course it remains open how far the close link between temperature and global sea level found for the past will carry on into the future,” says Rahmstorf. “Despite the uncertainty we still have about future sea level, from a risk perspective our approach provides at least plausible, and relevant, estimates.”
Article: Schaeffer, M., Hare, W., Rahmstorf, S., Vermeer, M. (2012): Long-term sea-level rise implied by 1.5° C and 2° C warming levels. Nature Climate Change [doi:10.1038/NCLIMATE158] (Advance Online Publication)
Weblink to the article when it is published on June 24th: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/NCLIMATE158
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UPDATE: The link above is as published at Eurekalert. The bolding of “when” is mine. Harold W points out in comments:
Correct link to the article is http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/NCLIMATE1584 [Published link lacked the final digit], or alternatively http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1584.html
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Rahmstorf is just another mindless nitwitt babbleing on about things he doesn’t have a clue about. No matter how many universities he attended , he did’t learn a thing.
“Also, low lying deltaic countries like Bangladesh and many small island states are likely to be severely affected.”
It might be instructive to show the remarkable connection between the world’s river delta’s and the coral islands:
1) Willis Eschenbach has laid to rest the notion of atoll islands being submerged. These islands began as a ring of coral around volcanic mound in the sea. During the Pleistocene (recent glaciation – I know there has been some egg-headed terminology changes since I studied the subject), sea levels were 100+metres lower and the atolls that had formed responded to sea level rise by growing upwards as the ice age caps melted. Drilling on Bikini Atoll (I believe) before nuclear testing there revealed a 100+ metres thickness of coral formation before intersecting volcanics confirming the genesis of atolls. These islands are alive!
2) Surprise, surprise, river deltas also rise with sea level. As sea level rises, any incursion of water up into the delta results in an earlier (upstream) confrontation with the sediment-borne river water, slowing the flow and resulting in dumping of its sediment load earlier thus building up the submerging delta. Drilling in the Mississippi where the ancient stream entered the Gulf of Mexico finds 100+metres of silt, clay and a layer of river gravel on the bedrock. The gravel comes from a period of more energetic, rapid flow when glacial melt water and coarse debris left by the glaciers were carried down the river system to the gulf. One can follow this upstream in the ancient Mississippi channel with the muds getting thinner and the gravels appearing shallower – an excursion that charts the growth of the delta.
Shame on you Potsdam doctors for not consulting your geological colleagues. It is arrogant to purloin and misuse subject matter from another science. This non-issue of submergence of coral islands and deltaic lands remains a mainstay of the obdurate alarmist. Like the the phoney plight of the polar bear (which they appear to have had to abandon), sinking habitat is a good plot for the CAGW story.
Anthony, I think it overdue for a two or three part post on geology for the climatologist. I won’t volunteer. I think it is a job worth doing well by an expert in this branch of geology.
OMG this is going to affect for my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grand-kids. Me must destroy civilization as we know it to prevent this minor inconvenience.
Seriously, I can only see us burning fossil fuels to any great extent for another 50 years. Given the half-life estmates in the 40 years range that means there will be 150-250 years for the current CO2 to be naturally sequestered. There are so many technological advances moving forward as we speak that the chances for this scenario to occur are so close to zero as to be absolute nonsense. Who would pay real money to fund this kind of idiocy?
You can see much about various claims by Rahmstorf through the years at these locations…
http://climatesanity.wordpress.com/critique-of-a-semi-empirical-approach-to-projecting-future-sea-level-rise-by-rahmstorf/
http://climatesanity.wordpress.com/critique-of-global-sea-level-linked-to-global-temperature-by-vermeer-and-rahmstor/
http://climatesanity.wordpress.com/gordian-knot-of-nonsense-%e2%80%9dclimate-related-sea-level-variations-over-the-past-two-millennia%e2%80%9d-kemp-et-al/
The new trend among these frauds is to use regional areas as propaganda targets. Yesterday we saw the regional sea level rise in CA. Now it is the Eastern Seaboard. Scare dullwitted locals and greenies. Force development away from the coast. Spend public money to confiscate coastal properties or to down zone the same into bankruptcy.
Question was: which award was given for best Science Fiction?
only me said (June 25, 2012 at 7:43 am)
“…The Hugo award, named after Hugo Gernsback. The awards are given in many categories; short story, novella, novel etc. This study would not be in competition for any of them, though the one on global warming impacting black hole size might well be…”
Google them all, then.
1. The Hugo Award – The Hugo Awards are given every year by the World Science Fiction Society for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year.
2. The Aurealis Award – Aurealis Award for Excellence in Speculative Fiction is an annual literary award for Australian science fiction, fantasy and horror fiction.
3. The Aurora Award – The Aurora Awards are given out annually for the best Canadian science fiction and fantasy literary works, artworks, fan activities from that year.
4. 2007 Nobel Peace Prize – The Nobel Peace Prize 2007 was awarded jointly to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change”.
Science fiction, fantasy and horror fiction. So a paper that has scary predictions about world disasters sometime in the far future, would apply.
“…Sea levels around the world can be expected to rise by several meters in coming centuries, if global warming carries on…”
“…Previous multi-century projections of sea-level rise reviewed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were limited to the rise caused by thermal expansion of the ocean water as it heats up, which the IPCC found could reach up to a metre by 2300…”
Any science fiction writer could easily re-create the scenarios here, and win any of the awards mentioned.
Is this the same study that this alarmist article is based on?
http://news.yahoo.com/rising-sea-level-puts-us-atlantic-coast-risk-171554622.html
Basically stating the east coast of the U.S. will be especially hard hit.
I wonder how long it’s going to take for rahmstorf to report that sea levels will rise 2 to 4 kelvins and that the temperature will increase by a whopping 3-4 meters over the next hundred watts.
Neo says: June 25, 2012 at 8:12 am
WASHINGTON — From Cape Hatteras, N.C., to just north of Boston, sea levels are rising much faster than they are around the globe… U.S. Geological Survey scientists call the 600-mile swath a “hot spot” for climbing sea levels caused by global warming. Along the region, the Atlantic Ocean is rising at an annual rate three times to four times faster than the global average… It’s not just a faster rate, but at a faster pace, like a car on a highway “jamming on the accelerator,”…
Physically impossible.. unless the added weight of all the fat cats in DC & NYC is causing the crust to subside… or the gravity exerted their extra mass is pulling the ocean towards them…or the massive amount of hot air they expel is causing thermal expansion of the water just off the coast…
Lol, did anyone read the study? It’s a circle jerk of self-validation. They use Mann’s 2008 hs with some paleo they dug up from a site in North Carolina, then added mechanical observations for temps and tidal gauges. Laughably from 1880. (Separate paper) Even more laughably, they compared their sea level paleo to others and get a great agreement with them!…… If you apply a variable GIA to each site….. GIA ranges from 0-1.7mm/yr. Then after that they apply some different emission scenarios with the whatever sensitivities they decided to use for the various emissions and use MAGICC6 for their model.
We can all rest easy in know the methods employed by Vermeer and Rahmstorf. A few people looked real close at the methods and have agreed that Vermeer and Rahmstorf’s results were “robust”. That little paper was called “Testing the robustness of semi-empirical sea level projections” it was authored by Rahmstorf, Perrette and Vermeer. It seems they are in full agreement with themselves. If anyone wants to drag my response and spiff it up, they’re more than welcome. It’s a bit rough, but you can read it here.
Over the past week there has been a series of Sea Level hype releases. Coordinated attack perhaps?
RE: pat says:
June 25, 2012 at 9:42 am
The new trend among these frauds is to use regional areas as propaganda targets. Yesterday we saw the regional sea level rise in CA.
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That one was an outright lie. I fail to see how they got a rise from the Ft. Point gage. That one shows a fall. I only saw an MSM article so I’m guessing it was the result of an “adjustment.”
SteveSadlov says:
June 25, 2012 at 1:10 pm
“Over the past week there has been a series of Sea Level hype releases. Coordinated attack perhaps?”
Naahh… global warming isn’t getting any traction so The Choir has flipped to the next page in the hymnal. As for coordination, they are always on the same page, eh?
I might need my own category of “denier.” Why couldn’t sea levels rise that much? Certainly they have been higher in the past. They have also been much lower.
But since they’re going to rise so much, can we at least get Democrats and liberals to go along with the idea of ending federal subsidies for flood insurance? I mean, as long as we know that all those beach houses are going to be washed away do we really need the taxpayer to pick up the tab? And can we stop subsidizing construction in New Orleans?
Neo says: June 25, 2012 at 8:12 am
______________________
Louis Hooffstetter says: @ur momisugly June 25, 2012 at 10:15 am
Physically impossible.. unless the added weight of all the fat cats in DC & NYC is causing the crust to subside… or the gravity exerted their extra mass is pulling the ocean towards them…or the massive amount of hot air they expel is causing thermal expansion of the water just off the coast…
_____________________
I think you have got it! Willis commented that the California coast is rising… [sarc on] as Californians flee the bankrupt state and relocate in the hospitable Marxist climes of Boston, NYC and Washington DC. This massive migration of CAGWarmists to the East Coast is causing it to sink beneath the waves… Thank goodness my home is about 600ft above sea level [/sarc on]
Neo says:
June 25, 2012 at 8:12 am
“I can understand a temporary (months) distortion to the sea level in a locality, but a multi-year distortion. Is that possible?”
One possibility
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2007GL030862.shtml
Gyre-scale atmospheric pressure variations and their relation to 19th and 20th century sea level rise
Most of the long tide gauge records in the North Atlantic and North Pacific commonly used to estimate global sea level rise and acceleration display a marked difference in behavior in the late 1800’s – early 1900’s compared to the latter half of the 20th century. The rates of sea level rise tend to be lower in the 19th compared to 20th century. We show this behavior may be related to long-term, gyre-scale surface pressure variations similar to those associated with the Northern Annular Mode. As sea level pressure increases (decreases) at decadal and longer timescales at the centers of the subtropical atmospheric gyres, sea level trends along the eastern margins in each ocean basin decrease (increase). This is not an isostatic response; the scaling between local surface pressure and sea level at interannual and longer timescales is 3 to 6 times greater than expected by that mechanism. Rather, it appears to be the result of large, possibly gyre-scale changes in ocean circulation. Some evidence is also presented indicating slow, ∼2 cm/sec, westward propagation of sea level changes in the Atlantic from the west coast of Europe to the east coast of the U.S. which produce the decadal variability seen there.
Here’s a link to the full paper referenced above
http://ibis.grdl.noaa.gov/SAT/pubs/papers/2007GL030862_Gyre_Miller&Douglas.pdf
here’s a follow up on the Miller and Douglas work
http://www.ocean-sci.net/6/185/2010/os-6-185-2010.pdf
The gyre-scale circulation of the North Atlantic and sea level at
Brest
Check Leroux and the link to atmospheric circulation and the fact pressure has been increasing southward in the Northern hemisphere -colder, more powerful MPHs sinc ethe climatic shift of the 1970s.
This alarmist crap is just like the Jevrejeva et al. study discussed by Willis here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/18/the-500-year-fud-about-sea-levels/
Sat. measurements show that sea level has been falling the last few years. Yet these bozos keep making their Nostradamus-like prophesies of a drowning doom 10 generations into the future. Are we supposed to take this seriously?
cui bono says:
June 25, 2012 at 2:56 am
300 years time? Reminds me of the 1712 alarmist report warning that if we didn’t cut back our wood use, even if that did mean some discomfort, economic dislocation and freezing to death, by the 21st century there wouldn’t be enough for shipbuilding. /semi-sarc off.
Hah cui bono – Sweden has all those huge trees planted on an island “just in case” they need them to build a modern fleet of warships now. see here.
http://www.duntemann.com/VisionThing57.htm
In 1980 Sweden’s Department of Forestry wrote a letter to the Swedish Navy, informing the Navy that its lumber was ready. One hundred fifty years earlier, in 1829 Swedish planners predicted that a shortage of oak timber suitable for building warships would arise by the year 1990. So they instructed the foresters to be proactive, and the foresters planted a new oak forest on a government-owned island, knowing that it takes ship-quality timber at least 150 years to mature. In their view, I’m sure, they felt that they had barely forestalled certain disaster.
Stewart Brand tells this wonderful story in his recent book, The Clock of the Long Now. The book is a plea for a return to the long view in human society, like the one the Swedes had in 1829. As intriguing as the book is, Brand tiptoes around the question of what exactly constitutes a long view, and while he credits the Swedes for long-term thinking, he’s at a loss to suggest what they should have done. Nobody can predict technology—nor anything else, for that matter—one hundred fifty years into the future. So how do you foster a long view of anything? What the Swedes probably should have done is funded a think tank on the future of warfare. On the other hand, the oak trees were a good hedge, and I guess you can always make bookcases out of them.
Hotspot of accelerated sea-level rise on the Atlantic coast of North America. Asbury H. Sallenger Jr, Kara S. Doran & Peter A. Howd Nature Climate Change (2012) doi:10.1038/nclimate1597
“Here, we present evidence of recently accelerated SLR in a unique 1,000-km-long hotspot on the highly populated North American Atlantic coast north of Cape Hatteras and show that it is consistent with a modelled fingerprint of dynamic SLR.”
A clever use of the term ‘Hotspot’ in the title.
The oceans cannot increase in temperature now and do the expanding later. No increase in the rate of increase of volume means no acceleration in ocean temperatures. Unless, that is, the hotter the sea the more ice forms elsewhere and takes some of the sea with it. This seems unlikely.
Here is the latest scare:
http://news.yahoo.com/rising-sea-level-puts-us-atlantic-coast-risk-171554622.html
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Willis,
Just finished reading all the Ranger Rick comments. My eyes are still wet.
Hi, can somebody get me an estimated sea level citation from a reliable source for the case where ALL of the ice melts everywhere on earth? I think its not going to happen, but I’ trying to size up the range of the problem between no water and all water.