Results suggest that global mean sea level may also be affected, though not yet fully confirmed.
Hot off the heels of an admission by NASA JPL that the satellite derived sea level data is “spurious” due to a lack of a stable reference frame and needs fixing, comes this new paper that suggests we may see a drop in sea level soon.
It is rather at odds with the notion that sea level rise is “accelerating” which is one of the unsupported memes being pushed by warmists and media, now even more so due to the hurricane that wasn’t when it made landfall, Sandy.
I wonder if it came up in discussion today at Dr. Mann’s “breaking news” breakout session?
Key Points
- The research reveals that there is a 60-year oscillation in the majority of long tide gauge records
- The signal is consistent in phase and amplitude in many ocean basins
- This has important implications for quantifying sea level acceleration
Cited by the CU Sea Level Group here.
Is there a 60-year oscillation in global mean sea level?
Don P. Chambers, College of Marine Science, University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, Florida, USA
Mark A. Merrifield, Department of Oceanography, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
R. Steven Nerem, CIRES, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, USA
Abstract
We examine long tide gauge records in every ocean basin to examine whether a quasi 60-year oscillation observed in global mean sea level (GMSL) reconstructions reflects a true global oscillation, or an artifact associated with a small number of gauges. We find that there is a significant oscillation with a period around 60-years in the majority of the tide gauges examined during the 20th Century, and that it appears in every ocean basin. Averaging of tide gauges over regions shows that the phase and amplitude of the fluctuations are similar in the North Atlantic, western North Pacific, and Indian Oceans, while the signal is shifted by 10 years in the western South Pacific. The only sampled region with no apparent 60-year fluctuation is the Central/Eastern North Pacific. The phase of the 60-year oscillation found in the tide gauge records is such that sea level in the North Atlantic, western North Pacific, Indian Ocean, and western South Pacific has been increasing since 1985–1990. Although the tide gauge data are still too limited, both in time and space, to determine conclusively that there is a 60-year oscillation in GMSL, the possibility should be considered when attempting to interpret the acceleration in the rate of global and regional mean sea level rise.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 39, L18607, 6 PP., 2012
h/t to Paul Homewood
NOTE: I made a clarification in the title and first sentence not long after initial publishing – Anthony
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Maybe it’s time someone sent the Team a copy of this?
From paragraph [13] of the paper:
“Some climate model experiments have found that forcing with combinations of external forcing (greenhouse gases, solar variations, volcanic aerosols) cannot reproduce the observed multi decadal variation in surface temperature [Andronova and Schlesinger, 2000], but that a coupled climate model forced with only climatological fluxes and run over 1000 years will reproduce a quasi 60 year oscillation in surface temperature that is related to fluctuations in the thermohaline circulation in the model [Delworth and Mann, 2000]. This suggests the multi decadal oscillation is an internal mode, and not externally forced. Moreover, a coupled model experiment where the Atlantic surface temperatures were forced to correspond to observations resulted in multi decadal surface temperature oscillations throughout the Northern hemisphere, similar to observations [Zhang et al., 2007], again with no external forcings other than climatology.”
Is there a 60-year oscillation in global mean sea level?
No.
But there is 65 year cycle in the world oceans, but most prominently in the North Atlantic. The origin is the Geo-Solar oscillation (sun-Earth) as described by Vukcevic
Extract: http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/EarthNV.htm
For 4-5 people who have the access details are on pages 5,6&7
Interesting- but it needs at least 3 full cycles to properly verify the frequency domain characteristics of that component of the variation.
Weird, reading the title of the article (” cycle discovered”) i was shocked to find out that the abstract suggests otherwise. … pays to be skeptical.
I am delighted to see that Steven Nerem is a co-author of this paper. Steven Nerem is associated with the Uni of Colorado sea level data http://sealevel.colorado.edu/. At long last, the narrative accompanying one of the “official” sources of climate data makes mention of natural cycles.
“Discussion
The Multivariate ENSO Index (MEI) is the unrotated, first principal component of six observables measured over the tropical Pacific (see NOAA ESRL MEI, Wolter & Timlin, 1993,1998). To compare the global mean sea level to the MEI time series, we removed the mean, linear trend, and seasonal signals from the 60-day smoothed global mean sea level estimates and normalized each time series by its standard deviation. The normalized values plotted above show a strong correlation between the global mean sea level and the MEI, with the global mean sea level often lagging changes in the MEI.“.
—
While we’re on the subject of “cycles” – I have some time-related data on which I want to do a Fourier Transform looking for signs of cycles. I can’t find any (free) software to run on my Windows XP Home Edition PC. Please can someone point me at suitable software.
MCKIBBEN DEBATE TONIGHT: Tonight at 7:00 Eastern, Bill McKibben will be debating Alex Epstein of the Center for Industrial Progress, on the topic of the benefits vs. hazards of fossil fuels. The debate is being live-streamed online at http://fossilfueldebate.com/
If the 60 year cycle does prove to be true, then another pillar of climate alarmism will have been well and truly torpedoed.
Steven Mosher says:”Weird, reading the title of the article (” cycle discovered”) i was shocked to find out that the abstract suggests otherwise. … pays to be skeptical.“.
The paper’s abstract says “We find that there is a significant oscillation with a period around 60-years in the majority of the tide gauges examined during the 20th Century, and that it appears in every ocean basin.“. Seems pretty clear to me, in spite of a more cautious finish (“Although the tide gauge data are still too limited, both in time and space, to determine conclusively that there is a 60-year oscillation in GMSL, the possibility should be considered when attempting to interpret the acceleration in the rate of global and regional mean sea level rise. “).
It is extremely interesting as the period is the same like with the temperature cycle. I can imagine the heat can be taken more rapidly into ocean deeps in the cold period and kept more on ocean surface in hot period. Nevertheless, my imagination fails facing volume of the water. Where is the water volume hidden and where is the water taken from? Thermal dilatation would not be sufficient I guess. Amount of water in hydrological cycle is also tiny in compare to the ocean.
The top graph looks close to the following:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/akasofu_ipcc.jpg
I imagine if taken with Houston and Dean and a few other studies, a pretty strong narrative about what is really going on with sea levels could be developed
There we go again- look back 60 years to see what kind of weather we should be expecting at this time. There were big droughts in Texas, wildfires, a very cold NW USA, etc. etc. There was also the worst 6 year period for October hurricanes to hit the east coast – I’m predicting another bolt of these hurricanes starting with Sandy over the next few years-it ain’t CO2 causing it but I’m sure we will be getting this BS. It goes with colder weather, too – the northern jet stream dips down further this early in the season and collides with the late N.American hurricanes.
And there’s that 60 year oscillation in global average temperature too, peaking in the early 1940s and early 2000s…
60 year oscillation again.
So, why can’t the AMO be included as a natural climate cycle when there is clearly some type of oscillation/cycle in global temperatures/sea level (which might not turn out to be 60 years all the time but probably varies some).
I note there is a new paper which updates Foster (Tamino) and Rhamstorf 2011 and extends it back to 1850 and also includes the AMO in its regression. This cuts the FandR 2011 warming rate in half.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/17/new-paper-cuts-recent-anthropogenic-warming-trend-in-half/
Tamino’s response – “The AMO just reflects the temperature.” But here we have another line of evidence indicating there is indeed some type of cycle. And if the AMO just reflects temperature, then what is causing the temperature/sea level to have a 60 year cycle. “Must be something” an objective person would say.
Mike Jonas,
The abstract says the 60 year cycle is seen in many ocean basins but that:
“Although the tide gauge data are still too limited, both in time and space, to determine conclusively that there is a 60-year oscillation in GMSL, the possibility should be considered when attempting to interpret the acceleration in the rate of global and regional mean sea level rise”.
So Anthony’s headline should not read GMSL, it should say in tide gauge records or in most ocean basins.
I’ve made a clarification of the headline and first sentence to more accurately reflect the paper. While one could argue that long period tide gauge data is representative of GMSL, the authors say it is indefinite leaving the “further research is needed” door open.
“Steven Mosher says:
November 5, 2012 at 2:54 pm
Weird, reading the title of the article (” cycle discovered”) i was shocked to find my confirmation bias suggests otherwise.”
There – fixed it for you. It really does pay to be sceptical. Or at least open-minded.
Very interesting–sea level seems to follow the 60-year PDO/AMO 60 year cycles, rising during warm cycles and dropping during cool cycles. It also trashes the notion of ‘accelerating sea level rise’ (which is also not shown in historic sea level curves). I don’t understand how the AGWs can continue to push ‘accelerating sea level rise’ with so much data to the contrary.
Adolf Balik says:
November 5, 2012 at 3:16 pm
Amount of water in hydrological cycle is also tiny in compare to the ocean.
But not in comparison to sea level changes. There is recent evidence that La Ninas cause heavy rain over normally dry areas and these areas ‘capture’ the precipitation resulting in a fall in sea levels.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/sea-level-fall-defies-climate-warnings/story-e6frg6nf-1226483797934
I’m generally sceptical of claimed cycles, because data generally doesn’t go back far enough for high confidence, but 60 years is the period of the PDO.
Wow, this is interesting Anthony, this is a breath of fresh air amidst the apocalyptic predictions from the AGW crowd and the liberal mainstream media.
65 year period (also found in the AMO) appears to be result of the solar-earth cross-modulation (Svalgaard & Mosher see: vukcevic pages 5, & 6).
I am skeptical. I copied the individual red and blue curves and overlay them one at a time into the future to see when they would be out of sync. Near 2300, they were still offset by the same amount. I was under the impression that AMO and PDO periods are not identical, yet in the top graph, they are.
John M Reynolds
Bill – Anthony has fixed the post’s heading, and yes it does more accurately reflect the paper. We will have to wait and see how it develops from here, but we are already one step further with Uni of Colorado’s “strong correlation between the global mean sea level and the MEI“.
[MEI is the Multivariate ENSO Index]
From the last paragraph: “It is important to point out that even if a 60-year oscillation is occurring in GMSL, it is still a small fluctuation about a highly significant rate of rise.”
Holgate documented this oscillation.