Sea level rate of rise shown to be partially a product of adjustments

Typical. Trying to engineer an acceleration to fit the models.
The isostatic adjustment was introduced last year as far as I remember?
(Adjusting for the sinking of the sea floor).

Why be surprised?
If there is no global warming you make it.
Is there no extreme ice melt you make it.
Is there no sea level rise you make it.
If glaciers wont meld you make them meld even if you have tho use a blowtorch.
Why is this a suprice? We all know AGW or CAGW is FRAUD the only thing to figure out is how far when they and when someone comes out and say stop this is to far.
All I now is that in normal science they already where out of job and possibly in to prison now.

Reminds me of interview with Nils Axel Morner back in 2007. Not much has changed since then. It would be interesting if the author had inserted tide gauge measurements over the same period.
http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/NilsAxelMornerinterview.pdf
“Now, back to satellite altimetry, which shows the water, not
just the coasts, but in the whole of the ocean. And you measure
it by satellite. From 1992 to 2002, [the graph of the sea level]
was a straight line, variability along a straight line, but absolutely
no trend whatsoever. We could see those spikes: a very rapid
rise, but then in half a year, they fall back again. But absolutely
no trend, and to have a sea-level rise, you need a trend.
Then, in 2003, the same data set, which in their [IPCC’s]
publications, in their website, was a straight line—suddenly it
changed, and showed a very strong line of uplift, 2.3 mm per
year, the same as from the tide gauge. And that didn’t look so
nice. It looked as though they had recorded something; but
they hadn’t recorded anything. It was the original one which
they had suddenly twisted up, because they entered a “correction
factor,” which they took from the tide gauge. So it was
not a measured thing, but a figure introduced from outside. I
accused them of this at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow—
I said you have introduced factors from outside; it’s not
a measurement. It looks like it is measured from the satellite,
but you don’t say what really happened. And they answered,
that we had to do it, because otherwise we would not have gotten
any trend!” So we have the adjustments to sea levels and the surface temperature records and I wonder what else. What about ocean heat content?

However, i’m sure they reference their data against known surface heights (large salt pans) then use this to correct satellite drift (the adjustment). They must give a reason / data for their correction.
Of all the adjustments in climate, height must be the least murky / easily verified or explained, surely.

I wouldn’t call these value added adjustments since that presupposes agreement on the value of the end-product, rather this is yet another example of values-based-adjustments in accordance with the post-modern-science-activism

The story of satellite sea level adjustments is even older. The values before 2011 can be assessed via WayBackMachine.
I made an analysis of the results of the adjustments of the ESA and Colorado Sea Level data over the years a couple of month ago (Google translation).
Conclusion, Even though the sea level rise rate has decreased over the years, the rate of sea level rise was kept more ore less constant at above 3 mm/year by applying various “adjustments”. This year it seems, the data is being made fit for the next IPCC assessment report…

Can anyone come up with ONE instance EVER, where adjustments have resulted in less warming, less sea level rise, etc?
If not, this tells a pretty clear story. It is totally unreasonable that all adjustments, year after year in multiple datasets and in multiple scientific disciplines should all contribute in the same direction – towards “confirming” a dramatic global warming.

Climate scientists, advocates and politicians following the AGW line have been shown to exagerate, fudge data and tell lies. They have shown themselves as untrustworthy so I always get suspicious when they make apparently outlandish predictions. These are supposedly educated and intelligent ( sometimes mutually exclusive I realise) people who by now should know they are wrong, wrong wrong. However whilst continuing the false PR some are acting in a way which is at odds with their public utterances. E.g Al Gore is sure sea will rise by up to six metres but buys a waterfront property in SF; Tim Flannery predicts an eight story sea rise but buys a property on the Hawkesbury river just above high tide and accessible only by boat. Tim also sprouts the urgent need for geothermal and has shares in a company that just happened to receive $90 million in Government grants. Unfortunately for Tim the share price has all but hit zero so he doubles his efforts to promote the evils of CO2. Local government has tried to move people from areas seven metres above current sea level stating that sea level rise will inundate these properties. Some people, believing the lies, sell at reduced prices to escape the coming catastrophe and I wonder who buys; folk like Flannery and Gore??
When someone who should know better keeps a discredited scam going and starst profiting from others who believe them I start to wonder. After all our own government is doing just that with the Carbon tax.

How does one go about measuring sea level to a tenth of a millimeter?

Dutch scientist found that the moon has some influence on the measured sea level based on cyclic variations of the orbit of the moon. Paper here:
http://www.citg.tudelft.nl/fileadmin/Faculteit/CiTG/Over_de_faculteit/Afdelingen/Afdeling_Waterbouwkunde/sectie_waterbouwkunde/people/personal/gelder/publications/papers/doc/JCOASTRES-D-11-00169.pdf
The moon pulls the ocean water from the southern to the northern hemisphere in cycles of 18.6 years. The oceans then get more or less the form of pear with the stalk heading north and south alternately. That should have an influence on the sea level of at least at few millimetres and that effect should not be forgotten when you monitor sea levels. You have to monitor for whole cycles of 18.6 years to get correct data. For the time being, the stalk points south.
Besides that effect, the mentioned moon cyclus should, according to this paper:
http://ansatte.hials.no/hy/climate/theClimateArticle.pdf
also have a more general influence on the climate in the northern Atlantic region.

Would someone please write a book on solely the adjustments you could call it “The adjustment burro”
Dare I say the only real hockey stick.

Come on. If this analysis shows something, then perhaps that sea level rise is accelerating, right?
Or maybe it would be good to take a little better look at the data and figure out what actually happened with them first.

I agree with Jim2.
Can anybody plot the I corrected/unadjusted data to compare?

Adjustments on their own are not a problem , its the need for justification, the retaining of old data and the tracking of changes that are the problem , especially in the highly politicised ‘climate science’ where often there poor of not seen at all .
But has it the old saying goes , when ‘mistakes ‘ always favour one side its unlikely there ‘mistakes ‘ in the first place .

MieScatter says:
January 25, 2013 at 3:26 am
osopolitico, sea level is typical measured with a laser altimeter. An example is on the Jason satellite, and the handbook is here:
ftp://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/allData/ostm/preview/L2/GPS-OGDR/docs/userhandbook.pdf
The error budget shows that an individual measurement expects an uncertainty of the order of cm to ~11 cm.
If I’ve got it right, then that is one measurement. But your uncertainty in measuring an average value gets smaller as you take more measurements.
This claim is only true if the errors are random. If there is any systemic error – a very likely possibility with only one Jason Satellite – then it doesn’t matter how many measures you make the systemic error will still be present. So let us say that there is a slow millimeter a year drift in the satellite measure – that drift will appear as a sea level drift regardless of the number of times you use the laser altimeter.
As long as that drift is in the ‘sea level rise’ direction, confirmation bias will ensure that it is not corrected.

In real science, adjustments are meant to arrive at the true value of something like temperature or sea level, but it is not an “adjustment” to redefine sea level as a virtual entity that does not exist on our real planet. Adjusting for sea floor settling or for retained water in artificial reservoirs on land disallows honest use of the term “sea level” to describe the result. Yet the term is still used to label charts for policy makers.
-=NikFromNYC=-, Ph.D. in carbon chemistry (Columbia U.)

MieScatter says:
January 25, 2013 at 3:26 am
osopolitico, sea level is typical measured with a laser altimeter. An example is on the Jason satellite, and the handbook is here:
ftp://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/allData/ostm/preview/L2/GPS-OGDR/docs/userhandbook.pdf
The error budget shows that an individual measurement expects an uncertainty of the order of cm to ~11 cm.
If I’ve got it right, then that is one measurement. But your uncertainty in measuring an average value gets smaller as you take more measurements. It crosses the equator ~25 times per day. I can’t find the sampling frequency, but the resolution is ~4 km. 12.5 full orbits in a day at ~4 km resolution is up to 10,000 measurements per day (assuming all ocean). Let’s say 6,000 to represent unfrozen ocean. The average cycle length at which they report a value is just under 10 days, so about 60,000 measurements per value….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
But are you (and they) applying the statistics correctly? Are you measuring the same widget 60,000 or are you measuring 60,000 different widgets from different cavities from different molding machines in different factories owned by different corporations?
Bob Tissdale mentions, depending on the strength of the trade winds, one side of the Pacific ocean can be as much as three feet (~ 1 meter) higher than the other side. And then there are the tides. In the Bay of Fundy the difference in water level between high tide and low tide can be as much as 48 feet (14 meters). Then there are waves. In the early 1990s, Ruggiero said, a fairly typical winter might have an offshore wave maximum of a little more than 25 feet.
I really do not think that the sea level rise on a moving body of water can be measured to the degree of accuracy you calculated. The tide waves and wind are all going to introduce error that must be included along with the accuracy of the instrumentation.

Another 0.1 mm/year increase in sea level rise!
At this rate UC will be underwater very soon. Is it no underwater now?
They better throw all the bad statistics overboard before their credibility sinks to the very bottom.
Thanks, Steve, Anthony. I have updated the graph in my pages.

The 2011 correction has been rehashed before – it is discussed at http://sealevel.colorado.edu/content/addressing-questions-regarding-recent-gia-correction, and was due to an updated measure of glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA). The 2013 adjustment is likely due to (as stated on their home page) “Switched to Jason-2 GDR-D release for all Jason-2 cycles. Updated through cycle 160”.
Better measurements, better sea level rise estimates. If anyone disagrees, show why the science behind the measurements is incorrect, rather than implying or directly accusing folks of fraud.

REPLY: Mr. Ryan. The only person who used the word fraud was you. That’s the second time this week where a warmist uses the word where the article did did. Projection perhaps? – Anthony

Altimeters are calibrated to an “absolute” coordinate system through GPS. This was traditionally done with GPS surveyed tide gauges. Salt pans are not used (as far as I know, for sure they didn’t used to be). Even if they were, they’d need GPS measurements to see how they’re moving in an absolute coordinate system tied to the earth..
That’s one issue I have with the GIA correction. It’s taking the measurements back from an absolute reference to being referenced to the sea floor. I can understand why alarmists would be interested in this, but I don’t think it’s appropriate for a primary dataset.
I’m also concerned with recent info from the GPS community that the location of the earth center is not nearly as well known as I thought it was and even worse is not even systematically off. If you can first imagine that the Z coordinate is off, then your value for sea level will also be off because of the N-S asymmetry of the oceans. This wouldn’t matter for trends, but apparently the error is not necessarily constant. So imagine that your best location for earth center is actually drifting N. Then GPS determined locations would have a slow drift and “calibrated” sea level would appear to be rising (even if it were actually not).
The GPS community really, really needs to nail down their coordinate system. Else all precise measurements and calculations based on it will be in error.

Here’s a good review of how sea level is determined with satellites: http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/technology/
Here’s a 15% systemic error that is not mentioned in any measurements: https://c3.nasa.gov/nex/projects/160/
Here’s the real problem that the satellite people must resolve: http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/MSL_global_trendtable.html
These are long term sea level trends measured by tide gauge sites around the globe. If you take the average of all 194 sites, there is no trend. These are the measurements that really count as far as coastal communities are concerned. Sea level with respect to the ITRF center of the earth is an academic debate.

Anthony – See http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/24/sea-level-rate-of-rise-shown-to-be-partially-a-product-of-adjustments/#comment-1208537 – my apologies for leaving out the specific reference to “fraud”.
Also _multiple_ comments claiming that these measures are based on manufactured data:
“…not a measured thing, but a figure introduced from outside”
“…the measurements … are being calibrated to radiative greenhouse theory, not anything real on Earth’s surface”
“This year it seems, the data is being made fit for the next IPCC assessment report…”
“Trying to engineer an acceleration to fit the models.”
These are all claims of fraud, whether or not that particular word is used.
I will note that saying “This sort of thing has been going on more or less regularly and it seems to go only one. way.”, without discussing _why_ adjustments are made, or that they might be justified, does leave unpleasant implications hanging for the reader.

I would not be concerned about the physics of an individual satellite. Satellite locations are known with great precision. The altimeter will take many measurements of land based locations whose altitude is very precisely known so instrument drift can me monitored and corrected.
There are so many other places between the instrument and the “global average sea level” in which a bias can be introduced. But staying close to the instrument – I would point out that every phenomena that would give an incorrect altitude reading (clouds, planes, ships) all bias the reading in the upward direction. So if there is a significant false negative rate for the rejection algorithm, then that would introduce an “instrument related” bias. And as Dr. Lindzen points out – we are talking about tiny numbers here.

RobertInAz says: January 25, 2013 at 8:52 am
I would not be concerned about the physics of an individual satellite. Satellite locations are known with great precision. The altimeter will take many measurements of land based locations whose altitude is very precisely known so instrument drift can me monitored and corrected.
Nope, they don’t measure the TRF with as “great precision” as they would wish. Currently they resort to cobbling together data from 4 different systems, including the GPS satellite system which was not designed for the job. To the extent that the GRACE system has not been as useful as hoped, and to the extent they want a new launch (GRASP) to resolve the problems.
Thus, we assess that current state of the art reference frame errors are at roughly the mm/yr level, making observation of global signals of this size very difficult to detect and interpret. This level of error contaminates climatological data records, such as measurements of sea level height from altimetry missions, and was appropriately recognized as a limiting error source by the NRC Decadal Report and by GGOS. (http://ilrs.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/GRASP_COSPAR_paper.pdf)

John Peter says: January 25, 2013 at 1:08 am
So we have the adjustments to sea levels and the surface temperature records and I wonder what else. What about ocean heat content?
========================
That apparently has been rigged too; Joel Shore recently provided a link to a NOAA chart that showed OHC rising these last fifteen years while SST remained flat. This is blamed on CO2, of course.

The GIA at 0.3mm/year, ten percent of the total, is particularly galling because it makes the numbers go up by 0.3mm/year even if every tide gauge in the world stays constant. Because the ocean basins are thought to be getting larger in capacity, it takes 0.3mm/year of additional water just to keep sea level from falling. The U. of Colorado is therefor re-defining sea-level as water capacity, which is perhaps useful if you are trying to account for where all the water in the world is, but it is totally misleading if you are talking about the effect on coastlines and coastal inhabitants, upon which the climate change discussion of sea level is based.

@KR, If it walks like, talks like and looks like??
Fraud or incompetence?
These systemic adjustments with astounding claims of precision, accuracy and certainty cause you no qualms?
What happened to clearly stating what you know, the precision of this knowledge and the acknowledgement of what is not known?
Infinite adjustments = attenuation of trust.

The University of Colorado is remarkably forthright about their re-definition of Global Mean Sea Level (GMSL) as something other than the level of the sea. They write (emphasis added):

This means that if we measure a change in GMSL of 3 mm/yr, the volume change is actually closer to 3.3 mm/yr because of GIA. Removing known components of sea level change, such as GIA or the solid earth and ocean tides, reveals the remaining signals contained in the altimetry measurement. These can include water volume changes, steric effects, and the interannual variability caused by events such as the ENSO. We apply a correction for GIA because we want our sea level time series to reflect purely oceanographic phenomena. In essence, we would like our GMSL time series to be a proxy for ocean water volume changes. This is what is needed for comparisons to global climate models, for example, and other oceanographic datasets.

[Ref: http://sealevel.colorado.edu/faq#n3113 ]

martin_cregg-guinan says:
January 25, 2013 at 11:10 am
The University of COLORADO has a sea level study group?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes, it is a hot bed of Climate Scientists. Colorado used to have a really good geology school, the Colorado School of Mines.

@martin_cregg-guinan
January 25, 2013 at 11:10 am
>The University of COLORADO has a sea level study group?
It is right ‘up there’ with Austria! (a reference to Dr Nils-Axel Morner’s video above).

Yes, Martin, the University of Colorado is uniquely positioned to study rising sea level because of all the United States, Colorado has the highest lowest point. Every other state will be partially inundated, and 18 states totally submerged before a rising sea pushes the first drops of brackish water up the Arikaree River from Kansas into Colorado, at a minimum elevation of about 3,315 feet. Perhaps that is why they seem so comfortable speaking about sea level as something other than the level of the sea at the shore. For a Coloradan, it is a purely theoretical consideration.

It seems fairly clear that they are not measuring sea level but rather sea volume. Their graph is mislabeled and the way they are quantifying it is awkward (mm/yr).

If you mewasure something with a ruler that is inaccurate, it doesn’t matter how many measurements you make, there will still be an error equal to the error of the ruler. No averaging will correct it.

In the meantime, all of their “adjustments” keep resulting in values that are increasingly further away from the only important ones that matter…. the tide gauges! You don’t see stories about tide gauges because they DON”T show anything alarming. Soon UoC will be claiming Manhatten is underwater and Hansen has been vindicated. Wonder what the people living in Manhatten will think when they find out they are supposedly living under water.

Tower: “Cesna 456, you are cleared to land on runway 2L”
Cesna 456: “Ah, Tower? There appears to be a communication beacon in our landing flight path”
Tower: “Pay no attention to that. You see, the land around here heaved up 100 feet recently. We’ve made the correct adjustments, so the top of that beacon is actually 100 feet lower than it appears and the runway is also 100 feet lower than it appears. Trust us! Ignore your instruments, we will guide you in.”
___________________________________________________
I wonder if CU consulted with The National Geodetic Survey? Professional surveyors have to be scratching their heads. CU has rendered the term “elevation”, which is a fixed vertical point, into a meaningless quantity.

martin_cregg-guinan……………….exactly

Not only is the slope of the 2013 rel 1 data steeper than the 2011 rel 1 data, it is also about 9.5mm higher on average. So they have ‘raised’ global mean sea level 9.5mm in two years of processing – actualy most of it (9.2mm) occurred between 2011 rel 1 and rel 2.

Tide gauges are only showing about 1.0 mm / year of sea level rise.
On average, the tide gauges are uplifting at about 0.3 mms/year according to GPS.
So, sea level rise is only around the 1.3 mms/year rate.
The satellites numbers are adjusted up to what the global warming scientists think should be there from their estimated glacial ice loss and from their estimated steric ocean warming sea level expansion rate.
So, they have just adjusted the satellite rise up to meet the global warming theory assumptions. I’m sure, the satellites are really measuring something in the 1.0 mm/year range (and the ocean is subsiding / deepening at something like 0.3 mms/year so again we are back to the 1.3 mms / year).
Glacial ice loss have grossly overstated due to the inappropriate glacial isostatic adjustment models which have been applied to the Grace gravity satellites. In addition, steric ocean warming expansion is much, much lower than estimated because the oceans are warming much slower than was assumed in the days before the Argo bouys. The global warming scientists are still trying to use the old ocean heat content trendlines which are too high.
It will take some time before the satellite adjusters have to come clean. But in the meantime, you will know what is really happening.

I have processed all the data linked in the article. There are no significant differences between them, all the differences are perfectly negligible. The biggest difference is that the last data series is a bit longer than the second to last, and that it shows certain rise in sea levels after several years of stagnation where the second to last series ended.
These data do not show any signs of tampering.
The only problem I can see is lack of scientific approach and a bit too wild imagination of certain people here.

Wow, I got a lot of answers to that! I’ll try and get round to some of the points.
M Simon, that level of time measurement should not be a problem. The best atomic clocks are accurate to within something like 0.01 ns per day, and DEMs regularly report precision of well less than a centimetre. My field experience with (much cheaper) terrestrial lidar doesn’t give me any reason to doubt this.
M Simon & Gail Combs; you question whether the statistics of the errors I used are appropriate because the thing changes. I think they are as we’re considering the average sea level height here.
The errors are affected by wave height etc, but that seems to be included in the error budget. The absolute value of sea level at each point isn’t relevant, only the error. The measurement error is typically independent for each sampling, so these are the correct stats to use assuming normal distribution of errors, which I didn’t check. Even if it differs from Gaussian, it would have to be pretty extreme to change my estimate by the two+ orders of magnitude suggested by some on here.
It’s fun to accuse scientists of fraud/stupidity/confirmation bias, but until I see the evidence before me showing that the peer reviewed work on sea level estimation from satellites is grossly wrong then I’m not buying it.

Doug Proctor says: January 25, 2013 at 3:34 pm
” ….Remember the 21 “high-quality” tidal guages that were used a few years ago to estimate a much slower rate of rise? I wonder that those 21 show …..”
About 2 mm/year over 100 years, including the 0.3 mm/year GIA adjustment.
The original 24 sites were published as Douglas etal 1997, but it does not seem to be available anywhere … here those24 sites are plotted up to about 2005 on shown on Wikipedia …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Recent_Sea_Level_Rise.png

who is Steve Case?