From the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, a claim of 2 feet by 2050, but tide gauge data from Annapolis doesn’t support it, showing it will take well over 100 years at the historic rate to reach 2 feet, and there is no hint of acceleration in the record:
Source: NOAA Tides and Currents
Sea level along Maryland’s shorelines could rise 2 feet by 2050, according to new report
ANNAPOLIS, MD (June 26, 2013)—A new report on sea level rise recommends that the State of Maryland should plan for a rise in sea level of as much as 2 feet by 2050. Led by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, the report was prepared by a panel of scientific experts in response to Governor Martin O’Malley’s Executive Order on Climate Change and “Coast Smart” Construction. The projections are based on an assessment of the latest climate change science and federal guidelines.
“The State of Maryland is committed to taking the necessary actions to adapt to the rising sea and guard against the impacts of extreme storms,” said Governor Martin O’Malley. “In doing so, we must stay abreast of the latest climate science to ensure that we have a sound understanding of our vulnerability and are making informed decisions about how best to protect our land, infrastructure, and most importantly, the citizens of Maryland.”
The independent, scientific report recommends that is it is prudent to plan for sea level to be 2.1 feet higher in 2050 along Maryland’s shorelines than it was in 2000 in order to accommodate the high end of the range of the panel’s projections. Maryland has 3,100 miles of tidal shoreline and low-lying rural and urban lands that will be impacted. The experts’ best estimate for the amount of sea level rise in 2050 is 1.4 feet. It is unlikely to be less than 0.9 feet or greater than 2.1 feet. Their best estimate for sea level rise by 2100 is 3.7 feet. They concluded that it is unlikely to be less than 2.1 feet or more than 5.7 feet based on current scientific understanding.
“This reassessment narrows the probable range of sea level rise based on the latest science,” said Donald Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and chair of the group of experts that assembled the report. “It provides the State with sea level rise projections based on best scientific understanding to ensure that infrastructure is sited and designed in a manner that will avoid or minimize future loss or damage.”
These estimates were made based on the various contributors to sea level rise: thermal expansion of ocean volume as a result of warming, the melting of glaciers and Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, changing ocean dynamics such as the slowing of the Gulf Stream, and vertical land movement.
“While there is little we can do now to reduce the amount of sea level rise by the middle of the century, steps taken over the next 30 years to control greenhouse gas emissions and stabilize global temperatures will largely determine how great the sea level rise challenge will be for coastal residents at the end of this century and beyond,” said Dr. Boesch.
According to Joseph P. Gill, Secretary of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, impacts associated with sea level rise are already being seen along Maryland’s coast, such as the documented loss of islands within the Chesapeake Bay, as well as visible changes to wetland habitats all along Maryland’s low-lying eastern shore.
“Recognizing the importance of building resilience within our natural and built environments,” said Gill, “DNR’s CoastSmart Communities Program is dedicated to offering on-the-ground expertise, planning guidance, training, tools, and financial assistance to help others in state plan, prepare, and adapt.” For more information on CoastSmart, visit http://dnr.maryland.gov/CoastSmart/.
Governor O’Malley established the Maryland Commission on Climate Change on April 20, 2007. The Commission produced a Plan of Action that included a comprehensive climate change impact assessment, a greenhouse gas reduction strategy, and actions for reducing Maryland’s vulnerability to climate change. On December 28, 2012, Governor O’Malley issued an executive order that requires State agencies to consider the risk of coastal flooding and sea level rise to capital projects.
The 21-member panel comprised of sea level rise experts from the Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, reviewed projections from Maryland’s 2008 Climate Action Plan and provided updated recommendations based on new scientific results that can better inform projections of sea level rise for Maryland.
The Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE), working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), is updating Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMs) for communities in Maryland. The revised maps are the first update in the coastal areas of Maryland in 25 years and confirm both increases and decreases in the 100-year flood elevations over this period of time.
“MDE is working with seventeen Maryland coastal communities to go through the mapping process, which requires the communities to update their local floodplain management ordinances before the revised maps become effective,” said Maryland Department of the Environment Secretary Robert M. Summers. “Many communities choose to better prepare themselves by adopting higher freeboard elevations or additional safety requirements for new or substantially improved structures, which could lead to reductions in flood insurance.”
Operative word is “could”. A meteorite could slam through the roof above where I am sitting and smash me to smithereens. But it hasn’t. Yet.
Well I could just whip out the ace that is up my sleeve, and my crossword puzzle pen, and I could draw a much better straight line through that Annapolis data. It would go through about the same point in the middle of the record, and have a higher slope which would put it in the middle of the range at each end of the record, instead of going through the top of the beginning data, and the bottom of the ending data.
But I wouldn’t do that, because there obviously are at least two shorter periods of even higher slope, so one line , is not a good substitute for the real result, which can best be seen, by erasing those straight lines to leave the wiggly line, which shows, what actually happened at Annapolis.
Besides, they like the sea, in Annapolis, the more, the merrier. Good place to take sailing lessons.
[in 50 years] it is unlikely to be less than 0.9 feet …
[by 2100, 100 years] unlikely to be less than 2.1 feet
Convert to mm:
0.9 feet = 270 mm (to two sig. figs)
2.1 feet = 640 mm
From 80 years of data: the rise is 3.44 +/- 0.23 mm/yr.
Take the maximum rate in the range of uncertainty: 3.67 mm/yr.
in 50 years, the maximum rise (by the data) would be 184 mm.
Their minimum is 270 mm. 46% greater than the maximum supported by the data.
in 100 years, the maximum rise (by the data) would be 367 mm.
Their minimum is 640 mm, 75% greater than the maximum supported by the data.
When you see a typical record of white noise (Gaussian), you will regularly see peaks that are six times the RMS noise level; that’s based on about 50 years of looking at noise, over all kinds of bandwidth ranges, from sub audio to several GHz.
So when I look at that Annapolis graph, I pretty much ignore the peaks, and see mostly the grass around the baseline. Then when you eyeball the slope of that grass, you get a higher slope, than their lines. I don’t know if they weight each and every data point, the same, but if you treat it as Gaussian noise, and weight each point based on the probability of it deviating that far from the base line, then I believe, you end up with something more like the grass..
That’s even assuming the points are noise free actual measured values; they still have some probability of occurrence frequency distribution.
Like philjourdan, I’m a nice guy. I want to help everyone who suffers from rising sea levels. That’s why I want to establish a foundation which offers future victims of sea-rise to swap their endangered coastal properties for safe, nice new houses well inland. No profit involved! We will take over the risk with no expenses. And here’s the clincher: If for some reason the sea does not rise to the bait of man-made global warming, we will pay 2% of the profit from any sale of the not-inundated beach property to the safely-provided-for climate refugees sheltering behind the nice carpark of our seaside shopping mall.
Care to put up some venture capital, Mr. Gore?
@Con Trari – Re: “Care to put up some venture capital, Mr. Gore?” – What do you think his sea side mansion is? 😉
State General Tidal
coastline1 shoreline2
Maryland 31 3,190
Gulf Coast:
Florida (Gulf) 770 5,095
Louisiana 397 7,721
1. Figures are lengths of general outline of seacoast. This does not include freshwater coastlines. Measurements are made with unit measure of 30 minutes of latitude on charts as near scale of 1:1,200,000 as possible. Coastline of bays and sounds is included to point where they narrow to width of unit measure, and distance across at such point is included.
2. Figures were obtained in 1939–1940 with recording instrument on the largest-scale maps and charts then available. Shoreline of outer coast, offshore islands, sounds, bays, rivers, and creeks is included to head of tidewater, or to point where tidal waters narrow to width of 100 feet.
Read more: Coastline of the United States | Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001801.html#ixzz2XRWdo3KN
Just some info on their miles of shoreline vs coastline. Note Louisiana has more than the Gulf coast of Florida.
Tetragrammaton says: June 27, 2013 at 7:57 am
[This posting is being written just a couple hundred yards from the 1813 Tighman base area].
Will all those Windmills you are going to have plunked down going to raise / lower / have no effect on the Bay and your wonderful view?
george e. smith says:
June 27, 2013 at 11:19 am
“When you see a typical record of white noise (Gaussian), you will regularly see peaks that are six times the RMS noise level; that’s based on about 50 years of looking at noise, over all kinds of bandwidth ranges, from sub audio to several GHz”
Well I see these frequencies in the UAH and CET temperature series.
http://s1291.photobucket.com/user/RichardLH/story/70051
http://s1291.photobucket.com/user/RichardLH/story/73127
You could also stop paving MD with federal money, federal jobs, and facilities. That would help a lot in all areas inland and the in the case of their waterfront homes.
Bob Shapiro says: June 27, 2013 at 5:00 am
“WUWT hasn’t updated Nicola Scafetta’s (commenter in this article) Widget in a year. I see at http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/#astronomical_model-1 (bottom of page) it still looks good.”
thank you. Let us hope that WUWT updates it.
I just updated my temperature vs. astronomical model vs. IPCC Widget with the temperature of May that has been just published.
My astronomical model forecast works great up to now!
See bottom of page at
http://people.duke.edu/~ns2002/#astronomical_model-1
From Nicola Scafetta on June 27, 2013 at 12:43 pm:
Anthony still has up the page with the widget, Top toolbar -> Reference Pages -> Research. Comments are still open. Why not directly flag the moderators there to update it, with the information they need to do so?
Or is that now a “frozen” version, to see how well the prediction made then has played out, rather than a “tweaked” revision that shows how well your theory now “predicted” the present?
@tetragrammaton:
We need pictures: before & after of historic Chessapeake buildings at high tide or low tide just to show how little the sea level has changed in the last hundred years. I went looking for some pictures but couldn’t really engage the local historical society. Maybe you’ll have better luck. Baltimore is old enough to have had some building that would evidence sea level rise if it were still around today. I am curious what story these buildings tell.
Les Johnson says:
June 27, 2013 at 5:14 am
“Reality is the murder of a beautiful theory by a gang of ugly facts.”
– RobertGlass?
“The great tragedy of science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”
– Thomas Huxley
*
I don’t know that the theory or hypothesis of CAGW was so beautiful to begin with.
Some experts. Even Wikipedia is more trustworthy. Flashback to an earlier article here that forewarned of these knuckleheads and their predictable mistakes …
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/01/part-2-of-on-sallenger-et-al-2012-hotspot-of-accelerated-sea-level-rise-on-the-atlantic-coast-of-north-america/
… and I’ll just repeat myself from that thread …
Well I hate to ruin the climate kook sea-level party but there is another dynamic variable that may account for 100% (or more 😉 of the alleged sea-level rise.
This large slab of land we call North America isn’t bolted to an imaginary solid core at the center of the Earth. Instead, like all other parts of the crust, it floats on the mantle. Furthermore it isn’t ‘level’ perpendicularly to an imaginary line spearing the Earth’s center. No, in fact it is tilting, which means one end is rising and the other end is sinking. Guess which end is sinking.
So, up North (…to Alaska) the land is rising, below the Great lakes (this includes North Carolina naturally) it is sinking. So where do the retarded alarmist community decide to go cherry picking this time? Yep, to North Carolina. They are liars and scoundrels of the highest order.
It is entirely possible that sea-level ‘should be’ rising faster than we currently see. In other words it may not be rising fast enough. Its is likely that the only detectable warning signal that humans will observe indicating the winding down of the current Holocene interglacial will be the slowing of sea-level rise until it turns the corner and sea-level begins to decline (that would be actual bad news). This is because the one constant during the Holocene has been rising sea-levels since the last glaciation maximum. Why would any logical person worry about a few millimeters of sea-level rise?
The Naval Academy is in Annapolis. The Mids will enjoy an extra 0.6 meters under their keels.
Confucious Say: One cannot measure sea rise from sink of land!
So we have the threat of reaching an astonishing 130 +/- meters of sea level rise in the next 100 years! RUN!!!!!!!!!! To the mountains. I’ll take care of your sea side house. (A height which relates to the difference since Ice maximum 20K +/- years BP seal level set to zero at max glaciation. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png)
O/T/ Years ago I wrote to our local MP (State) about climate change and all the rubbish we were receiving from the likes of Tim Flannery, etc. He sent a reply from the Bureau of Meteorology. The result they predicted that the sea would rise 177 MM, (not meters or cms) that’s approximately 6 1/2 inches by 2100. Hmm, I wouldn’t be urged to sell my sea front home if I had one. Beach erosion is a problem, so I would not be building a home on a cliff either.
Thanks, Anthony. Very good article, with very good comments.
Dr. Scafetta, thanks for the good news, I will update your graph in my web pages.
Gee whiz, after thousands of years of recent sea level rise we manage to populate the planet with calculators to measure our sea level doom. Yet put men on the moon just in case.
When it comes to sea level rise I stay with Chao, Yu and Li (Science, April 11th, 2008). They corrected the published sea level data for water held in storage by all impoundments built since 1900. The resulting sea level curve became linear for the last 80 years, with a slope of 2.46 millimeters per year. Anything that has been linear that long is not about to change anytime soon. Extrapolating this gives 24.6 centimeters per century or a little under ten inches. That very likely is what we should expect. Sea level does vary by location because of mass distribution changes since the end of the ice age. In the Baltic Sea region that was under the Fennoscandian ice shield the land is still rising and sea level is receding. The corresponding ice shield in North America was the Laurentide ice sheet. Now land north of the Great Lakes is rising faster than to the south of them with the result that lake basins are being “overturned” and spilling water to the south. Check what sea level is doing.