Guest essay Steve Goreham
Originally published in The Washington Times
Sea level rise is the greatest disaster predicted by Climatism, the belief in catastrophic climate change. Today, leading scientific organizations support the idea that the ocean level is rising due to man-made emissions. Further, they claim to be able to measure ocean level to a high degree of accuracy. But a look at natural ocean variation shows that official sea level measurements are nonsense.
The theory of man-made climate change warns that human emissions of greenhouse gases will raise global temperatures and melt Earth’s icecaps, causing rising oceans and flooding coastal cities. Former Vice President Al Gore’s best-selling book, An Inconvenient Truth, showed simulated pictures of flooding in South Florida, the Netherlands, Bangladesh, and other world locations. Dr. James Hansen predicted an ocean rise of 75 feet during the next 100 years.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in 2007, “Global average sea level rose at an average rate of 1.8 mm per year over 1961 to 2003. The rate was faster over 1993 to 2003: about 3.1 mm per year.” This translates to a 100-year rise of only 7 inches and 12 inches, far below the dire predictions of the climate alarmists.
But three millimeters is about the thickness of two dimes. Can scientists really measure a change in sea level over the course of a year, averaged across the world, which is two dimes thick?
Today, sea level is measured with satellite radar altimeters. Satellites bounce radar waves off the surface of the ocean to measure the distance. Scientific organizations, such as the Sea Level Research Group at the University of Colorado (CU), use the satellite data to estimate ocean rise. The CU team estimates current ocean rise at 3.2 millimeters per year.
The organizations AVISO (Archiving, Validation, and Interpretation of Satellite Oceanographic Data) of France, CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization) of Australia, and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) of the United States agree with the University of Colorado that seas are rising three millimeters per year. Given the huge natural variation in global sea level, the three millimeter number is incredible. The fact that four different organizations have arrived at the same number is suspect.
As Dr. Willie Soon of Harvard shows, ocean level variation is large and affected by many factors. If temperatures rise, water expands, adding to sea level rise. If icecaps melt, levels rise, but if icecaps grow due to increased snowfall, levels fall. If ocean saltiness changes, the water volume will also change.
The land itself moves continuously. Some shorelines are rising and some are subsiding. The land around Hudson Bay in Canada is rising, freed of ice from the last ice age. In contrast, the area around New Orleans is sinking. Long-term movement of Earth’s tectonic plates also changes sea level.
Tides are a major source of ocean variation, primarily caused by the gravitational pull of the moon, the sun, and the rotation of the Earth. Ocean water “sloshes” from shore to shore, with tides changing as much as 38 feet per day at the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia. The global average tide range is about one meter, but this daily change is still 300 times the three-millimeter change that scientists claim to be able to measure over an entire year.
Storms and weather are major factors affecting satellite measurements. Wave heights change by meters each day, dwarfing the annual rise in ocean level. Winds also change the height of the sea. The easterly wind of a strong La Niña pushes seas at Singapore to a meter higher than in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
Satellites themselves have error bias. Satellite specifications claim a measurement accuracy of about one or two centimeters. How can scientists then measure an annual change of three millimeters, which is almost ten times smaller than the error in daily measurements? Measuring tools typically must have accuracy ten times better than the quantity to be measured, not ten times worse. Dr. Carl Wunsch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology commented on the satellite data in 2007, “It remains possible that the database is insufficient to compute mean sea level trends with the accuracy necessary to discuss the impact of global warming—as disappointing as this conclusion may be.”
Scientists add many “fudge factors” to the raw data. The same measurement taken by each of the three satellites, TOPEX, JASON-1, and JASON-2, differs by 75 millimeters and must be corrected. As a natural adjustment, researchers add 0.3 millimeters to the measured data, because ocean basins appear to be getting larger, able to hold more water, and reducing apparent ocean levels.
Tide gauges are also used to “calibrate” the satellite data. But gauge measurements are subject to errors of one or two centimeters, again many times more than the sea level rise to be measured.
Clearly, the official three millimeter sea level rise number is a product of scientific “group think.” Not only is this number far below what can be accurately measured, but all leading organizations support this nonsense number. Could it be that our leading scientists must endorse sea-level rise to support the ideology of man-made global warming?
Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the book The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
“Excellent point, thank you.”
Excellent but incorrect it does change:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/20/sea-level-rise-climate-change-and-an-ocean-of-natural-variability/#comment-1422631
IB should still be neutral globally.
Philip Bradley says:
“The mass of the atmosphere doesn’t change”
Where in the Earth did you get tht nonsense from? It has been quoted that humans are adding CO2 and Methane, and also water vapor increases with increasing temperature. Also continual mass is added or removed by solar wind and othe actions. The changes are small but not zero.
It would seem that the apparent rise in the sea level is proportional to the volume of money flushed on the various alarmist climate ventures. That is as good as any other theory out there.
I think you may be missing the point in my demonstration. Incidentally, I used a mean of 70″ and SD of 3″ to calculate the distribution.
Had I selected a true random sample then the numbers in each ‘bin’ would, with a high probability, have been close to the numbers in the example. That is the whole point of using an appropriately large enough sample size.
The fact that my measuring technique is crude is not a major issue. Ok – I realise my sample is unlikely to replicate the true distribution exactly – but it will be close and I can provide an estimate of the errors.
Steve Goreham wrote that
“Dr. James Hansen predicted an ocean rise of 75 feet during the next 100 years.”
I followed the link, and I didn’t see that prediction. However, Dr. Hansen has said that five meters is possible (See Page 18) in this paper
. Using his scenario of a doubling every ten years it calculates out to a rise of a millimeter per day by December 2099 which is nuts of course.
Page 14 – I hate it when that happens.
Steve Goreham, another aspect of huge increase of sea level is the rate of rise in the last few years leading up to 2100. For a 2 meter rise by 2100 requires a growth (acceleration) in the rate of rise of 3.4% per year. That means in the final year, 2099, sea level would have to increase some 7 cm, in one year!! Funny how the alarmists fail to mention that.
There are major problems calibrating satellite instruments to our un-cooperative planet, and the proposed GRASP project will resolve that giving us an accuracy to 1 mm (ie, we don’t have that now): The baselines between RF/Optical phase centers of all sensors on the proposed supremely-calibrated GRASP spacecraft will be known to 1 mm accuracy and stable to 0.1 mm/year,….
“ …. Beckley et al. [2007] reprocessed all the TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason-1 SLR & DORIS data within the ITRF2005 reference frame, and found that the differences in the older CSR95 and ITRF2000 realizations and ITRF2005 caused differences of up to 1.5 mm/yr in regional rates of mean sea level rise….”
QUOTE: “….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
The University of CO used to make separate charts showing sea level both with and without GIA. It seems that now they only make a chart with GIA. This is disingenuous IMO because what matters with sea level is where the water is in relation to the land. If you add 0.3mm to ‘adjust’ for the land rising, then you are no longer talking about sea level, you are talking about sea volume
From Greg Goodman on September 21, 2013 at 5:21 am:
See this:
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/content/interactive-sea-level-time-series-wizard
Available here is a 1°x1° gridded sea level anomaly database, and a map where you can get data for a single coordinate.
As expected, first they calculate for each point, which includes the inverted barometer adjustment. You can agree it’s needed for individual points, yes?
Then they crunch it all together for the global number. Since they used IB-adj data, the result is labeled IB-adj.
Is it really nonsense to have global MSL be IB-adjusted? Remember the global is made from the little bits. For similar sea surface area amounts with similar pressure drops, is the sea level change near a coast on a shelf more or less than the change over a deep mid-ocean trench?
If it is either, then IB adjustment of global MSL is justified. Only if there would be no difference can leaving the adjustment out of the global be justified.
well a stupid guy like me needs something at the beginning..how do you define sea level?
I can esaily figure out what se volume is ??but sea level…
I am not that stupid..but i jsut agree with the point..it is anything but simple..i mean it is hard to know the whole thing for an average guy.
The fact that ‘ocean level variation is large and affected by many factors’ does not mean that sea level rise cannot be measered. The present essay suggests that it may be very difficult but there is not a single argument in it that shows that it is impossible. Scientists do many things that look impossible to the uninitiated. You cannot invalidate the claim of the alarmists without looking into how they actually perform the measurements.
rabbit says:
September 20, 2013 at 3:49 pm
According to this recent paper from the NOAA
the total sea level rise over the last seven years has been 1.6 mm / year, with an uncertainty of .8 mm / year.
This is about half of other estimates of sea level rise, even those made by NOAA. Have I misinterpreted the above paper?
Interesting, if you go to Colorado University’s Sea Level Data Page today and run the numbers from January 2005 to December 2011 it comes out to 1.95 mm/yr a bump up of over 0.3 mm/yr since that paper was written.
Bob Greene says:
September 21, 2013 at 4:53 am
Absent from all of these ’causes’ is a myopic view of history and a blatant abuse of the word ‘unprecedented”.
There’s quite a bit here that looks like “mathematical fallacy”.
I’m liking the seismic shift and plate tectonics changing the sea floor over thermal heat expansion or Ice expansion explanations. Idakno
Relating to my earlier comment; With thermal expansion doesn’t water expand into the atmosphere?And doesn’t ice displace water?Displaced water on the sea with ice ,displaced water on land with rain and snow(and ice),displaced water in the atmosphere in vapor.With just those variables it would be hard to calculate SSL or total volume for that dynamic system.
‘…and if it gets cold and the sea level is rising ,i might start to worry.’
Thanks and everyone have a nice day.
Question: Who’s lying?
As it currently says on the U of Colorado sea level page:
I clicked on the NOAA link. The sea level graph that pops up says the trend is 2.9 +/- 0.4 mm/yr.
So Colorado is adding the usual 0.3mm/yr glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) to NOAA’s amount. Looks acceptable.
Except NOAA apparently disagrees:
NOAA admits the globally averaged GIA can be from 0.2 to 0.5 mm/yr.
Colorado has taken NOAA’s value with a +/- 0.4mm/yr error range, added on a value that’s supposedly between 0.2 and 0.5 mm/yr, and then report NOAA’s value as still +/- 0.4 mm/yr, no change in error range.
They can’t do that. You can’t reduce uncertainty by declaration, adding in another uncertainty as if it was an absolute certainty.
NOAA’s range was 2.5 to 3.3 mm/yr.
The GIA range is 0.2 to 0.5 mm/yr.
The range of NOAA + GIA is thus 2.7 to 3.8 mm/yr.
The range Colorado specified for NOAA w/ GIA is 2.8 to 3.6 mm/yr.
They don’t match. Colorado is not honestly relaying what NOAA is saying.
Logic says the sea levels will start falling with sun cycle 25
Rudolf Kipp says:
September 20, 2013 at 3:26 pm
The story of satellite sea level measurements is a strory of constant adjustments, always leading in the direction of higher values. To follow these adjustments, 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 some time ago (Google translation).
Very true Rudolf and many thanks for the analysis. One of the issue with satellite sea level measurement is that the error rate is so large, the imprecision of the measurement so big in relation to the measured rise that it allows for a lot of play room for the data manipulators.
We have seen each and every satellite data being adjusted and corrected. Incidentally all corrections result in “more”. If it is temperature, if it is sea level rise.
When I see a historical diagram where the history changes, the relative values of the historical data change I know… I know it is a climate diagram.
I am not aware of any other field where historical data do change like in what is called “climate science”.
Not sure this proves much – they could get the same answer because it is the correct answer.
Just saying…
They just lopped about 80 FEET off the measurement of Mt. McKinley. Forgive me if I remain skeptical of anyone’s ability to reliably state how much sea levels have changed over the past 100 years or whether any detected change is attributable to natural or human influences.
More proof that this has nothing to do with science. Adjusting sea level for a larger basin? Where is the adjustment for all the volcanic activity which is mostly pushing upwards, creating small hills/mountains under the sea. If the bottom of the Pacific caved in and the water poured into the void, would this be reported as a sea level rise (after the necessary adjustment? Sea level is sea level (profound eh?)
At all the places I revisit after some fifty-odd years, the sea looks as though it’s exactly where I left it.
After all is said and done we’re only really interested to know whether waterside interests are in any danger of inundation – ie sea level. Adding in modeled changes in basin volume is irrelevant – and it’s only models not science.
Rant over.
SteveT
The argument is essentially correct, and the technical postings about uncertainty, upward biased adjustments, and a probable actual 1mm per year seem to be correct also when fact checked.
But suppose 3mm per year since 1960 is correct. That rate corresponds to the warming we have actually seen. Now ignore the pause and natual variability. Recall the effect of CO2 is logarithmic, as Guy Callendar showed in the 1930’s. Recall that even flawed gCMs have most feedbacks save ice albedo happening within a decade or two, so the asserted 3mm/yr incorporates them. Then 100 years from now sea level will be about 300mm higher. That is 30 cm, about a foot. Which is what AR 4 said. There is no where on earth that anything meaningful to man built on dry land exists within a foot of mean high tide. Visit the Florida Keys, Hong Kong harbor, the Durch polters to see for yourselves. Hurricane Sandy’s storm surge of 13 feet was also exactly at high tide with a full moon. And all natural shore features ( barrier islands, reefs, estuaries) are ‘living’ things that have plenty of time to adapt.
So the only theoretical cause for SLR alarm is sudden collapse of WAIS. Which why alarmists keep trying to prove it did during the Eemian when it didn’t. See my recent posting at Climate Etc.
Since SLR isnt alarming, I think the CAGW ocean focus is turning to acidification, a much murkier, less easily falsified proposition involving multiple ecosystems and marine biology. “The evil twin of climate change” Save the coral reefs. Save the oysters being two prominent examples urrently being completely misrepresented as crises. That is where the next alarmist CAGW effort is starting to occur. Just check out NOAA websites to see US tax dollars being put to work on ocean acidification alarmism.
Jimbo: On ground water…some sources show 600 to 700 km3 per year withdrawal, which effectively make ground water extraction account for 50%, or more, of observed sea level rises. I had one source that put ground water use at 1000 to 1500 km3 per year, but that link is now dead.
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Climate_scientists_say_they_have_solved_riddle_of_rising_sea_999.html
The above study puts ground water contributing 42%.
http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/freshwater_supply/freshwater.html
The above post is based on work by Gleick and Erhlich.
The anthro increase in sea level also does not count the creation of water by burning hydrogen. This would add another several hundred km3 to the hydrological cycle.
“Scientists add many “fudge factors” to the raw data”
…of course, otherwise we wouldn’t know sea levels were rising…/snark