NZCLIMATE TRUTH NEWSLETTER NO 319
by Vincent Gray, Wellington New Zealand
Chapter 13 of the IPCC 5th WGI Report claims that sea level will rise by an amount between 0.26 to 0.97 metres by 2100 according to which of their new scenarios actually happens
Relative Sea Level,the distance between the level of the sea and the level of neighbouring land is what matters to most of us. The Level of the open ocean is only of minor importance. This Report tries to mix the two up in a single chart.
Relative Sea Level is measured by tide gauges which measure the distance between the level of the sea registered on specialist equipment and a supposedly constant benchmark location on the neighbouring land. carried out in over 1000 coastal locations all over the world. The records are averages, over a day, week, month or years.
Both the level of the sea and of the neighbouring land constantly vary from place to place.and from time to time.
The sea changes level constantly, diurnally and seasonally. It is influenced by winds, storms and hurricanes and also by earthquakes. The level of the sea may be influenced by breakwaters and harbour works. The equipment may be damaged or its location altered by storms. Severe storms may prevent correct measurement and give a false reading which interferes with claims for “change.
Land surfaces may change. The land may subside by weight of buildings, and removal of minerals and groundwater. The Report illustrates the problem of measurement near land covered in iceGeological change (Isostasy) may result from plate movements and earthquakes. Many of these effects cause an upwards bias to the readings.
Long term trends may as much show these changes as any other influence. As a result they are not a reliable guide to the future.which should be based on a recent period of reliable measurements.
The recent installation of GPS levelling equipment on m,ay sites has greatly improved the reliability of the land-based benchmark. It has resulted in a nearly constant sea level change for many records it is therefore wrong to place reliance on older readings in order to assess future behaviour. It should be based on the most recent measurements which are the least likely to be affected by previous bias.
The records are publicly available at the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) website at at http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/map.html which features a very convenient map of the world from which all the records can be obtained.
Many records are defective in one way or another. Many have gaps or sudden changes, Few have a long-term continuous record. Frequently there is little sign of change during the recent decade. evidence. that currently there is little or no change in sea level. The following figure from Chapter 13, FAQ 13.1 Figure 1. illustrates this error.
It shows six tide gauge records compared with the supposed global average..
The actual current records, which are shown (rather small), disagree with this supposed trend
San Francisco is unchanged since 1990.
Charlottetown is unchanged from 1995 to 2010.
Antofagasta is unchanged from 1980 to 2012
Pago Pago is unchanged since 2000.
Stockholm is actually falling.
Manila is a rogue record.The following website states that the gauge is subject to subsidence
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_global_station.shtml?stnid=660-011
The following records from the Philippines, show no recent rise.
I have published a study of the Pacific islands which also display no recent rise at
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/south_pacific.html
Recently there was a Pacific Forum meeting in Kiribati attended by our Prime Minister which complained that the islands were sinking. And we must take action
This is a recent tide gauge record from Kiribati
. These figures and also those from Australia continue to show little change. He same is true for many islands as shown at
http://www.contrepoints.org/2013/10/01/140868-les-oceans-montent-dangereusement-sauf-autour-iles
Future projections for different places from the latest IPCC Report Chapter 13 are shown in their Figure 13.23 .
Every one of these actual measured sea levels have shown no sign of change for at least ten years, yet all the projections claim that this settled behaviour will suddenly change to an upwards level of around half a metre by the end of the century.
This is based on models which have failed to predict the lack of a global temperature increase for the past 17 year,.yet it is claimed they are causing melting of ice, particularly in the Arctic
All the models assume that any temperature rise will be least at the poles and greatest at the tropics because the water vapour feedback is lower at the poles..They do not mention Antarctica where the ice is currently increasing
There are no measurements of temperatures on ice anywhere, on ice caps, oceans or glaciers. In all cases there are other influences.on their behaviour. In the Arctic it is the temperature of the ocean and the behaviour of the ocean oscillations.
The ice in the Arctic is beginning to grow now
The satellite measurements do seem to show a steady increase in sea level, but it seems to be little known that the instruments are subject to drift and they have to be calibrated on tide gauge measurements,
This is described in the following web address
which can be boiled down to
These satellite measurements have only been going since 1992. There have been several calibration problems and it is unclear to what extent it incorporates errors from tide gauges
CONCLUSION
Models based on an assumption of a temperature change that is not currently happening, and on melting ice which is absent from Antarctica and which appears to have ceased in the Arctic, are poor guides to practical sea level changes near a coast. These need to be judged from tide gauges measuring recent local behaviour with reliable equipment,, . The IPCC “projections” are thereby grossly exaggerated.
I once installed a GPS receiver on the roof of a major defense contractor (they wanted to play with things in the back yard I guess).
We tied the position of the receiver into a couple known GPS landmarks, while receiving corrections from another receiver situated on a pre-determined GPS point.
Gave the contractor the coordinates.
We got a call one week later.
When they turned on their receiver, they said they were 30 feet off of what we told them.
They weren’t receiving the corrections (radio link) from a receiver on a known point, that corrects for all the atmospheric effects, accuracy becomes ~1/4 inch.
Most large urban areas, are now about 1/4 ” (depending on the receiver).
The corrections are broadcast like Wi-Fi, for a fee ?
Oh, 2-3 times that in vertical.
I’ve been out of the game awhile, updates encouraged folks 🙂
The author appears to be making the case that we should only look at recent tide data (the last ten years) as this is the most accurate and coincidentally agrees with his point that CAGW is overblown. Since global temperatures have been static for 17 years it would be expected that thermal expansion of the ocean would also tend to become static over the last 17 years (with some lag). This seems to be a somewhat circular argument not withstanding the overarching difficulties of obtaining accurate data in the first place. I agree with the overall thrust of the piece but the evidence as presented doesn’t really support it one way or the other.
Since global temperatures have been static for 17 years it would be expected that thermal expansion of the ocean would also tend to become static over the last 17 years (with some lag).
The heat is hiding in them there oceans, don’t you know?
Even the alarmists can’t hide heat in the oceans and claim there is no thermal expansion as a result!
Flat sea rise is yet another reason to ignore Trenberth’s wild assertion of “hiding” heat.
“Jeff L says:
October 30, 2013 at 8:44 pm
My question is how they accurately (over the time periods of interest) separate out isostatic & tectonic effects from the tidal records.”
I think you will find the answer is that prior to 1952 (when I left school) it was assumed that the oceans were not expanding and therefore all changes of apparent sea level in tide gauge records were, bar accident or shifting of the gauge, due to the land rising or sinking. Hence, nobody tried to separate our isostatic effects from tidal records.
BTW, how much sea water would have to come from melting ice to produce the “Parallel Roads of GlenRoy”? Alternatively, if from thermal expansion, what would the temperature of the oceans be?
Climate Scientists are like amateur fishermen. Everything gets adjusted upward. 🙂
Just read a very interesting thing on Wiki about Stockholm and land raise since ice age. I live in Sweden so I’m well aware of this since school age.
The land raise has been on-going since the ice age with 20 mm/year about 2000 years ago. However around the time for the Vikings, 800-1200 AC, the land raise stopped.
That was the time when the Vikings went to Greenland and started agriculture there.
Hmmm – for me it is very evident that there were no stop in land raise but an increase of sea level due to that it was warmer and ice melted from Greenland and other places.
Sarcastic conclusion must be that the Vikings used a lot of log to burn and increased the CO2 levels so the planet went hotter.
Or was it just normal climate changes? This sort that some climate Taliban’s want to hide.
Vincent, you write –
“There are no measurements of temperatures on ice anywhere, on ice caps, oceans or glaciers. In all cases there are other influences.on their behaviour.”
………………….
I can’t understand what you mean. There was a whole debate, for example, about temperatures in the Antarctic, with Eric Steig and O’Donnell et al refuting the changes that even made the cover of Nature Magazine. The et al were O’Donnell [Ryan O], Lewis [Nic L], McIntyre [Steve] and Condon [Jeff Id])
http://climateaudit.org/2010/12/02/odonnell-et-al-2010-refutes-steig-et-al-2009/
More generally, the take-away point might be that ice does not melt (though it can sublime) until temperature reaches 0 deg C. Persistent ice temperatures below that would indicate a site with low potential to lead to sea level rise. The average temperature in Antarctica is about -37°C, so the ice there is in low danger of melting.
It also bears repeating that the melting of floating ice does not produce a sea level rise (Archimedes ca. 250 BC).
There are many temperature measurements on ice. Please say there was a typo or whatever, bigger than the one that shows.
Jeff L requests pre 1990 isostacy/tectonic data :-
Although I dont have time to go find the data, the London plate is slowly tipping into the english channel, rate of declination was carefully calculated back in the 1950 based on only land surface measurements initially and then linked to sealevel later, there must be data hanging around that somehwere
regards
More data on sea levels. Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology maintains a network of tide gauges in the tropical west Pacific, around where El Nino related measurements are made. We can presume it to be of high quality because it is modern design with many earlier problems sorted.
http://www.globaleducation.edu.au/case-studies/south-pacific-sea-level-monitoring.html
These estimates of recent rise indicate about 5.5 mm per year, a value somewhat higher than typical of other places. I’ve often wondered why they seem out of step, because clearly a portion of the global seas cannot just take off and rise faster than the rest forever. As Dad used to say, water finds its own level. The main candidate explanation to date is that the term of measurement, about 1992 to end 2012, is part of a cycle that is incomplete and might take decades longer to resolve.
Steve B says: “Climate Scientists are like amateur fishermen. Everything gets adjusted upward.”
There is so much wisdom in that simple statement.
I have always been highly sceptical about satellite measurements of sea level. I just do not see how it can be done to the accuracy claimed, there are just too many variables. I cannot see how anything, moving at a high speed (20-30,000kms/hour) in a decaying, elliptical orbiting a couple of hundred kilometres out in space, can possibly claim to measure something not dead flat and static with an accuracy of 0.01mms. I suggest the adjustment process might even make His Manniness blush.
Anyhow, if the sea level is now static and the Arctic ice is recovering, that puts a couple of really hefty nails into the coffin of CAGW theory.
Next time you’re at the beach, wade out into the water until it reaches your waist, and then kneel down. A climastrologist will tell you that the water level actually rose! This is the game they play with tide gauges in regions that are subsiding. It’s one of their many games and it’s obvious fraud. Over the course of the next few years, data from GPS CORS stations located near tide gauges will correct vertical land movement to show true sea level fluctuations.
Vincent Gray writes: “All the models assume that any temperature rise will be least at the poles and greatest at the tropics because the water vapour feedback is lower at the poles.”
You’ll need to clarify your post. For land+sea surface temperatures, the IPCC prognostications (2005-2100 with RCP6.0 Scenario) show both poles warming faster than the tropics. But for sea surface temperatures, they show the tropics warming faster than the poles.
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/rcp6-0-trends-zonal-mean-lost-vs-sst.png
Regards
All the models assume that any temperature rise will be least at the poles and greatest at the tropics because the water vapour feedback is lower at the poles.
Should it not be the other way round?
The ‘need’ for sea level increases is what drives these models , not science and not data for both of these refute the claims. And this is the give away , for take away the ‘need’ you your left with the reality without models telling you a very different story.
I know I have posted about this article before, but it seems to say again here
“The whole car is being assembled with this kind of precision with the aid of a “surface table” – a super-flat, 7m-long slab of cast iron that weighs 10 tonnes.
The accuracy of the build is regularly checked using a Hexagon laser, which will measure the position of any part of the car, in three dimensions, to one millionth of a metre.
This has given us a bit of a problem, though, as the surface table (all 10 tonnes of it) keeps moving.
After a lot of checking, it would appear that the surface table, and the whole of our Technical Centre, is actually floating.
The ends of the table move up and down by a couple of millimetres or so with the tide. We’re only a few hundred metres from the River Avon and the tide in the river makes the floor (and the surface table, and therefore our chassis) go up and down very slightly. ”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24458799
Can some explain to me how anyone can tell with accuracy. How much the sea level are raising or falling is within a few mm. Climate scientists would not know real science if it bit them in the arse.
The article above shows what happens when do real science. I am sorry alarmists don’t do real science.
A very poorly written article imo. It could have been summarized quickly as “Sea levels are rising at a slower rate than the IPCC forecasted and at a local level; changes in land height often dominate local conditions”.
Mike says:
October 30, 2013 at 9:29 pm
The author appears to be making the case that we should only look at recent tide data (the last ten years) as this is the most accurate and coincidentally agrees with his point that CAGW is overblown. Since global temperatures have been static for 17 years it would be expected that thermal expansion of the ocean would also tend to become static over the last 17 years (with some lag). This seems to be a somewhat circular argument not withstanding the overarching difficulties of obtaining accurate data in the first place. I agree with the overall thrust of the piece but the evidence as presented doesn’t really support it one way or the other.
____________________________________________________________
No SLR pretty much kills the “missing heat is hiding in the deep ocean” idea.
There was a mercury Tiltmeter in Auckland New Zealand that showed that Auckland tilted twice a day, matching the tides. IIRC there was a trough of mercury about a metre long, with a metal plate above at each end. The capacitance between the plates and the mercury could be very acurately measured.
Here’s someone else who made a tiltmeter:
http://gbush.mcn.org/Tiltmeter/tiltmeter%20Main.html
Too many typos. And there’s only one ell in Manila.
IPCC will always be attacked for their past minor errors http://climal.com/climate-change-facts.php
No sea level rise in the Galapagos Islands for 35 years: http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/10/31/no-sea-level-rise-in-the-galapagos-for-35-years/
I am 100% sure sea level hasn’t changed over a much longer period of time.
In this regard I would like to refer to a photo published at the late John Daily website which is showing a clear picture of a rock at the Isle of Death in Tasmania with the sea level carved in it combined with the following text:
The 1841 sea level benchmark (centre) on the `Isle of the Dead’, Tasmania. According to Antarctic explorer, Capt. Sir James Clark Ross, it marked mean sea level in 1841. Photo taken at low tide 20 Jan 2004.
Mark is 50 cm across; tidal range is less than a metre. © John L. Daly.
Just like all the fuzz that is made over a natural temperature variation of plus minus half a degree Celsius temperature fluctuation, every word spend on sea level rise by the IPCC is 100% exaggeration. Hell, even the mention of “sealevel rise” is an exaggeration
Just look for yourself:
http://www.john-daly.com/index.htm
How many years are we going to recycle all this BS? I really wonder.
Dr Gray, thank you
There was an article in a recent Discover magazine that focused how Venice was planning to respond to rising sea water and more frequent floods. It seemed exaggerated. Do you have any data relative to Venice?
It seems to me that having lived with in a few miles of the sea on the English Channel side of the the SW counties that the important information is how far the tide comes in on open beaches at Spring tides (when the moon and sun are on the same side of the Earth). To the best of my knowledge of the last eight decades they are just the same — although a strong SE wind will bring the sea a bit further up the beach. Any other measurement seems to be just theory. I have made many enquiries of the Met Office and the Ordnance Survey who make our maps The latter have recently told me that the Datum Point for British maps is at Newlyn Harbour in the very far SW and that they are still using the height established in 1915 –1921 for countour maps with spot heights produced today. Surely it is only the highest tides that matter?
In Canterbury New Zealand there has been a series of large earthquakes since 2010.
The land has sunk relative to sea and river levels. All of New Zealand is now on alert to the imminent possibilty of major earthquakes. Minor earthquakes are common. See the New Zealnd site geonet. It seems that levels of sea and rivers will always be changing by small amounts.
This is not to consider the aggrading of of beaches of river mouths, many of these are braided rivers, and move gravels washed down from many mountain ranges.
“Stockholm is actually falling” – well it would be, as GIA is causing the gauge to rise at almost 5 mm/year (several studies using CGPS/satellite data).
Sea level is rising at rates much greater than the much-quoted 3.2 mm/year global average in the western Pacific, and falling in the east, which is why Steven Goddard is right about Santa Cruz in the Galapagos. In general, satellite data reflects gauge rates rather better than fairly well across the Pacific. Both western and eastern Pacific rates are driven by ENSO, and can be graphically correlated quite convincingly.
You link to your SPPI South Pacific “paper” which claims “no recent rise”, Vincent – do you hold that “eyeballing” low-resolution sample charts published online by the BOM is a robust analysis technique?
I’d be interested to know whether you still believe that tropical cyclones can depress the sea surface, rather than raise them (“storm surge”) as they logically do due to low atmospheric pressure? How do you justify claiming that the illogical and unobserved depression of the surface lasts then lasts for periods of up to several years after the event?
Your claim that Australian sea-levels “continue to show little change” is, quite frankly, rubbish. Rates in the west and north match other SW Pacific rates well, and are certainly well above “little change”. Show us a few linear regressions over the period you refer to as “recent”.
There’s nothing alarming about rates worldwide, in general, but let’s deal with facts, not what amounts at best to ill-informed comment.