Is there anything global warming can’t do? Now it seems that there is so much global warming that it is slowing the rise of sea levels.
As glaciers melt due to climate change, the increasingly hot and parched Earth is absorbing some of that water inland, slowing sea level rise, NASA experts said Thursday.
Satellite measurements over the past decade show for the first time that the Earth’s continents have soaked up and stored an extra 3.2 trillion tons of water in soils, lakes and underground aquifers, the experts said in a study in the journal Science.
This has temporarily slowed the rate of sea level rise by about 20 percent, it said.
“We always assumed that people’s increased reliance on groundwater for irrigation and consumption was resulting in a net transfer of water from the land to the ocean,” said lead author J.T. Reager of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “What we didn’t realize until now is that over the past decade, changes in the global water cycle more than offset the losses that occurred from groundwater pumping, causing the land to act like a sponge — at least temporarily.”
The global water cycle involves the flow of moisture, from the evaporation over the oceans to the fall of precipitation, to runoff and rivers that lead back into the ocean. Just how much effect on sea level rise this kind of land storage would have has remained unknown until now because there are no land-based instruments that can measure such changes planet-wide.
The latest data came from a pair of NASA satellites launched in 2002 — known as the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE). more here
Here is the Press release from the AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE
Land reservoirs helped offset sea level rise, study says
Recent increases in the storage of excess groundwater may be helping to offset sea level rise by as much as 15%, a new study finds. While the capacity of land to store water is known to be an important factor affecting sea level rise, the magnitude of its storage contributions are not fully understood. Land masses store water in numerous ways, though some human-induced changes — including to groundwater extraction, irrigation, impoundment in reservoirs, wetland drainage, and deforestation – are affecting this process, as are climate-driven changes in rainfall, evaporation, and runoff.
To gain more insights into how the land storage capacity may have changed over recent years, John Reager and colleagues analyzed satellite data from 2002 to 2014 that measure changes in gravity, and thus underlying changes in water storage. They combined this satellite data with estimates of mass loss of glaciers to determine what impact land water storage might have had on sea level change.
Their analysis suggests that during this timeframe, climate variability resulted in an increase of approximately 3,200 gigatons of water being stored in land. This gain partially offset water losses from ice sheets, glaciers, and groundwater pumping, slowing the rate of sea level rise by 0.71 ± 0.20 millimeters per year, the authors say. While a small portion of the increase in land water storage can be directly attributed to human activities – primarily, the filling of reservoirs – the authors note that climate is the key driver. The greatest changes in land water storage were associated with regional climate-driven variations in precipitation.
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Is there anything global warming can’t do? Now it seems that there is so much global warming that it is slowing the rise of sea levels.
Maybe so. Warming probably produces increased rainfall. GCMs estimate about 3% per C; empirical estimates on parts of the Earth surface range from 4%-7%. Rainfall transfers water from ocean to land; much flows back to the ocean, but much flows into aquifers and soils.
Once again, as it has done a few times per year over the past few years, Science Magazine has published a study that tends to provide evidence that undermines warnings of disastrous consequences from global warming. That’s despite their pro-warming, anti fossil fuel bias.
And in others news: Warm Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation mode dries land masses…
And they are just discovering this now, I thought “THE SCIENCE” was settled back in 1998.
They just make this stuff up as they go along.
A good example of negative sea level change. I’ve seen many times.
Harlech castle in Wales overlooking a huge Cardigan Bay and the Irish Sea it was built over 1000 years ago, it adjoining the sea making supplies and regarrisoning the Castle an easy proposition.
The Castle is now high and dry-nothing to do with stasis or deposition, but that sea levels are much lower now the Irish Sea is far away on the horizon.
The sea is now in the far distance from Harlech castle.
http://westwales.co.uk/graphics/harlech.jpg
“In 1409 an attack was made upon Harlech, led by Gilbert and John Talbot for
the King; the besiegers comprised one thousand well-armed soldiers and a big siege train. The besieged were in the advantageous situation of being able to receive their necessary supplies from the sea, for the waves of Cardigan Bay at that time washed the base of the rock upon which the castle stands. Greater vigilance on the part of the attacking force stopped this and the castle was surrendered in the spring of that year.
A remarkable feature of the castle is a covered staircase cut out of the rock, defended on the seaward side by a looped parapet, and closed above and below by small gatehouses. This was the water-gate of the fortress, and opened upon a docking quay below.”
Liverpool UK has one of the best tidal gauges back to 1700.
Absolutely true, but it isn’t a result of seal level dropping, but the land rising due to isostatic rebound after the ice sheet melted. Raised beaches are common throughout Britain.
Smart Rock.
Thanks for the lesson, I learn something new every day from the great articles and commenters like yourself.
This is also true in many parts of Scandinavia.
Conway/Conwy Castle as a further data point. No one worried about flooding (aside from bedwetting) here:
http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk/images.big/conwy40big.jpg
Mods, has something changed. Images used to appear automatically. This is probably a new Apple Safari bullshit thing, right ?
Harlech castle-
The City of Troy- the sea used to be up against the city walls a few thousand years ago. Today the sea is a few kilometers away,
Gee whiz, NASA’s unknown quantities (represented by x) sure are spurting a lot of new science these days. And I though the science on this was settled. Silly me.
I took this to mean that NASA admits the sea levels ain’t rising.
This looks like yet another Ptolemaic Epicycle added to the great CAGW Machine to account for yet another glaring anomaly in the f.orecasting of reality
A Climate Scientist is A) Completely certain of what is going to happen (the science is settled), and B) Completely surprised by each new development.
And for this study they used 15 year old satellites to measure gravity? But newer satellites s weren’t good enough for reading temperatures?
Not turtles.
It’s w@nkers all the way down.
Sorry mods if that’s a problem.
True though.
One more thing we didn’t know.
In global water, 97% is in oceans [salt water] and 3% fresh water. Of the 3%, ground water is 30.1% [and of this only 15% is available for use], in ice caps & glaciers 68.7% and surface water 0.3% — 2% in rivers, 87% in lakes and 11% Swamps.
Usable ground water and surface water is highly seasonal. With the growth of population and use of water in agriculture, industry & domestic are steeply increasing and thus many parts of the globe the groundwater is emptied.
Also, the precipitation and snowfall follow the cyclical variation. During last three years several parts of the globe faced with drought.
Under these circumstances, where is the water?
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
How can climate cause or drive anything. To cause or drive requires energy and climate is only a description of weather patterns over a period of time. That is conceptual in nature and can not be reified, i.e., can not be considered as something that exists in reality. What exist are actual acting things such as atoms, molecules, photons, etc. which have potential and kinetic energy relationships. Averaging those energies does not give anything that exists in reality. Averaging gives something, in some minds, to create a danger which require grants to fight.
Could Global Warming result in boulders so massive Global Warming cannot lift them?
How much error fits on the head of a pin, and how massively could it be interpolated?
If science fails to evolve adequate defenses, could it fall prey to a single hypothesis that is intelligently designed?
There seems to be a race on, when ever time series measurement of something becomes available, someone reaches for a ‘Global Warming first aid kit’ and stitches on a field dressing that binds it somehow to anthropogenic excesses, warming or CO2. The data provide enough foundation for publishing, and even the most flimsy and hastily applied posit-dressings survive long enough for the press to pick the whole thing up by the guilt-angle and coin a few headlines. Then it’s off to the next one.
The objective is to trick people into believing that science has just uncovered a massive elephant in the living room, and from countless angles we see little portions of what could be an elephant. . But he is a paper mache elephant with nothing inside.
Here’s the church, here’s the steeple, open the door and here is all the missing heat.
I may have missed someones posting the embarrassing Tim(flimflam man) Flannerys statement
that even when rain did fall again in Aus(just prior to decent flooding all over )
that the rain wouldnt soak into the soil anyway
it would be too dry
and we paid the blithering lying ftard!
http://www.colorado.edu/geography/class_homepages/geog_3511_s11/notes/Notes_8.pdf
I don’t know the Tim Flannery statement you are referring to, but there is such a thing as “hydrophobic” soil.
Anyone who has ever gardened in more than one location knows that different types of soil absorb water differently, depending on the grains/cells of the actual soil itself. And water tends to soak into the soil by creating capillaries or channels (think tiny ant tunnels) between soil grains. Soil like that, that gets regular moisture, channels the water down below ground easily and rapidly. If the soil gets TOO dry, those capillaries dry out and can collapse, and then if a huge amount of rain comes along in a short time period, the water arrives faster than the soil can rebuild that capillary system and the water builds up at the surface rather than soaking in deeply and causes flooding.
Some types of soil grab moisture easily and hold onto it longer than other soils do. I’ve gardened in soil that I can water 3 times a week for 20 minutes and the soil stayed moist and the plants grew well and happily because the soil conducted water deep to the roots and drained away enough to not rot them. I’ve gardened in soil (a mere mile and a half from the soil mentioned above) where the water would puddle on top after 20 minutes and only soak about 6 inches into the soil before evaporating in the summer heat which didn’t conduct it deep enough to reach the roots and the plants died even though from the puddling on the surface it appeared as though I was watering them TOO MUCH.
There simply is no blanket statement that can be made about rates of absorption/storage of moisture in ALL soil because there are too many varying factors across the globe.
JPL is just mining old datasets for cash – a kind of Bitcoin operation.
By the way, this study is suggesting a positive outcome for AGW. Like the greening of the desserts, shouldn’t we be cheering?
More bloody pseudo science.
So how do they know pre GRACE situations concerning land water retention and absorption?
They don’t, there is no comparison.