Guest essay by Albert Parker
Just in case somebody could be interested in understanding if the climate scientists are telling us the truth about sea level acceleleration, there is still the opportunity to verify by using the tide gauge data in the PSMSL data base.
The tide gauges measure the relative sea level in many locations worldwide, mostly in northern Europe and North America, in the best cases since the mid-late 1800s, and are therefore the best source of information to understand what is going on…
The PSMSL data base include the time series of the monthly average mean sea levels recorded by every tide gauge…
· Go to http://www.psmsl.org/products/trends
· Use as start year 1900 and end year 1975 and then zoom and window over one selected area, for example Europe (but the United States and Canada or Australia and New Zealand work fine as well …)
· These were the relative sea level rates of rises about Europe in 1975 – this is a print screen of today 17 March 2016
· The above relative rates of rise are obtained by linearly fitting all the monthly average mean sea level data 1900 to 1975. The relative rate of rise is the slope of the fitting line.
· Now, let see what happened during the last 40 years …. Just move the end year to 2014 …
· These are the relative sea level rates of rises about Europe in 2014 – this is a print screen in March 2016
· The above relative rates of rise are obtained by linearly fitting all the monthly average mean sea level data 1900 to 2014.
· Surprise, surprise, no major changes …..
· Do you spot any significant change?
· Those that are claiming the sea levels are rising sharply than ever before at an accelerating rate are simply not telling the truth.
· This may realize (for now) downloading and analyzing the PSMSL data, or even analyzing the data online.
· In a few years’ time, also this data base will be corrupted and the truly measured data will be replaced by computations or reconstructions.
· Below same results for the US and Canada, plus Australia and New Zealand … just in case …
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Where is the effect of erosion and sedimentation taken into account?
In Norfolk UK, lots of cliffs have fallen into the sea over time. All of that plus sediment washed from rivers along with space dust must go into the sea. If I have a bowl of water and pour quantities of earth/sand into it the level rises.
Don’t forget all the stones kids throw in the sea at the beach. That must be allowed for as well.
I would imagine in any model that is assumed to be constant, or have some algorithm adjustment attached to it. What is important is the contribution to sea level increase due to the warming caused by CO2. I don’t see how you can make the case for CO2 is the rate of sea level increase isn’t increasing. The evidence shows that with an increase in CO2 caused warming the rate of sea level increase actually decreased, meaning that AGW is actually delaying the flooding of Manhattan. Al Gore must be disappointed.
https://youtu.be/QowL2BiGK7o?t=54m6s
what are you trying to prove with these simple facts (suspicious)
Is that Auckland, New Zealand (NZ), I see in some of the images? Hey, did these people know Auckland sits on some ~60 extinct volcanos? NZ also sits on a very active geological/tectonic region, so there is a constant flux in land levels relative to sea levels?
What I find very strange is that I cannot find tide gauge data adjusted to land uplift and subsidence for the last years. To talk about accelleration is meaningless without adjusted data. Do anybody know global tide gauge dataseries for the last years (2000 to 2016)?
The biggest problem with the tide gauge data is that the database managed by PMSL is just so hard/impossible to work with. It would take months of data entry to put it all together so that you could come up with the average annual change in sea level. It is the modern area of massive databases, so one would think they could make it user-friendly. But they do not. On purpose I assume so that people can’t actually know what the tide gauge database says.
Then there is the issue of local land uplift and local subsidence which must also be factored in. There is NO place on the planet that is vertically stable.
——————————
But there are now up to 384 Tide Gauges that are co-located with GPS stations (operating for long enough to provide useful information – it takes about 4 years for a solid vertical uplift/subsidence number to become apparent).
This table shows the Vertical land movement (V_GPS) for the stations. Sonel.org is the agency keeping this database.
http://www.sonel.org/IMG/txt/ulr5_vertical_velocities-2.txt
Unfortunately the GPS station ID name is not the best to know where it is so one has to use this table as well to match up the ID to the location and then to the local tide gauge it is co-located with.
http://www.sonel.org/index.php?page=cgps&GLOSS=1
Battery Park/Sandy Hook (SHK2, SHK5) is actually sinking by about 1.6 mm/year to 3.6 mms/year so the tide guage at Battery Park measuring sea level increase of 2.84 mms/year is essentially measuring no change in real sea level at all.
———–
I tried to use the info from Sonel and PMSL to get to annual average sea level change from the tide gauges adjusted for local vertical changes. The issue is they keep changing the gauges in the co-located database. If one is trying to calculate a “1.5 mm/year”, switching out 10 sites can make all the difference. I tried to keep the same locations in over time (manually removing the changers – needless to say – too much work), but what I found is that sea level increase, adjusted by GPS, was fairly stable at 1.4 mm2/year up until 2010, when it started increasing to about 2.1 mm2/year and has been to 2013.
Thank you for your reply. It seems so difficult that I had feared. And it is strange, compared to all the effort that goes into climate science.
Surely that is irrelevant. Tectonic processes are slow and essentially invariable; that said all we need to know is whether the rate of change is varying. If it isn’t at many tide gauges around the world then sea level isn’t really varying much. The first derivative tells you what you need to know.
Sorry if its already posted….
http://www.geo.hunter.cuny.edu/~fbuon/PGEOG_334/BnC/Lecture_pdfs/jcr_dean_gauge.pdf
Bill Illis, you mention sea level increase, adjusted by GPS. Do they measure the altitude
of gauges by GPS satellites on a regular schedule to track subsidence, or lack thereof,
to have a reliable number to compare to gauge readings? If not why not? It seems to me
that using several GPS satellites, up to five, to establish elevation of the gauges would
render readings which would make the wave reading satellites useless.
A GPS technician who was measuring the elevation of the survey monument on the
top of the rock in Stone Mtn. Ga informed me that with enough satellites, they
could establish elevation to within 1.25 MM. This seems me to be much more accurate
way to track actual sea levels over time.
Sorry Bill. My comment was written while you were adding the answer to my question.
If the concern about sea-level change is based on the fear of flooding, then has aerial and statellite photography shown significal changes in shorelines?
And for the pre-sattelite era, comparisons between successive editions of nautical charts ought to reveal historical trends.
This is one of the smoking guns of global warming. If in fact the earth’s temperature is increasing at an increasing rate, one would expect that the glaciers would be melting at an increasing rate, therefor the sea level should be increasing at an increasing rate, ceteras paribus. That isn’t happening. The oceans are also warming so there should be some thermal expansion of the oceans, which would raise the sea level. The failure to show an increasing rate of sea level increase, the fact that the oceans are warming, and the fact that temperatures don’t correlate with CO2 is pretty solid evidence that something other than CO2 is causing the climate change.
Has anyone quantified or guessed at the amount that the weakening of the earth’s
magnetic field has contributed to the sea level rise?
http://www.inquisitr.com/2550786/nasa-warns-earths-magnetic-field-weakening-pole-shift-imminent-reversal-could-have-caused-neanderthal-extinction/
The Fifty year trend peaks around 1950.
Surfing around the world at this site makes for an interesting afternoon, IMHO. Note the differences between Lewes, DE and Cape May, NJ which are just across the mouth of Delaware Bay from each other, a good indication of the subsiding coast of NJ vs that of Delaware.
Toby
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/50yr.htm;jsessionid=165AD27AD502CC0E60339D16BE0FC2C5?stnid=8518750
Interannual Variation
Average Seasonal Cycle
Variation Of 50-Year
MSL Trends
Previous MSL Trends
Variation of 50-Year Mean Sea Level Trends
8518750 The Battery, New York
(Looks like the graph did not copy)
EXPORT TO TEXT | EXPORT TO CSV |
Linear mean sea level trends were calculated in overlapping 50-year increments for stations with sufficient historical data. The variability of each 50-year trend, with 95% confidence interval, is plotted against the mid-year of each 50-year period. The solid horizontal line represents the linear mean sea level trend using the entire period of record.
Greg March 19, 2016 at 11:52 pm says:
I don’t understand your claim. How have the average trends been “subtracted”? As far as I can see he is reporting the average trend.
I also don’t understand this objection. Yes, trends depend on start and end dates … but how does that make them useless on your planet?
Since I cannot make sense out of your objections, either common sense or any other kind, I’m not sure you are exactly the poster boy for a call for common sense …
In any case, the best way to poke holes in papers is to demonstrate and support your objections to the method. However, you have not done any of that. Instead, you’ve just claimed that their method is wrong, without the slightest attempt to either demonstrate, support, cite or back up your objections in any manner.
More to the point, this is not a place where Anthony publishes perfect scientific papers. Nor is it even theoretically possible to do so. Instead, it is a place where people can poke holes in scientific papers, because that is how science progresses.
Regards,
w.
Rather than the arrows, can you give us exact numbers? It is possible that the arrows are hiding an acceleration.
In this topic I found a useful tool to study some of what we have. I really wish this site could be split such that discussion on any information coming in could be discussed in a rational manner.from a scientific perspective I don’t see Albert Parker claiming he has found the magic formula. If these tidal gauges are all we have then don’t throw them out with the bathwater. The current atmosphere is hardly inviting to people with some useful to present. Please keep them coming. Science cannot progress through skepticism alone. Its is built from snippets of truth
Not surprising that Scandinavia is rising and Northern Germany is sinking, just like the first two charts show. Scandinavia was under heavy burden of snow during the ice ages and is still rebounding from it. The same is true of Laurentide ice sheet in North America. Changes lijke the ones in Europe are also taking place in the Great Lake region. One result is that some lake basins are slowly being tilted and are spilling water from their south margins. If you are going to measure sea level changes keep a good distance away from any formerly glaciated coasts and make allowance for the water held back in artificial reservoirs. Chao, Yu, and Li did that and published it in Science in 2008. They found that correcting for reservoir storage made the sea level curve linear for the preceding 80 years. The slope of this linear section was 2.46 millimeters per year. Anything that has been linear that long is not going to change anytime soon. 2.46 millimeters per year works out to just under ten inches per century. This is what I expect the century’s sea level rise to be. Bear in mind that Al Gore pronounced the sea level rise to be 20 feet per century and prognosticated that this will wipe out the state of Florida. When he got a Nobel Prize after mouthing that trash I knew something was wrong with the organizations controlling such prizes. I was proven right when it turned out that the MacArthur genius prize for 1992 went to Stephen Schneider for revising the IPCC FAR report in 1990, for which he was an editor. The journal in which I read it printed both the original and the revised section involved but I was too stupid to pick up the difference and thought both of them irrelevant. Schneider was interviewed and he said the prize came just in time because he was in the middle of a bitter divorce. Later I tried to trace that article but Google will not give it to me. Checking Wikipedia tells you he was married to Terry Root and nothing about a previous marriage. And James Hansen also got a prize in 2001 for his stellar performance in 1988 in front of the Senate. Prize giver in this case was the Heinz Family Foundation. These are just examples I happen to have run into of global warming advocates being financially rewarded by institutions supporting the global warming cause.
It exists to make commenters ask questions …
w.
I keep getting into these conversations and being called all manner of bad names, accusations of being in the pay of big oil, or people saying I’m just plain stupid.
But I too have been digging through the tide gage records for some time. None of the excuses work. All of the adjustments are easy to check and basically involve land use changes…land use changes that would not apply to small island stations, which also show no signs of sea level rise accelerations.
The tide gage record is a big thorn in the side of global warming alarmists. It is truly the ultimate “No, you’re just wrong” to the whole thing. Oh really…so much more energy going into the ocean you say, and where is that magical thermal expansion? Oh really…so much more glacial melt that you claim is impacting sea level rise as we speak…but where is this magical water? It is simply not present.
The oceans also represent a bit of a problem in terms of warming…they simply can’t. All you need to do is a simple check of the numbers…claimed energy imbalance (no matter how high), the volume of water in the oceans, the specific heat capacity of water. It would take 500 years at current rates to heat the oceans even 1C. And even that isn’t a diagnostic number…that’s just an example. These people aren’t claiming it will warm by 1C, they’re claiming quite a bit more more. And it’s just physically impossible for it to happen before almost all of the CO2 is removed again through natural forces (even if sensitivity was as high as they claim).
And these people never seem to learn..and outright refuse to think. They won’t let the fact that the math simply does not add up stop their belief…instead they just send links of some other “scientist” who is also seem incapable of doing this very basic math.
All of the adjustments are easy to check and basically involve land use changes
Land use changes refer to forestry, agriculture, urbanization and the like. What you mean is land height changes.
…changes that would not apply to small island stations
Islands aren’t immune to tectonic changes.
The tide gage record is a big thorn in the side of global warming alarmists
The tide gauge record shows global sea level rise of 18cm since 1900. The fact that it rises with early 20th century warming, dips with mid-century flat temps, and rises again in the last 40 years or so is hardly a thorn. Long-term global sea level appears to track long-term surface temps pretty well. Plenty of shorter scale variability, though. Strong ENSO events can have a significant impact for a couple of years, for example.
It would take 500 years at current rates to heat the oceans even 1C. And even that isn’t a diagnostic number…that’s just an example. These people aren’t claiming it will warm by 1C, they’re claiming quite a bit more more
You’re confusing projections of near surface air temps with the oceans. No one is claiming the seas will warm 1C by 2100. The oceans have 1000 times the heat capacity of the atmosphere. A temp change of 0.01C in the oceans transferred instantly to the entire atmosphere equates to a temp rise of 10C. No one is projecting nearly that much temperature rise by 2100, not even at the high end of projections.
At current rates it would take more than a thousand years to warm the entire oceans by 1C.
“Worldwide tide gauge comparisons show no acceleration in sea level rise”
Less than 10% of worldwide coastline is covered in the analysis. Less than 1% of the seas. And the periods overlap. Better to have done 1900-1975 and then 1975-2014 n any case, comparing two distinct periods.
Here’s the result for Europe. Pop them in adjacent tabs, if you like, to click/compare a little easier.
EU sea level trends 1900 – 1975
EU sea level trends 1975 – 2014
First thing to notice is that quite a few tide gauge locations in 2014 don’t have any data prior to 1975.
I couldn’t spot any tide gauges that have a slowing trend post 1975 in this analysis, but some have increased trends. Also, the negative trended stations (around Scandinavia where the land is lifting relatively quickly) are either stable between the two periods, or the negative trend is decelerating.
Same breakdown for US:
US sea level trends 1900 – 1975
US sea level trends 1975 – 2014
Not much change. Increased rate in a couple places. Again, far fewer tide gauge locations on that map prior to 1975.
I didn’t bother with Australia, as there was only a couple of data locations on those maps prior to 1975.
Probably a good idea to include the caveats on that page.
The map should be used with some care as anomalous trends have many causes:
land movements (e.g. earthquakes, glacial isostatic adjustment)
unexplained instrumental datum shifts
changes in atmospheric pressure
short records
Single-study syndrome.
John Daly link is broken. Is it a formal study, or a blog piece? And is it about location??
[Link fixed. ~mod]
Thanks, mod (above).
Dispute over a couple of tide gauges in Tasmania hardly puts the debate ‘to rest.’ You can’t extrapolate a couple of data points in a tiny location for global.
Curious about Tasmania’s tectonic history (land height changes), and knowing that it is one of the closest bits of land to Antarctica, I went searching for information.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/002532279290173F
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jqs.717/abstract
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08120099508728178
Tectonic uplift is another factor for Tasmanian long-term tide gauge records, as would be localised vertical land changes.
Also, el Nino causes short-term sea level rise globally, so the “full-blown” el Nino referred to in the John Daly article may have raised mean sea level. But it also could have lowered sea level. Effects are not uniform for every el Nino, and el Nino effects are suppressed in Tasmania due to proximity of the Antarctic, which has a moderating influence on short and long-term global changes.
I admire the diligence of the author, but as I read through it raised as many questions as it answered.
As for the checking of alternative written records, it has been investigated at length, and there is more information.
On 1 July 1841, Ross and Lempriere had a standard survey mark cut into a sandstone cliff on the Isle of the Dead. The mark is a horizontal line with a broad arrow touching and pointing down at the horizontal line. A plaque was installed above the mark, but unfortunately it has not survived.
Ross’ journal of the event is confusing. It is not clear whether the mark was made of the mean sea-level, or high water. Ross did make two more marks on the Falkland Island on the same voyage, and these were both above mean sea-level.
A paper published in 1889 by Captain Shortt recorded the wording of the plaque, including the time the mark was struck and the height of the sea given by Lempriere’s tide gauge. By taking a measurement of the height of the sea, and estimating what the tides were when the mark was made, Shortt determined that the mark was made near high water.
An article in The Australasian in 1892 also recorded the wording of the plaque. While almost the same as the version published in Shortt’s paper, it differed in the time the mark was supposed to have been made, although both reports were consistent regarding the reading of Lempriere’s tide gauge when the mark was struck. Taken on its own, the reported time of the striking would suggest that the mark was originally near mean sea-level.
Significant work has gone into determining which of the accounts is correct, including a current major study by a collaboration of international scientists, as knowing whether the mark was originally placed near mean sea-level or high water is crucial to being able to compare sea-levels of 1841 with today. This study has concluded that it is almost certain that the benchmark was originally placed near high water. The conclusion is based on other estimates of sea-level made later in the 19th century, and on the fact that, if the mark had originally been placed near mean sea-level, then the Penitentiary building would have suffered flooding every few years (there is no record of this having happened).
http://soer.justice.tas.gov.au/2009/copy/84/index.php
I’m surprised no one has mentioned John Daly. This article puts to rest the ‘accelerating sea level’ scare.
This high tide benchmark was carved into rock in 1841:
http://www.john-daly.com/deadisle/rossmark.jpg
Current high tide is very close to the same. In almost two centuries, the sea level rise has been less than ten centimetres.
NOAA has a website “Tides and Currents” that gives data for 128 tidal gauges for the U. S. and 112 additional tidal gauges for the rest of the world. Data goes back for some locations back to 1880s. Their data shows no acceleration from 1990 to present.