Guest essay by Albert Parker*
Hopefully everybody remember Sallenger’s “hot spots” of sea level acceleration along the East Coast of the US.
Asbury H. Sallenger Jr, Kara S. Doran & Peter A. Howd, Hotspot of accelerated sea-level rise on the Atlantic coast of North America, Nature Climate Change 2, 884–888 (2012), doi:10.1038/nclimate1597
This was one of the many examples of bad science misinterpreting the sea level oscillations by cherry picking the time window.
As 6 more years of data have been collected, let see if the hotspots are now the “hottest on record” or if they have cooled down.
The logic of Sallenger & co. was based on the comparison of the rate of rise of sea levels over the first and second half of time windows of 60, 50 and 40 years, i.e. the comparison of the rate of rise over the first and the last 30, 25 and 20 years respectively of these 60, 50 and 40 years windows.
This did not make any sense to me, as if you do have sinusoidal oscillations of periodicity 60 years, positive and negative phases of 30 years, and you select the end of the time widows at the end of one positive phase, this way you will always have “positive acceleration” even if there is none, and everybody knew about periods and phasing of the natural oscillations.
The logic was clearly flawed, but obviously Nature did not accepted any comment. The science is settled, and can’t be discussed.
So, let see the data, for example for Washington DC and The Battery NY, to check if the hotspots have produced huge sea level rises since December 2009.
The figure below presents the MSL (monthly average mean sea levels) and the SLR computed with 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 years’ time windows for Washington DC and The Battery NY.
Is there any one able to spot any sign or acceleration or simply oscillations? With the data up to December 2009 and with the data up to April 2016, not a chance. There are only oscillations about same longer term trend.
Which is then the novelty of the last 6 years of data? Since December 2009, the sea levels have declined in both Washington DC and The Battery NY, -3.3 mm/year in Washington DC and -10.7 mm/year in The Battery NY.
It seems that immediately after December 2009, the last month of data considered by Sallenger & co. in their June 2012 paper, corrected online June 2013 with the publishing in the supplementary of the actual numbers, a positive phase of the oscillations has been replaced by a negative phase.
*Note: Originally this story was submitted under a pseudonym “Giordano Bruno”. The author, Albert Parker has consented to it being changed to his real name. – Anthony Watts
“Sea level rise hotspots” are the Washington Post and the New York Times! Ha ha 🙂
All the oceans are connected, therefore if the sea level rises in one location it should then rise in all locations. If this is not correct please explain how it could be different.
Gravity, atmospheric pressure, currents, and wind. For relative sea level, add tectonics.
Mark C,
In almost every area, the land (and ocean floor) is either subsiding or rising. Therefore, one tide gauge is not a reliable measure of sea level changes.
But taking the average of the hundreds of tide gauges does provide an accurate sea level change metric.
All tide gauges averaged together show only a minuscule rise in the mean sea level; it is a smaller change than satellite measurements, which are much too coarse to measure millimeter changes. Satellites were not designed to measure sea levels, although they can show if there is any ±change.
Finally, the small, long term rise in the mean sea level is not accelerating — yet another failed prediction made by the climate alarmist crowd.
If we sacrifice Al Gore on the North Pole will global warming end?
yes it will. a man with 0 science background and divinity school flunkie.
Sea level gauges up the Northeast US Coast — Sandy Hook, NJ…Montauk, NY…Bridgeport, CT…Newport, RI…Boston, MA…New Castle, NH…Bar Harbor, ME — all have falling sea level since 2010.
Not doubting that, but links would sure be timesheets if you have ’em.
See below. Most if not all of those gauges are also on NOAA’s map http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends.html
As “Mr. Bruno” notes, the trends oscillate and these drops will likely reverse. I’m noting those along the Northeast coast are dropping in tune. Moving south we see a different pattern. Stations south of Virginia down to Key West are showing a rise.
Scroll up to long post. Those NOAA links also account for the land’s motion. That’s why sea level in the Guf really isn’t rising at 9.65 mm/yr. The Eugene Island gauge is sitting on sinking ground, just as the Pacific isn’t falling almost 18 mm/yr at Skagway AK. That gauge is bolted to a climbing rock.
Opps. My bad. Scroll up to my long post . . . . .
Sea level in the Gulf “really isn’t rising at 9.65 mm/yr…”
Something that bears repeating every time you see a news article about “climate refugees” being relocated from islands in the Mississippi Delta.
Westward along the Texas coast the land is sinking due to aquifer depletion. Some areas around Houston are subsiding at a rate of 55mm/year, making them more susceptible to “unprecedented” flooding as reported in the news recently. Is it any wonder the tide gauges along the Texas coast show as much as +6.6mm/year sea level trend?
Look eastward along the Gulf coast to Panama City, Apalachicola, and Cedar Key, FL — tide gauges less affected by population growth and land use change. You find a sea level trend of around +2mm/year that is NOT accelerating.
More accurately, “tide gauges…”
http://www.psmsl.org/
I have found that most climate scientists when discussing global climate change and the melting of the ice caps and glaciers miss one part of the water cycle equation. Water has three properties. Liquid, solid and gas. If fresh water melts and it warms enough from the sun light it will turn in to a gas and evaporate in to the atmosphere. Eventually the earths weather pattern will be effected by these moisture laden cloud formations. Like we are seeing now around the earth. Torrential rains and extreme constant winds. The sea levels will not rise. We will just drown like rats…
Except there is nothing unusual or UNNATURAL about any of rains or wind “now seen around the earth.” It’s called weather.
And if you want to consider yourself a rodent, be my guest, but leave the rest of us out.
“The Sky Is Falling, ANd I Can ‘Prove’ It!” is a great way to begin a grant application.
Especially when the falling sky is being used to amass political power.
Just sayin’
Love the article and the pseudo scientific explanations of the readers, all contradicting each other and proving nothing. One thing I do know that is the hundreds of friends I have who live alongside the ocean all around the world have never reported a rise in the ocean at their place! That the ocean is rising or falling at any given location is NOT due to the volume of water anywhere, but the elevation of the land, which indeed does slightly rise or fall depending on it’s location to shifting plates, or indeed, in the case of much ocean side property in the USA, is the result of the “land” settling, as much of it is artificially created land which is always going to “settle”. I am content to know that MGW (if it exists) is actually good for plant life and human kind, as it will very slowly (if ever that is), allow formerly unsuitable areas for crops to be opened up for production.
Exposing another Obama lie.
NEWFLASH – Sallenger has read this article and the comments, and he now accepts that these locations were not genuine “hotspots” of accelerating sea level rise.
However, he and his team have identified some new cherry picked locations where formerly sea level rise appeared to be decelerating but has now shifted to a 4 year accelerating trend…
Only joking. But I wouldn’t put it past them.
Nothing is too dumb for these fools. And nobody can be too gullible.
Thankfully, politicians and the journalists are very very gullible indeed. And they control public opinions and the public purse.
So, I expect that we will see a new list of sea level rise “hotspots” within a few years.
And then a few years later, these locations will show a return to around the normal 20th century rate of rise.
There will always be an extreme something, for alarmists to draw our attention to.
Meanwhile the bigger picture is unchanged.
And the perception that sea level rise is changing is also unchanged. Here is what was being said in 1959.
“Believed in large part to be the result of the melting of the world’s glaciers, sea level has been rising at a rapidly increasing rate, amounting to as much as a 6-inch rise from 1930 to 1948 (Marmar, 1948). This is about four times the average rate of sea level rise during the past 9000 years, as recorded by Shepard and Suess (1956). It should be noted that more than a six-fold increase in the rate of sea level rise occurred in the mid-1920’s at the same time there was a striking change in the rate of glacial melting in the north (Ahlmann, 1953, Fig. 11).”
Erling Dorf 1959.
http://notrickszone.com/2016/05/22/1959-paper-shows-most-warming-before-1945-arctic-warmed-7-7c-sea-level-rose-8-mmyr/
Was that paper written by Dr. Suess right after he wrote The Cat in the Hat?
Yeah, the cat in the hat is a Nature submission on “potential behavioural shifts as adaption to climate change and extreme rainfall, in domesticated felines”.
Later he researched wild species adaptation to extreme cold, and wrote “the Fox in socks”.
Many people ignore the seriousness of his popular works on climate impacts.
The graph shows increasing MSL. How do you get the title “..sea levels are now reducing…” from that?
The rate of sea level rise has reduced and is now in line with the historic rates, dating back to well before the man-made climate change nonsense..
It is true that it is a bad title.
It should not have been “sea levels are now reducing in the…”. It should probably have read, “SLR rates are now reducing in the…”
Although, that’s not a very catchy headline.
And the first few sentences do explain what is really meant.
Rich, there’s some math and graphing going on here, let me know if you need to borrow my slide rule.
bd ______________
>
I heard/read about this years ago. Sea levels on the US East coast were rising.
But sea level is sea level. If they were rising THERE, they’d also be rising elsewhere on coastlines around the world.
First thing that came to mind was plate tectonics.
Second thing was too many people on the east coast weighing it down – maybe, like that scientist-politician Hank whatsisname suggest regarding Quam, too many people in one place could cause the island to flip over. Maybe the same is true of the US continent. I wonder what’s on the other side? Atlantis?
All kidding aside, the idea that the oceans could only rise on ONE coast of ONE continent is ludicrous and it amazed me it went unchallenged.
Great article. Lots of buyers are reluctant to purchase real estate in Sarasota due to global warming concerns. I always try to level their fears. http://www.thesrqduo.com
It is quite clear after reading the replies here that no one know what is going on and many of you are guessing to go,with you agenda.
[True. And the better choice at this point in time is? .mod]
Greg,
If you decide to read the article you can learn about the subject. If that’s not sufficient, put ‘sea level’ into the search box. You will find a mountain of sea level data, and you can read comments from all sides of the discussion. Because this site does not scientific censor different points of view.
Then you can make up your mind. That’s reasonable, no?
For Mod and for Greg,
More accurate take: there’s a lot less guessing than either of you realize. Geodesy measurements by themselves don’t explain WHY the benchmarks are moving as they do (both horizontally and vertically) but they can resolve whether or not only the water is moving or if both the land and the water are moving. The botany-biology-engineering folks most commonly invested in attempted coastal restoration are usually not surprised by vertical changes. However, the heading changes surprise them. Geologists not all surprised.
By contrast, here’s a good attempt to merge several different pools of data from different branches of the overall geology discipline into a unified picture of what is going on: http://uavsar.jpl.nasa.gov/science/workshops/workshop2013.html (the first of 3 annual workshops so far) then the Blom et al slides at: http://uavsar.jpl.nasa.gov/science/workshops/presentations2013/UAVSAR_WorkShop2013_Gulf_Coast_Subsidence_(Blom).pdf
If you read this article and all the other literature concerning climate change, you will arrive at the same conclusion: no one knows what is going on, and that includes climate scientists. That’s the whole point of all this research, and we should be very wary of those who want the power to control everyone else by claiming they will save us from climate change.
Thanks for the information. It proves my theory that we should stop shoving climate change down people’s throat and just make everyone stop pollution!!!!
I have yet to find a detailed explanation of the whole rising sea level thing.
When ice melts, the volume it occupies shrinks, and vice versa, (which is why pipes burst when they freeze). So if the polar ice melts, ONLY the ice above sea level will add to the volume of the oceans, right? Seems they are assuming there is WAY more ice above sea level than below, but is that a known fact? If it is, fine. But I don’t want to hear a “we guess it is.” When you see a floating iceberg, everyone knows that the part you see above the water line is only a tiny bit of the whole thing, (hence the phrase, “tip of the iceberg”).
I can’t help but think they are counting on most people not knowing that water expands when frozen.
Fill a glass with ice, then add water to fill to the brim. Let it sit in the hot sun until all the ice melts. You will find the water level drops below the brim.
Mike – only valid for the floating ice at the North Pole or already off the land at the South Pole. Aside from the supposed thermal expansion of what’s already ocean, the other big “rising” concern of AGW is ice sitting atop land which will run down to sea as water if it melts. That ice really will raise the ocean level if it melts. End of the Wisconsin about 18K years ago; sea level rose about 130 m. The US Gulf Coast moved about 100 miles north, from the edge of the shelf to about its current location.
I have yet to find a detailed explanation of the whole rising sea level thing.
When ice melts, the volume it occupies shrinks, and vice versa, (which is why pipes burst when they freeze). So if the polar ice melts, ONLY the ice above sea level will add to the volume of the oceans, right? Seems they are assuming there is WAY more ice above sea level than below, but is that a known fact? If it is, fine. But I don’t want to hear a “we guess it is.” When you see a floating iceberg, everyone knows that the part you see above the water line is only a tiny bit of the whole thing, (hence the phrase, “tip of the iceberg”).
Fill a glass with ice, then add water to fill to the brim. Let it sit in the hot sun until all the ice melts. You will find the water level drops below the brim.
MDW, regarding your university comment.
Most people would accept that ‘The Platonic Academy’ founded ca. 387 BC and lasted 916 years (until AD 529) as the first University who taught the scientific method. Of course institutions of higher learning such as Pandidakterion, Gundishapur, or Pushpagiri existed before the birth of Islam.
I think you are referring to Madrassas which are quite different from a Western-Style University, an autonomous organization of scholars.
thank you!
and aristotle did more to establish the scientific method than the ‘relgion of peace’ which has always been a negative sum game- realizing wealth by robbery and status by slaughter.
https://www.thereligionofpeace.com/pages/muhammad/raid-caravans.aspx
much less any gang of cannibal/vampire/zombie worshippers
Jail the climate de..liars.
I think we all know what needs to happen. The people best known for fixing problems should be involved. They have a long and storied history of benevolent use of power. We should all have to pay a portion of our federal reserve notes to them regardless of consequence for our lifetimes. And our children’s lifetimes. This group of moral superiors should never be questioned and anyone questioning them should be name called and immediately blacklisted.
Of course I’m speaking of politicians and bankers.
They know exactly what to do.
Silly mundanes shouldn’t be allowed to question them or the lemmings that sing their tune.
bearsfan4life, for a moment there I thought you were talking about the philosopher kings from Plato’s Republic, as led by the king of kings, AlGore, who has perfected the AlGoreitm for self-enrichment, while killing democracy simultaneously. BTW, used to be like you, but 20 or so years back moved to Denver area, where ownership actually has the single goal of W – Superbowl. Kind of hard to resist this logic after so many yrs here.
Also, as a southsider, this yr is setting up perfectly for my ultimate fantasy. The flubs will win the first 3 games of the WS, at which point the Billy Goat curse will kick in and with their annual choke, they will lose the last 4, game 7 by 1 run when they have a 3 run lead, 2 outs in the 9th, bases loaded, an an opposition GS occurs on a 3-2 count. The southside will go wild with joy!
Sports is much more important than AGW cant (I won’t call it a theory, since there is no scientific basis), There is at least some reality to sports. In fact, there is more reality in WWE contests than in AGW cant.
I’m sure this proves global warming and that it’s all the fault of white American men.
Yeah, all the hot air emanating from algore
I do not believe on the global warming theory. Yet I consider myself a person who cares for the planet. I believe that we should not pollute the oceans,the rivers the air with industries. I make sure that my trash is recycled
but the global warming is not a true story in my humble opinion.
Obsession with attempts at somehow measuring the level of water in a spherical plastic bucket is about as sensible attempting to measure the height of a blob of jelly on a flat plate. It is all misdirection by pseudo scholars with long names, past and present. Never mind which church they belong to.
Global warming is real. At the end of winter this year there was a day that started out -33 degrees F and by about 2:00 PM it was 52 degrees F. That is a differential of 85 degrees in the space of 8 hours. No one survived, everyone died. I now understand that a 1 degree C rise in temperature over 100 years will kill everything living on the planet Earth, at least anyone left who managed to survive the existing temperature variations happening daily. I barely survived this morning, which started out at 71 degrees F and is now 89 degrees only five hours later. Global warming is real, and so is global cooling. Be careful when putting on a coat, it can cause your temperature to rise by many degrees, further adding to the danger.
You’d think after a temperature increase of 15 deg. C and a sea level rise of some 150 meters, we’d understand that climate change is real ..
i suppose when the next Ice Age comes around the alarmists will start yet another religion based on their fear of reality
PS .. here in Colorado we call it weather, and don’t worry too much about sea levels .. yet
the only way that the poles will melt is if the tilt of the earth changes. Duh! Are we really this stupid?