The sea levels are now reducing in the “hotspots of acceleration” of Washington and New York

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.

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*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

 

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Rick
May 30, 2016 4:29 pm

Al gore will have to find a new way to take other people’s money

May 30, 2016 4:48 pm

Loved the post from Climate change is real? It is funny, how when humans move from place to place, they rarely encounter the same weather in their new abode as in the one they left. What to do?? They adapt. And so does nature in all its forms. If you think you cannot adjust to say, a few degrees of change over many centuries, you might ponder how most temperate regions adjust by over 40 degrees of average daily temps between the seasons and yet no species are wiped out. When you might wonder why no one even cares about this MGW madness any more, just think why – it doesn’t affect their lives in any way, nor will it in their time on Earth. We have gone to forecasts that are epic failures so many times, the forecasts now are for centuries ahead, so no one alive now will be around to see those forecasts also are damnable lies.

T Sullivan
May 30, 2016 4:56 pm

Great news!!!!
Made my holiday!!!

May 30, 2016 5:19 pm

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks”
https://youtu.be/oQNkVmdicvA?t=17s

May 30, 2016 5:20 pm

I blame Bush.

GozieBoy
May 30, 2016 5:46 pm

Hank Johnson (D-GA), world renowned oceanic scientist, plate tectonic physicist and part time representative, explained all of this. Rep. Hank said that this phenomenon was due to a huge amount of water being sloshed over to the Asian region every time Guam flips over. Thus decreasing sea levels on the US east coast. Ingenious!

May 30, 2016 5:51 pm

You’e been lied to folks.

A Eagle
May 30, 2016 6:16 pm

Alot of off-topic chatter equals blab – no matter how highly-educated the diversionary idiocy.
Take this post, for instance…

cirby
May 30, 2016 6:33 pm

Oh, my…
I hate to say it, but you seem to have been hit with one of the heirs of Jagged85.
There’s a whole subculture of Islamic pseudoscholarship going on around the net, and one of the most famous cases was Jagged85 on Wikipedia. Basically, he did what MRW did (cite something that had little or nothing to do with his claim), then complained when people tried to correct him. He did thousands (literally) of edits to Wikipedia, and did permanent, real damage to it.
Basically, ignore everything MRW claims.

May 30, 2016 6:36 pm

In related news, 97% of Climate Scientists don’t have a friggin clue about Science or the Climate, but they love being included as a talking point in Al Goron’s and Lord Obama’s numerous ignorant Pontifications.

Mike
May 30, 2016 6:39 pm

With china dumping billions of tons of sand and dirt into the ocean to build islands, you`d expect a little rise.

grumpyoldman22
Reply to  Mike
May 30, 2016 8:16 pm

Don’t tell these dills or they will add it to their list of islands that prove sea levels are changing.

Reply to  Mike
May 31, 2016 6:06 am

The Chinese are dredging sand and dirt from the ocean floor and piling it up above sea level. This should lower sea level slightly.

Gabriel
May 30, 2016 7:10 pm

What the masses don’t get is that nature always seeks balance. Global warming as well as global cooling is natural…man has not made even the slightest of impact. Just think of all the nuclear bombs (2000+) detonated on the earth, most during the 50s and 60s with no correlation to this junk science. This global warming ideology is nonsense.

Milwaukee
May 30, 2016 7:54 pm

“Both were invented by Islamic Science. The university system (900+ AD) and the scientific method (11th C). Monckton has written about the latter a few times here.”
Since Islam has disconnected cause and effect, how did they develop science? Oh. Global climate change has disconnected cause and effect.

Andrew Bennett
Reply to  Milwaukee
May 31, 2016 4:38 am

Can I suggest to people to look closer to Islam as a religion. I have had a couple of trips to china in the last year and the Moslem people there do not follow anything like the “religion” in the middle east. The difference is quite staggering.

TheLastDemocrat
Reply to  Andrew Bennett
May 31, 2016 2:21 pm

Andrew – this is pretty simple: do they believe in and follow the Koran or not?

Kevin
May 30, 2016 7:58 pm

Watch “saving the planet” by George Carlin.
Climate change is socialist progessive globalist corporatist propaganda. The snake oil, magic elixir, feel good potion of this century. Kind of like tulips.

Milwaukee
May 30, 2016 7:58 pm

“Chris Fishers May 30, 2016 at 8:01 am
Hurricane Sandy was a typical category 1 hurricane that the alarmists in the media have dubbed a “Superstorm”. It caused so much damage to NYC and N.NJ because the storm track was a direct hit and it made landfall during a full moon high tide.”

While Sandy was rated category I while at sea, by the time landfall happened it had been downgraded,to whatever is below a category I storm. Katrina is still the last named tropical storm to make continental U.S. landfall. Because of global warming and everything.

riparianinc
Reply to  Milwaukee
May 30, 2016 8:13 pm

Minor quibble – – Rita hit the TX-LA border a few weeks later.

TheLastDemocrat
Reply to  Milwaukee
May 31, 2016 9:35 am

Milwaukee – I agree – and posted here at WUWT at the time.
Close to real-time, I figured out the weather buoy closest to the landfall. I picked a couple bracketing Delaware River/Atlantic Ocean.
On neither did wind speed readings reach “hurricane” definition more than momentarily.
I knew to watch because I predicted that the media would carry on as they eventually did. This confirmed a lot of what many people have been saying: the media play up weather events in order to sell tickets, and the catastrophists and politicians have no problem with any of this lying.

Darwin Wyatt
May 30, 2016 8:19 pm

Mrw,
You had me until the Iraqi stuff. Pretty sure the Kurds and Iranians that Saddam gassed don’t miss him. And thank God Saddam and the Iraqi army (Isis) don’t have the 550 tons of yellow cake (now sitting in Canada) to process like the iranians? Thank you to the American soldiers who took it from him!!!
As for Saddam and his involvement in 9/11, I suggest you read pages 78,83 of the 9/11 report. It clearly states saddam offered ubl santuary to carry out his plans. After 9/11, is that the kind of guy you leave in power? Or his other many atrocities?
It’s just sad president Obama threw the Iraqi people under the bus or they’d be voting today instead of being slaughtered.

MRW
Reply to  Darwin Wyatt
May 30, 2016 9:39 pm

@Darwin Wyatt,
I have the pdf version of the report with the original pagination. My copy is the one sold by U.S. Government Printing Office and is entitled:

THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT
Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT EDITION

Saddam Hussein isn’t mentioned on pages 78 and 83.

MRW
Reply to  Darwin Wyatt
May 30, 2016 9:43 pm

Page 79 has this passage:

Bin Ladin was also willing to explore possibilities for cooperation with Iraq, even though Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, had never had an Islamist agenda—save for his opportunistic pose as a defender of the faithful against “Crusaders” during the Gulf War of 1991. Moreover, Bin Ladin had in fact been sponsoring anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, and sought to attract them into his Islamic army.53

MRW
Reply to  MRW
May 30, 2016 9:46 pm

Correction: it was pg 79 of the PDF, pg 61 of the report. Sorry for the mix-up.

Professor Fate
May 30, 2016 8:21 pm

This just in:
A Mr. C. Little of Kenosha, WI claimed today that the sky is falling. He offers proof by exhibiting an object that he claims fell from above and struck him in the head. Although it appears to be an acorn, Mr. Little is firmly convinced it is, in fact, a piece of the sky. Consequently, he is applying for a substantial grant from the federal government to study this phenomena in detail. The goal of which is to avert a planet wide catastrophe by constructing huge nets that will cover the globe to catch the falling pieces.
Al Gore has weighed in stating: “Makes sense to me.”
More on this as it develops.

May 30, 2016 8:42 pm

Everyone understands that human knowledge increases exponentially over time. If AGW is not the cause of rising seas (the east coast does not represent the planet), a warming atmosphere, weather changing, ice melting, the oceans becoming more acidic and warmer, and constantly increasing C02 in the atmosphere, then what exponentially increasing human knowledge supports an alternative? There is none. We already have the smoking gun. Get used to it.
Or take a group of people from a cross-section of the political spectrum and put them in a room with a NASA scientist who explains that we have a rover on Mars and the only evidence is an image on a screen which can be easily computer generated. Everyone in the room accepts the minimal evidence that suggests we have a rover on Mars. Take the same group in a room with another NASA scientist who explains decades of human knowledge that supports AGW and only the conservatives in the room deny the evidence. Does that make any sense? Of course not. What’s different?
Conservatives were born with more fear in their DNA from evolution and it is sub-conscious. It fully explains what differentiates them from everyone else on the political spectrum. The most common symptom of paranoia is the sense that everyone is out to get you and conservatives obviously think government is out to get them. Since they sub-consciously associate AGW with government out to get them, no amount of evidence will convince them it is real. Bizarre. And when evidence gets in the way of an irrational fear, the brain makes stuff up to deny it, that’s how the brain works. That is why you always find conservatives making stuff up about AGW science and is why they should not be in positions of public policy – they prioritize irrational fear over the well-being of the people, country, even the planet. I have never had a conservative take me up on an offer to drive or ride in my electric car. Once I figured it out, I stopped offering about 3 years ago. It is all sub-conscious, rooted in evolution and they aren’t even aware of it. But is really obvious.

Mooky
May 30, 2016 9:04 pm

God is showing everyone how foolish “man-made” climate change is.

Stephen
May 30, 2016 9:16 pm

Get a spell checker & hammer checker. Your credibility shrinks with such bad writing.

Jack Dale
May 30, 2016 9:43 pm

Steve Goddard tried a similar cherry pick of of time frames and locations in March.
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2016/03/23/falling-sea-level/
Coincidence – I think not.

indefatigablefrog
Reply to  Jack Dale
May 31, 2016 8:50 am

Erm…the locations were cherry-picked by Sallenger et al for their paper in Nature.
Skeptics didn’t cherry pick the locations – the alarmist Sallenger did that.
And this is the rebuttal/debunking of such cherry-picking nonsense.
You can’t debunk someone elses cherry-picking of extreme trends without making reference to how those specific locations tend to return to the mean trend over time.
Cherry picking is dumb. That’s why we have to keep an eye on locations cherry picked by alarmists.

Jack Dale
Reply to  indefatigablefrog
May 31, 2016 9:02 am

Of course the locations chosen by Sallenger et al were cherry picked. What part of “hotpots” do you not understand? Read the abstract http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v2/n12/full/nclimate1597.html?W
The 6 year time frame cherry picked by Bruno is far too short to drawn any meaningful conclusion. Sallenger et al used 59 years.

indefatigablefrog
Reply to  Jack Dale
May 31, 2016 12:26 pm

YOU read it –
“Here, we present evidence of recently accelerated SLR in a unique 1,000-km-long hotspot.”
“Recently accelerated” – read that.
It doesn’t matter that he considered 59 years – the acceleration which he reports is perceived to have occurred “recently”.
Bruno shows graphs extending back to 1880. So he’s “using” 136 years.
He is showing that the acceleration which appeared to have occurred “recently” is merely an artifact of choosing locations where the natural oscillation about the overall linear trend, has ended high.
Now, a few years later, it no longer ends on high on apparent acceleration.
Look at the graph of the Battery gauge using your own eyes.
Do YOU see overall acceleration?
Try holding a ruler up to it.
Seriously.

Darwin Wyatt
May 30, 2016 10:02 pm

Mrw,
Then you know what it says? Please share it with us. Or do you contend that in saddams police state he didn’t know what his intelligence officers were doing? Hilarious your brainwashing.

Darwin Wyatt
May 30, 2016 10:48 pm

Mrw,
Funny how you left this part out?
“Iraqi officials offered bin ladin a safe haven in Iraq”.
http://www.faqs.org/docs/911/911Report-83.html
Who in their right mind after 9/11 would leave a dictator in power who offered to help Bin Ladin? One with chemical weapons and 550 tons of yellow cake? Saddam would be processing it as we speak. Just like the Iranians. Thank you American soldiers. Heroes all.

MRW
Reply to  Darwin Wyatt
May 30, 2016 11:44 pm

Darwin Wyatt,
And it was preceded by

Similar meetings between Iraqi officials and Bin Ladin or his aides may have occurred in 1999 during a period of some reported strains with the Taliban.
According to the reporting Iraqi officials offered bin ladin a safe haven in Iraq. […]

In other words, conjecture.
The ‘yellow cake in Iraq’ was debunked, or don’t you remember. And “Just like the Iranians?” Hyperbole. You wouldn’t last two minutes in a military briefing room with that level of adolescent drama.

May 30, 2016 11:18 pm

Does this mean that the waters as the world turns over like Guam? What is Al Gore going to do with his multi-million dollar beach front Malibu home?
Oh the horrors!

Darwin Wyatt
May 31, 2016 12:25 am

Mrw,
You are a victim of mind control. Read.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/25546334/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/t/secret-us-mission-hauls-uranium-iraq/
It’s the same (low grade yellow cake) the peace loving mullah’s in Iran are processing into enriched uranium as we speak. Just as Saddam would be were he still in power.
Further, I would hardly call “according to the reporting” conjecture. If that’s the case, then the entire 9/11 report is conjecture. Sorry, as best we know, Saddam offered BL safe haven to carry out 9/11.

MRW
Reply to  Darwin Wyatt
May 31, 2016 2:56 pm

From the article you linked to:

There was no evidence of any yellowcake dating from after 1991, the official said.