Reposted from the NoTricksZone
By Kenneth Richard on 3. January 2022
Over 700 low-lying islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans have coasts that have been stable to expanding in size since the 1980s. The relative sea level rise has only been +0.46 mm/year in these regions with “almost trivial acceleration of +0.0091 mm/year²”.
The claim that sea levels are rising so fast that low-lying islands have been uniformly sinking into the sea worldwide is wholesale myth.
Actually, the opposite has been observed via satellite. A 2019 global-scale analysis of 709 islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans revealed 89% were either stable or growing in size, and that no island larger than 10 ha (and only 4 of 334 islands larger than 5 ha) had decreased in size since the 1980s (Duvat, 2019).
Image Source: Duvat, 2019
As Dr. Alberto Boretti asserts in a new paper, one of the main reasons why Pacific and Indian Ocean islands have not been mercilessly submerged beneath the sea as a consequence of today’s “catastrophic” climate change is that sea level rise has only been rising “very slowly” in these regions: 0.46 mm/year in recent decades. The acceleration is “an almost trivial” 0.0091 mm/year².
Succinctly, “absolute sea levels are rising much slower than in climate model predictions.”
Charles Darwin, during the “Voyage of HMS Beagle” (title of one of his books about the Naturalist expedition), in 1842, in the South Pacific and Indian Oceans, observed atoll formation and evolution. These atoll islands are quite dynamic in their formation and evolution, due to coral growth working against subsidence. The curious comment, at least for me, is how author Alberto Boretti can describe 0.0091 mm acceleration per year as ALMOST trivial. The standard thickness of a sheet of paper is 0.1 mm, so it is about 10 years of sea level rise acceleration to get to the thickness of a sheet of paper.
Not knowing much about such matters, but still aware that this is not (internally) dead planet such minuscule changes are expected. I would bet that height of Himalayas has changed at least 0.1mm if not more in the last 10 years (“There’s good evidence that the Himalayas are getting taller, at the rate of 5 millimeters a year”) . Maybe Nepalese need to put their claim in too.
That’s climate change for you. It can even make mountains grow!
yuh, it must be some sort of Divinity that people should worship
There’s nothing that the Magic Molecule ™ cannot do!
So India must be getting smaller as the Indian plate is still pushing. Is that 5mm counting for erosion ?
And where will the Indians live in the future if the country is getting smaller ?
China seems to have a generous policy of allowing citizens of neighbouring countries live in China….
你好 Zig!
How are the Mandarin classes going?
Pretty well, now that I’m not allowed to learn Tibetan any longer.
India?
Which is about twice the average annual sea level rise as measured by tide gauges. People are excited about geological rates of change supposedly caused by humans.
Yes, it’s the same sort of thing with the global warming hysteria: Computers producing loads of insignificant decimal points producing loads of insignificant scientists.
Some folks are going to misread or misunderstand that.
The annual increase in sea level seems to be 0.46 mm/yr. Given the almost trivial acceleration, Boretti has it that in ten years the annual sea level increase would become 0.56 mm/yr.
What I don’t see are error bars. The alarmists seem to think that if you take enough data measured with large error bars, if you take the average, the error bars will magically disappear.
In most of the world, according to sat data, which are not affected by subsidence, erosion, or other natural processes, the actual sea level rise is approx. 2.5 mm per year. Most sea level gages in the US some in at that rate as well. That’s just 250 mm in a century, or a quarter of a meter, or around 8 inches a century.
Otherwise they would have nothing at all to talk about.
“almost trivial acceleration of +0.0091mm/year²”.
___________________________________________
That’s about what it is for most tide gauges with a century or more of records.
That’s less than 4 thousandths of an inch of acceleration per year – a measurement of tides that is entirely impossible to authenticate with any existing tide gages or sat measurements available today. It would take a micrometer to measure such small accelerations.
It rounds up to 0.01 mm/yr². which means that IF that trend continues, and sea level is going 3 mm/yr today, then 100 years from now it would be going up 4 mm/yr. Or by 2100 the median rise in sea level would be a little less than 7 inches.
Dave Burton runs a very good page on sea level:
https://sealevel.info/
Where you can check out a lot of what the IPCC and the screaming media headlines say. Or you can go to the original source for tide gauge data:
https://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/
Steve ==> Pragmatically, “acceleration of +0.0091mm/year²” is trivial. Relative Sea Level Rise is highly variable over decades and to believe that the computational acceleration is a real-world acceleration is hubristic and unphysical.
With a data set like RSLR, in which the actual tide gauge measurements have uncertainty bars of original measurements at +/- 2 CM (yes, centimeters) all other portions and derivatives must show substantial uncertainty bars as well.
It would require thousdands of years of measurements (a whole lot more than we have, at any rate) to be able to scientifically claim an acceleration as small as < 0.01mm/yr.
Of course, this is all nit-picking. The reality-based fact is that low-lying islands have failed to become inundated, over-washed, by “rapidly accelerating sea level rise” as threatened by the Gretas and the IPCC.
RSLR data is adjusted, not necessarily for nefarious purposes, but simply because tide gauges are moved from time to time. The moves may be a meter or more, eg Felixstowe near where I live
https://jeremyshiers.com/sealevels/20111116/uksealevel_felixstowe.html
Jeremy ==> This is a different issue. When a tide gauge is moved, it really starts a brand new data series. A tide gauge only measures the water level at exactly that one place — always and only. This also applies to anytime a tide gauge is replaced with a newer model etc.
To stitch together the record from one gauge location to another — basic surveying methods are used to determine the difference in elevation of the first site to the new site, the difference then being used to line up the records. Done correctly, this is perfectly valid. All such shifts should be marked clearly on any long-term record.
This has become a lot easier and more accurate with newer “military-grade” GPS technology.
Ceteris paribus!
We don’t know even how fast the sea level rises. How fast the rise accelerates is a pure speculation. “Almost trivial” fits.
The data must be wrong.
The Models say the data is wrong, so it must be so. The Prime Ministers of these island states need the models to be right, else they don’t get the money they want.
After all, these ministers are forced to hold their meeting under water wearing scuba gear. That ought to convince anyone that these island leaders need lots more money to keep their islands from sinking more.
Lots more money for scuba gear, certainly!
If I could hold my meetings underwater, I’d do so too. Much more interesting than a conference room, and a lot less unnecessary chatter.
$$$ for the new airports and hotels going up on the beaches
Here is my hypothesis as to why tropical ocean coral islands are not sinking as sea level rises:
Charles Darwin postulated that coral islands are built on old buried volcanoes. These volcanoes have deep roots that extend down into the mantle. As sea level rises the thin ocean crust surrounding them sinks with the extra weight of ocean water. The islands however pop up due to the differential loading. I call this the “zit hypothesis”. In order to test this idea, I need to undertake a series of geophysical gravity surveys at as many South Sea Island locations as possible. This will clearly be a tough and grueling assignment.
Will you need an assistant?
The assistant criteria is: 1) Female; 2) good-looking; and 3) “lots of fun.” I doubt you qualify.
Be careful. If the pressure from below is higher on one side of the island than the other, it could possibly tip over.
Don’t forget it could take a full decade. You should take some friends to help fill the time.
And loads of booze.
Philip, I let your first comment pass, but this is too much. Go to the Principles office and wait for me.
Aaah yes, the Zero Island Tomfoolery project. That should put the squeeze on them.
I realize that I’m way back in the line, but if you need someone on your grant proposal to order and maintain the enormously expensive photography equipment you will need, I’m your man.
Oooops, person I meant.
Oooops,
personsentient being I meant.Da plane, boss! Da plane!
Yes, our lying eyes must be deceiving us.
CAGW hypothesis:
” ’tis but a scratch…”
“Your arms off!”
Black Knight “No it isn’t!”
From the article: “almost trivial acceleration of +0.0091 mm/year²”.
Lol! That’s pretty trivial. I wonder how they measured such a trival amount?
A triviometer, of course … plotted on a trivialograph.
Sea level rise is such a joke. Especially when it is connected to CO2.
Eagerly waiting for the NYT headline trumpeting the great news.
…..and the Washington Post and CNN and MSNBC and Bill McKibben and…..
OT- but related to climate change matters
This morning forward price of ethanol collapsed, down by nearly 25% while all other fuels are static or have made modest gains of 2-3% (natural gas, naphtha & propane)
Is there any explanation for that?
Supply problems. It’s the north west European ethanol that’s slumped – UK switching to a 10% ethanol mix basically just doubled the demand, France has followed suit increasing demand still further whilst the supply of ethanol has remained at a reduced level. It’s not going well.
I’m not sure I follow this – wouldn’t increased demand lead to an increase in price?
Not if Griff is running it
At first, yes it would and we’ve seen that last year. When supply consistently fails to get anywhere near demand over time, you’ll likely see a slump.
Surprise, surprise! Liars caught out in their lies, yet again.
What I would like to know from our friends over the Atlantic is how are they coping when the global warming hit Virginia during night and early this morning?
“Drivers have been stranded for hours on a major interstate in eastern Virgina — some stuck from Monday into Tuesday morning — after a severe winter storm caused massive backups, sending authorities scrambling to clear a path.”
Clinton running mate Sen Tim Kaine stuck on highway for 27 hrs
All coastal shorelines, islands or continental mainlands, constantly shift and change due to a variety of processes. Erosion and sedimentation result in barrier islands that come and go or change shape, and deltas form as well. Plus there are biologic processes, such as shallow water corals that continue to grow towards the ocean’s surface even when that surface is elevating … parrotfish that ingest corals and poop out granular coral “sand” that then accumulates to great depths (up to thousands of feet, as in the Bahamas Bank) some of which is transported to land by ocean waves … to mangrove forests that constantly grow, trapping both sediment and organic materials in their prop roots, creating new “land”, but occasionally getting trimmed back by ocean storms.
Anybody who knows the least thing about these geologic and biologic processes would never claim that a rising sea level, such as it may be (with tremendous variations between coastal markers, satellite data, and various geologic processes that cause land to rise or fall independent of actual sea levels) would drown tropical and sub-tropical coastal islands, because it just does not work that way in real Earth life.
But its good for grant money. Everything else, including truth, is unimportant.
Better fire up the dredges and videographers to counter this, plus Griff. /sarc
An acceleration rate of 0.0091 mm/yr?? 9 microns?–who writes that down not realizing what they’re doing and how stupid it looks?
I’ve written my share of technical reports in my career, and I simply cannot understand someone putting 9 microns of rate of change into something with 2 meter waves on it; how would you do that and not reflect ‘Geez, does that ever look stupid–I better take that out’.
Oh well, I calculated it so it must be right; I’ll just call it ‘almost trivial’. Does the scientific hubris now extend so far that someone thinks they can measure rate of change of planetary sea level rise in microns??
Wait–I’ll calculate the height of the bow wave caused by the North American plate drifting west, and measure the turbulence left on the east coast by the wake.
Bet I can get it published!
By ignoring the range of uncertainty in the measurements.
Actually, the bow waves exist…just they’re slow and are called tsunamis!
I wouldn’t call 600 MPH in the deep, open ocean slow. It is only in my lifetime that airplanes have exceeded 600 MPH.
Climate change promoters are always in panic mode with exaggerated claims and demands. And so far none of the predictions have happened but the demands have always been for more.
To make a faulty analogy, during WWII many of the pacific islands took one hell of a beating from explosives and are still there with no appreciable change unlike that predicted by climate change that hasn’t happened. And as Rep Johnson worried that Guam might tip over from an unbalanced distribution of people the island has not tipped over and the Admiral testifying stated they did not anticipated that happening. I also, having been there a couple of times found it quite stable. Guam might sink some day or become the tallest mountain but it will not tip over. That will take awhile.
More stable than those predicting catastrophe. Darwin correctly observed that the coral atolls tend to maintain their elevation as the seamount they are attached to sink as a result of isostatic adjustment. Those corals are pretty smart. They stay at just the right height to avoid drying out and to avoid losing light to grow. They must share some genes with a thermos bottle.
Almost certainly immeasurable! That is 9 microns or about an order of magnitude greater than the wavelength of red light. Where are the error bars for these claimed measurements?
We don’t need no steenking error bars! We’re CliSciFi gods.
You want to see the error bars and I want to see the instrument and method of measurement.
Most climate models (INM-CMx excepted) don’t get anything right.
And so on.
The reasons are simple, basic, and inescapable. Discussed and illustrated in old guest post “The trouble with climate models”.
The satellite records of the sea level are saying that the current rise , about
3,4mm per year is accelerating while the average of many GPS-corrected tide gauges
say less than half of this rise. Of course, the IPCC keeps only the satellite observations since they help for its catastrophic scenario of the melting of Antarctic and Greenland ice caps.
Who is lying ?
Another study goes in the same way:
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/nleng-2020-0007/html
Interesting conclusion from that paper, calculated with GPS offsets:
The tide gauge and GPS measurements show a stable pattern across Oceania, of mild rising sea levels, with negligible accelerations, mostly explained by the sinking of the tide gauge instrument. In Fremantle, Sydney, Auckland, Dunedin, and Honolulu, the average relative rate of rise is +1.306 mm/yr., the average acceleration is +0.00490 mm/yr., and the average absolute rate of rise is +0.125 mm/yr. This pattern is consistent with the other long-term-trend tide stations of the Pacific.
Wonder what the margin of error is in all that?
The problem is of course that the GPS chips are very rarely attached to the tide gauge instruments.
But in effect there is nothing happening WRT sea level rise in the South Pacific.
Will anyone address and explain the huge discrepancy between the satellites and the tides gauges observations ?
Since the tides gauges are all placed on the shores and since the submersion threatens the shores only, why to worry when the IPCC says that the sea level far offshore rises 40 mm per decade ?
Let’s start with the absurdity.
“almost trivial acceleration of +0.0091 mm/year²”; besides being impossible to measure such a trivial amount, just how is sea level rise a Year squared measurement?
“relative sea level rise has only been +0.46 mm/year”; is another unmeasurable amount. Especially for sea level.