Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
My Twitter friend Wei Zhang @WeiZhangAtmos pointed me to an open-access study in Nature magazine entitled “Timing of emergence of modern rates of sea-level rise by 1863“. It claims that sea levels were basically stable for centuries, all the way up until the 1860s when the modern rates of rise started occurring. They are basing this claim on a variety of different kinds of proxy sea level data—foraminifera, coral microatolls, plants, diatoms, peat, shells, vermetids, herbaceous peat, mangrove peat, ∆13C, sediment, testates, archeological, and bioconstructed reefs.
Intrigued, I took a look. Here’s their Supplementary Figure 5.
Figure 1. Figure 5 from the Supplement, with original caption
Hmmm … overall, that wasn’t impressive in the slightest. Different areas are claimed to have wildly differing rates of change, sometimes going up and down radically in a couple of hundred years. Why would New Jersey be so different from North Carolina? Why do Iceland and Denmark show no change in sea level until very recently, when relative sea level is supposed to have dropped? These questions and more …
I noted an interesting point in the caption to Supplementary Figure 5 above. It said that the “global and linear” components had been removed. Hmmm again … how was that done?
Reading the paper I found the magic behind the curtain. The finished records in Fig. 5 above are the result of the raw data being “incorporated into a spatiotemporal empirical hierarchical model” … and hey, if you don’t believe in the millimeter-level accuracy of a random spatiotemporal empirical hierarchical model, you must be anti-science.
Now, those who know me are aware that I’m a great fan of raw data. And kudos to the authors, they included a link to download an Excel spreadsheet containing the data. It contains proxy data from 103 different sites around the world. So I took that proxy data and I graphed it all up.
Figure 2. The proxy data used in the sea level study.
YIKES! All I can say is, it’s a darn good thing that they have their spatiotemporal empirical hierarchical macerator … because if they’d shown the unmacerated data, they’d have to provide 500ml of eyebleach with every issue of the magazine …
With that data as a starting point, as you might expect, their claims are all over the map. Regarding the North Atlantic, for example, they say that the emergence of modern rates of sea-level rise occurred “earliest in the mid-Atlantic [US] region (1872–1894 CE) and later in Canada and Europe (1930–1964 CE)”.
Seriously? After centuries during which their claim is that there was very little sea-level rise (Fig 1.), they say that one side of the Atlantic started rising about a half-century before the other side of the Atlantic, leaving the entire Atlantic tilted … wait, what?
And climate scientists wonder why the general public is so skeptical of their findings?
Sigh …
My very best wishes to all, stay safe and sane in these parlous times …
w.
My Custom: I ask you to quote the exact words you’re discussing. Misunderstandings are a bane of the intarwebs, and vague claims based on what someone thinks someone else meant are a major source of said confoundibulations.
Even climate change alarmists know that it is far easier to tilt a playing field than to tilt an ocean.
Figure 2 is a killer. Mann would be proud of creating such a program to make “sense” of such raw data.
This proves the old saying (that I just made up): “One instrumental record is worth 1000 proxies.”
Spaghetti charts are one thing – that looks more like a vomit splatter chart!
In Australia, we call it a technicolor yawn.
It is surprising how many proxies show decreasing or constant sea level over the past 2K yrs.
Problem is – the general public’s news feeds & headlines don’t ever show them what’s behind the curtains.
Shouldn’t the title of this be “Poxy Rates of Sea Level Rise”?
Published Study. Well, then.
How do they get this stuff published
I think some group must have paid for it. Probably the same group or groups that fund the other green new deal excrement.
because they honestly do not care how they got there….only what the result says
It’s called pal-review. It’s the new big thing in climate science.
And yet sea levels are rising at an accelerating rate as the oceans warm due to increased atmospheric CO2 from human activity increasing the greenhouse effect.
Any questions?
The scientific method is based upon questions being constantly posed to challenge “accepted” understanding of natural phenomena Barry.
So the short answer to your question would be a resounding
YES!
And where are your facts and figures to bolster your claim of accelerating sea level rise?
It certainly isn’t found in tide gauges
” It certainly isn’t found in tide gauges ”
Are you sure?
I made last year a comparison of a few evaluations of the PSMSL tide gauge data set with my own one, and together with sat altimetry data:
Please look at the consecutive trends from 1903-2015 till 1993-2015 for the various PSMSL avaluations:
If there was no acceleration in the tide gauge data: would then not all trend sequences be flat lines?
Some sources
PSMSL tide gauge data
https://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/rlr.monthly.data/rlr_monthly.zip
Dangendorf’s evaluation
https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41558-019-0531-8/MediaObjects/41558_2019_531_MOESM2_ESM.txt
Grant Foster’s evaluation
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UaePmF9fkKWK6pUxPWgZhuhTP-EvMud6/view
Seems to be missing about 30y worth of data.
And some measures seem to have been accelerating from well before AGW.
How about objective scientific evidence to back up your two claims:
Acceleration:
https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/socd/lsa/SeaLevelRise/LSA_SLR_timeseries.php
And…
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32814886/
Anthropogenic CO2 driving global warming/ice sheet melt/sea level warming/rise:
http://railsback.org/FQS/FQSCO2&Temperature-Holocene02.jpg
And…
And…
“These results confirm theoretical predictions of the atmospheric greenhouse effect due to anthropogenic emissions, and provide empirical evidence of how rising CO2 levels, mediated by temporal variations due to photosynthesis and respiration, are affecting the surface energy balance.” http://asl.umbc.edu/pub/chepplew/journals/nature14240_v519_Feldman_CO2.pdf
I have plenty more for your review if you’d care to do so.
Sea level rise according to tide gauge data and satellite data are different. Your first link is to satellite data. You can see the differences here:
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/sea-level/
Sea level rise suddenly accelerated around 1995. Or did it? That’s when the satellites started measuring it and they have consistently measured a higher rate of sea level rise than tide gauges do, so splicing satellite plots onto tide gauge plots shows a sudden acceleration; the “Mann Nature Trick” of splicing different data sets onto each other.
If you look at long-running tide gauge data, like around New York, the only acceleration you see is short term jumps that correlate with strong El Niño years (1998, 2010, 2016) followed by a decline or plateau.
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=8518750
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=8516945
The satellite data appears to show a very slight long-term (~30 year) acceleration of 0.098 ± 0.025 mm/yr², but it depends heavily on the begin and end dates of the data.
https://sealevel.colorado.edu/
Nevertheless, if you extrapolate it to the year 2100 the difference between a linear trend and an “accelerated” trend is slight. Using the satellite trend (which is higher than the tide gauge trend):
Sea level rise by 2100, linear trend of 3.3 mm/yr: 261 mm (10.28 inches)
Sea level rise by 2100, accelerated trend (4.08mm in 2100): 292 mm (11.5 inches)
Pretty hard to get worked up about a very small acceleration that may be mostly an artifact of when the measurements began and ended.
This should help clear up your confusion. https://www.globalchange.gov/browse/indicators/global-sea-level-rise?fbclid=IwAR2gsYGegl9lJ5NYpNg33xI8GTaexLCE9EWf6q76nTRRA-Y0FkaE1YeIqkM
Please indicate which surface tide data sites has that acceleration..
None of them do..
Faked and adjusted data is not science.
Who’s confused ?? 😀
Barry, I went to your link. It has a graph with NO metadata, NO citations as to source, NO indication of what data was used, NOTHING.
And your link claims that tide gauge data shows a greater rate of rise than satellite data since ~ 2000, a totally unbelievable rate of 4.7 mm/year … despite years of studying tide gauge data I’ve never seen such a claim.
Which is probably why they didn’t state their sources … you’ve gotta start hanging out with a better class of scientific losers.
w.
What you get from the “grey literature”
From NASA, 1995,
“According to long-term averages estimated from tide gauge measurements, global mean sea level has been rising at a rate of only one to two millimeters per year over the last century. However, mean sea level changes over shorter time scales are more difficult to detect using tide gauges. The rise observed by TOPEX/Poseidon was undetectable using tide gauge data.”
And yet that plot has it twice as large for that early 90s period. That only happens when the data is massaged to fit a theory.
one of the many problems with satellite data ,which nasa favors over empirical tide gauge data , is that satellites are not able to measure sea level rise along coastlines , where it really matters and can be verified by observations
I’ll give you another issue – with UAH. Many of us sceptics think of it as a good dataset to see what is really happening, but go take another look at the graphs.
There is a state-change in 2015, where the temps apparently take a sudden jump to the positive. And it hasn’t come back down even though we are seeing cooler temps around the world. (as in real-world cooler, experienced by actual humans)
In 2015, they introduced Version 6 of the data. I’d really like to see the last 7 years of data recompiled under version 5. It’s a bit too coincidental that right at that change the global temps took a rise.
Also, it may be just me but I can’t find a version of radiosonde data that doesn’t require a stats degree to plot and understand – once upon a time I could check UAH (and back in the day, even RSS before THEY got a ‘new version’) against radiosondes and see the close correlation.
From your article: “Also, as air temperatures warm, water from melting ice sheets, polar ice caps, and glaciers enters into our ocean basins.”
From March 14, 2022 NOAA Climate.gov
”Overall, the long-term trend in Antarctic sea ice is nearly flat. The satellite record spans over four decades, and although the ice has shown increasing and decreasing trends over portions of that record, few of those trends have been statistically significant.”
Melting of the Arctic polar ice cap will have zero effect on sea levels. This one, simplistic error blows any credibility of your reference to smithereens.
First, consider this:
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/arctic-sea-ice/
That said, in comparison to the rapid loss of total melt balance of the world’s ice sheets, the loss of sea ice isn’t a significant contributor to sea level rise. That’s understood.
But why did you fail to mention the ice sheets?
Consider this – that base period starts at the tail end of several decades of cooling. I know the church of AGW likes to pretend the ‘science’ was NOT concerend about a coming ice age but I lived through that period and even did a class assignment on what we might do when the ice came.
So it is only to be expected that as the Sun goes into a solar maximum we will see effects. The one puzzle none of the ‘climatologists’ could explain was the fact the Antarctic ice was INCREASING, year by year, when they were all trumpeting the doom of ice caps.
That’s why they got so loud in 2016 (I think it was) when they saw an actual reduction of the mac ice – you could hear the champagne popping for miles around Hadley and Penn State.
Also that link – 13% per decade? Really? Not by THEIR figures. 13% per decade would put Antarctic ice at 52% of 1981 level and it’s actually around 71%.
I guess when you’re trying to justify more funding it is OK to fudge a few figures and be, like… you know… 130% wrong in your figures!
So sea level rise comes nearly all from solar radiation because the ocean is heated nearly completely by non-IR radiation while IR just evaporates the top few molecules thick layer. That means that thermal expansion and glacier melt is the cause of sea level rise. As IR increases, more evaporation decreasing sea level by the what is rained out over land and ice sheets.
ROFLMAO
Fake zero CO2 models versus fake CO2 added models.
Not science.
Circular fraud, that shouldn’t fool even a low IQ teenager.
Objective doesn’t mean a result after subjective choices on how to do the number crunching.
There is a massive difference in the estimate of sea level rise between satellite and tidal gauges after 1992. Both go through a not so straight forward process from raw data to global average. There is a 10 cm change over 30 years in average height of oceans with an average of a 1 m swell in the satellite data. It is very subjective as to how to deal with it.
Tidal data also show localised land movement that has to be taken into consideration.
One thing that is objective is how linear the satellite estimates are after 1992, how linear the estimates from tidal gauges are since well before 1992, and how linear individual tidal gauges are, overall. An acceleration should show up as common to nearly all tidal gauges, without adjustment, but it well and truly doesn’t.
You only get an acceleration if you splice the lower tidal gauge estimate to the higher satellite estimate.
The only objective evidence is that which shows how dodgy climate scientists are.
Why in heavens name do we even consider data.
Just draw a graph, it’s as simple as that.
Hockey sticks 😉
Manipulated data is a common theme. Temperature, tides, weather events. Since it hasn’t actually happened, they’ve been paid off to pretend it has. The stakes are high.
Oh Bummer should move to higher ground immediately, if not sooner.
1) There is no evidence that SLR is increasing. As has been shown on this site multiple times.
2) There is no evidence that CO2 plays more than a tiny role in SLR.
Your classic deflection from the post article is typical of people like YOU who doesn’t want to face it head on make lies instead since it is well known that increasing CO2 has a decreasing LOG rate and sea level rise isn’t accelerating at all.
You are not fooling anyone here.
More of the usual BS from BA. He must be related to Griff!
I am surprised you didn’t demand the data Willis used in this post because in three other posts Willis Eschenbauch authored you made loud demands for the data which was always supplied right in all three posts he published.
Now you have had TWO days to download and show where Willis might be wrong about yet you silent and go the next post to whine and post baloney.
Here is what I posted a few minutes before I wrote this post in the Climate Models Don’t article:
“It has been TWO days yet NOTHING from you about the KNMI data download Willis used to make his charts how come you didn’t download them and make YOUR case against what Willis wrote?
I think you are blowing white smoke and nothing more.”
LINK
It looks like you are now 0-4 on download of data that are readily available to you from 4 separate articles Willis wrote.
Maybe it is time you shut your mouth in demanding data from Willis when you are not going to do anything with it anyway.
You are pathetic.
“Data? We don’ need any stinking data!”
With apologies to fans of “Treasure of the Sierra Madre”
He’s not smart enough to check anything.
No, Its only the adjustments in satellite sea level fabrications that is accelerating. That is certainly human activity.
Real sea level rise remains undisturbed.
CO2 causing sea level rise = zero science. !
Barry doesn’t realize that all he does is scream authority, authority, authority.
Willis dissects an idiotic paper published in Nature which should never have gotten past peer review.
This in turn contributes to casting doubt on the field, climatology, the journal, and the process. This is what we have been doing for more than a decade.
Barry’s response: But these other papers/people/articles say something different!
Barry is incapable of discussing an issue logically.
Barry is like griff, just with an over-wound spring.
I think they are both actually trying to make a total mockery of the AGW meme.
Sort of slap-stick 3 Stooges comedy.
And doing a great job, I might add. ! 🙂
Keep it up Barry, you are doing sceptics a service with your idiotic alarmist claims. We can see straight through you like a sheet of glass.
Who as climate scientist has friends like BA doesn’t need any further enemy 😀
Show us your data, Barry. Please provide a link to a plot or source data that shows sea levels are rising at an accelerating rate. I’ve looked at a lot of data and I don’t see it. Please share.
Please define “accelerating” and “due”: our understanding of your unsubstantiated statement depends on the meaning of those two words.
And be so kind as to tell how can “atmospheric CO2 from human activity” be differentiated from common CO2 (please consider in your answer the assertion of Leslie White in a 1949 writing, viz., “Man is the only animal able to distinguish between distilled water and holy water”).
And I would become very obliged if you could post ONE, a single reference, to a scientific paper where it is demonstrated that there is a relation between CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and the greenhose effect.
Thanking in advance.
You say “as the oceans warm due to increased atmospheric CO2 ”
So here is my question:
Who taught you that lie?
It has to be one of the most idiotic and anti-scientific pieces of nonsense to come out of the CAGW stable.
The same people who warm their bathwater with hair dryers.
And then along comes someone to keep Barry company.
Nobody has ever made the claim that the atmosphere directly warms the water.
The sun warms the water and the warmer atmosphere slows down the rate at which that warmth is able to escape.
Even the climate alarmists are only claiming that the oceans have only warmed by about 0.002C. Exactly how much have the oceans expanded due to that warming?
Any questions?
Show any proof or evidence, at least some reproducible data.
Any ? No ? Why I don’t wonder 😀
Any questions?
When should Sydneysiders head for the Blue Mountains with the dooming?
sea-levels-sydney.pdf (saltbushclub.com)
All those blocks those stones those worse than senseless things!
Revealed! Top 10 most expensive suburbs in Sydney 2021 – OpenAgent
First, I showed here that the claim that the satellites show acceleration is an artifact of improper splicing.
Next, I showed here that bogus satellite record is spliced onto the end of the tide-gauge-based record, so that they can claim that the tide-gauge records show acceleration.
Finally, acceleration comes and goes in the rate of sea-level rise, as I showed here, but there is no overall acceleration.
In other words, you’ve bought into the lies of the climate alarmists and the misrepresentations of the state of the sea level rise.
w.
Maybe you , Barry, should take another look at “The Key to Science”:
Fellow Feynman fan here.
He’s the one who came up with the classic “I would rather have questions that cannot be answered than answers which cannot be questioned” quote.
Question for “Barry Anthony”. Any questions ?
In an article that discusses the many problems with the proxy data used to calculate the sea level rise, Barry responds, who cares, the sea levels are rising. And he still wonders why he gets no respect.
Got to make one of these for you
ROFL! Thank you!
Does that spatiotemporal empirical hierarchical model come with a laser supported 3000 kw turbo encabulator?
It is powered by Mr. Fusion.
Unfortunately we know what the Turbo Encabulator is.
Here is a brief description.
Thanks Tony, I first became aware of the turbo encabulator around 1982 or so. It has captured my imagination ever since, and i thought for sure it must have been incorporated in the spatiotemporal empirical hierarchical model. Thank you for the link that fascinated me so many years ago
I’ve read a number of CliSciFi studies along the same line. Many warmunist posters to WUWT went to similar lectures by Leftist activists. CliSciFi Ted Talks are hilarious.
You can deduce the video was made many moons ago by the dollar figure for government largesse.
I have serious doubts about the drawn reciprocation dingle arm reducing very much soinosoidal replenaration. I think more research funding is needed.
Only on the floor model.
Do people get to vote on what data series goes to the top of the hierarchy? Or do they just use the communist system of everyone voting for the same single series?
Is there a difference between eye bleach and eyewash? In my very-ex military parlance the latter indicates concealment of a trick: eg camoflage, and/or hiding the real stuff from military auditors, inspectors, and bean counters.
Does ‘spatiotemporal empirical hierarchical’ mean ‘space-time, observational, ranked?’ How does one do that with the mathematical model without changing the data? It seems another ex-military acronym, WAG (wild-ass guess) might have been more succinct, as well as easier to spell
I always heard WAG as an engineering term. I guess it depends on your background.
We use the term “guesstimate”
In my senior partner consulting days we NEVER WAGed. We always SWAGed—Sophisticated Wild Assertion Guess. We got paid for the Sophisticated part. Very important distinction. /s
Its like the technician justifying the high cost of a simple fix to a machine: “I’m paid to know which button to push to get the machine going again, not the amount of time I spend on the task.”
I’ve always heard eye bleach as being a way of getting rid of an image you really do not want to remember.
MarkW
I used to use beer for that. But looking back, now it seems likely that it is possibly how I acquired the images in the first place.
Gouging your eyes out is supposed to work in forgetting an image. To remember not to do something ever again, you chew off your arm (Coyote Ugly).
This is a science about a correlation with nothing and everything. Water ebbs and flows with diverse forcings.
What this article should demonstrate to Nature is that their proxies are inaccurate.
Any self-respecting magazine would not have published this rubbish. Obviously this is just more propaganda masquerading as research to fit a narrative.
Shame on Nature.
Harlech Castle sea gate….
I Harlech Castle in the southern hemisphere?
Maybe Chaswernertoo is in OZ, hence the inversion?
Downunder … that is the view we see in the Antipodes. 😉
I didn’t realise the UK had tilted that much ! 🙂
Sea level rise tipped it over.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cesSRfXqS1Q
At 1:20
It’s a Mannian proxy – upside-down
First, Harlech Castle’s sea gate was never at sea level. Here’s a reconstruction.
Second, it is now distant from the sea because of siltation and beach infill from a nearby river. See here.
w.
Looking at a few centuries of sea level variation says very little when over the last 40-50 centuries sea level is down six feet. The climate anxiety over melting pole ice and glaciers is about ice that didn’t exist before the sea level drop. A blip of warming in long-term cooling is a blessing not a curse.
How does their “spatiotemporal empirical hierarchical model” account for sedimentary subsidence and post-glacial rebound?
Obviously, they use a variety of long term proxies the estimate differential GPS readings going back up to 1,000 years.
So for awhile there you just put a boat on one side of the Atlantic and float down to the other side…
That’s how the Vikings discovered North America. The sea level was higher around Greenland in 1400 AD and they rode the down slope to Newfoundland Big River Marsh having been pushed away from Newfoundland Placentia.
Explains why the couldn’t get back, too. Rowing a boat uphill can’t be easy. !
And in the not too distant future when sea level rise is greatly accelerated, you’ll be able to surf down the slope from one side of the ocean to the other.
What fun!
For years I have wanted to take up water skiing, but was put off by a lack of places to undertake the activity. Now that I learn that there is a significant slope on the Atlantic there’ll be no stopping me!
Satellites show that the area above Indonesia has sea level rise far greater than other places..
So head to that region to catch the big wave to America.
It’s not a wave it’s a slope me thinks.
Its the Slip-N-Slide.
A 2011 paper in The Journal of Coastal Research, US tide gauges show a slight deceleration in sea level rise over the prior 60 years. http://www.jcronline.org/doi/pdf/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-10-00157.1
A 2010 paper in The Journal of Coastal Research, Australian tide gauges also show a slight deceleration in sea level rise over the prior 60 years. http://www.jcronline.org/doi/full/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-10-00141.1
“linear” components had been removed”
I have seen this once too many times myself. I have always wondered about it.
?????????????????
They take a system where doing a fit to the data and getting the linear trend is ordinary.
then they:
1) remove the trend.
2) claim there is no trend.
???????????????????
What am I missing?
According to the paper “To highlight the underlying nonlinear regional to local signal at each site responsible for the spatial pattern of the ToE, we use the spatiotemporal model decomposition (Fig. 3) to remove the global signal (which is common to all sites) (Fig. 3b) and linear signal (which is consistent with the effects of glacial isostatic adjustment19) (Fig. 3c).”
I see. That was a straight question, thanks for the straight reply.
There are a couple of ways to approach a problem like this.
1) Do a garden variety linear regression. The regression accounts for perhaps ~90%+ of the variation in the data. Do an analysis of the residuals to see what interesting things are left over. Stats programs like R are rich in residual analysis tools.
2) Clobber the data set with a polynomial regression, examine the effects of the higher order fit parameters. This is my preferred solution, not because I know what I am doing. I just like clobbering the data.
3) Use a technique which has been described as “Remove the trend, keep the noise”.
I suppose it is in principle the same as a residual analysis. It just was not obvious what was going on.
In the process, bury it all in impenetrable statistical bafflegarb.
“we use the spatiotemporal model decomposition”
Of course they did.
Tony, They needed to create a hockey-stick curve of global sea level rise rate and a spatiotemporal empirical hierarchical model was the only thing that worked.
What started increasing the rate of the rise in 1883? If it was CO2, everything but the tallest mountain ranges should be under water by now.
” What am I missing? ”
You are missing that the scientific methods were also removed.
The trend? 😂😂😂
I wouldn’t believe them even if they didn’t have a spatiotemporal empirical hierarchical model” .
Of course not. A modern model must have a multi-polydimensional recursive optimization algorithm. If you do not have one of these in your model, it is just not up to date.
I wonder if a “spatiotemporal empirical hierarchical model” does anything that a common Swiss knife cannot do…
A wonderful illustration of that old maxim: Garbage In, Garbage Out!
“Timing of emergence of modern rates of sea-level rise by 1863“.
______________________________________________________
How very interesting, they say the modern rise started in 1863 not 1865 or 1860 but exactly 1863. Alarm bells should go off to look for a good and valid reason why they chose exactly 1863. OK maybe I should read the entire post.
I’m back, and I pretty much just scanned it, but I didn’t see any reason why exactly 1863 was chosen. So cynic that I am, I looked at my file of tide gauge data from the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level PSMSL to see how many tide gauges there were before then and of the 1513 stations listed, 14 have data prior to 1863:
BREST, SWINOUJSCIE, SHEERNESS, CUXHAVEN 2, MAASSLUIS, WISMAR 2, SAN FRANCISCO, NEW YORK (THE BATTERY), WARNEMUNDE 2, TRAVEMUNDE, LIVERPOOL GEORGES AND PRINCES PIERS, LYOKKI, LYPYRTTI and JUNGFRUSUND
Does that mean anything? Well the low point at the Brest France tide gauge is 1862 and Swinoujscie 1856 others just don’t go back far enough to say that’s when there was an increase.
My guess? They looked at the Brest tide gauge record.
The first line of the introduction in the paper gives the game away:
They took a load of data, played with it using their obscure, opaque methodology until they got what they wanted – SLR started in the mid- to late-19th century (quelle surprise!!!), so it must be human caused – QED!!
====================================================
Assuming (for the moment) that their analytical methods are valid, is it possible that their mid- to late-19th century date for the onset of SLR coincides with the time when tide gauges start to be available and dominate the record, whereas most of their earlier data sources are “fuzzy” proxies that couldn’t possibly give millimetric, centrimetric (or maybe even metric) accuracy? IMHO, that is a much more plausible conclusion than that SLR only started when human activity f***ed up the timeless, arcadian harmony of nature.
Remind me – when did the Dutch start building dikes?
“The time of emergence (ToE)…” with “0.66, 0.90, and 0.95 probabilities.” How is ToE related tipping point? A crude and arguable estimate of the quality of a paper (Like “Impact Factors”) is the percentage of papers cited in this millennium. They have 62 of 65, and did find 1945 for the Netherlands. Last line of Results after more needs –“… but the timing of these trends suggests that the spatial patterns in ToE are unrelated to anthropogenic climate forcing. ” I want to know why/how the northern and southern Gulf of Mexico co-oscillate.
It seems to me that in Figure 1, the 1-σ uncertainty of any of those proxies would cover any one of the other proxies. It all seems rather uncertain to me.
I do give them props for showing the uncertainty. A lot of the plots we see don’t show it.
(Forgive my Mark 1/2 eyeball. I may not be seeing those shaded areas just right. Maybe I should use my good eye.)
Makes tilting at windmills seem rational.
Isn’t that convenient! One of the oldest records of sealevel is the Dutch Rijkswaterstaat’s going back to the late 1870s, complete, and the 60s and 50s increasingly incomplete. So the sealevel started to rise just when it started to be measured. Who would have thought that? What coincidence.
Occam’s razor says: utter tripe.
“So I took that proxy data and I graphed it all up.”
===============
Love your cutting sarcasm Willis.
Willis Eschenbach: “YIKES! All I can say is, it’s a darn good thing that they have their spatiotemporal empirical hierarchical macerator … because if they’d shown the unmacerated data, they’d have to provide 500ml of eyebleach with every issue of the magazine …:
West Marine will sell you one of these spatiotemporal empirical hierarchical macerators for the very reasonable price of $193.99.
Jabsco heavy duty self-priming macerator pump with run-dry protection.
From the West Marine catalogue: “This popular pump works well for fish box, livewell and holding tank applications. The 4 blade stainless steel cutter reduces fish scales, ice and other waste to 1/8″ particles and allow it to pass through the nitrile impeller with ease. Its self-priming abilities allow this pump to be installed up to 5′ above the holding tank and provide 11 1/2 gallons per minute capacity. That means the typical 40 gallon holding tank can be evacuated in less than 4 minutes (outside of restricted discharge areas). A fully sealed motor and powder coated housing ensure a long service life.”
No boat coming into port under threat of a rising sea level should ever be without one.
“The 4 blade stainless steel cutter reduces fish scales, ice and other waste to 1/8″ particles and allow it to pass through the nitrile impeller with ease.”
It is a household garbage disposal for a boat.
Somehow, this seems most appropriate.
I owned a 26′ sleep-aboard boat for thirty years. One of these Jabsco macerators was installed after the original wore out. Bought it from West Marine.
My beautiful Hunter 35.5 sailboat had a 40 gallon waste holding tank. We had such a Macerator, since sped up refueling and pump out. We always did water intake at the slip, not the pump out dock.
The UK uses mean sea level at Newlyn as Ordnance Datum.
Long records of annual MSL data from Aberdeen, North Shields, Sheerness, Newlyn and Liverpool are representative of the sea level change around the coastline. First, the long term rate of MSL change was removed from each record, thereby removing contributions from vertical land movements and (linear) climate change associated sea level rise. Then, MSL values from the five records were averaged to make an index of UK inter-annual and -decadal MSL variability, with the index having zero trend by construction, as shown in (a). (The standard deviation of the five values about their mean in any one year is typically 25 mm except for the early years of the 20th century when it is several times larger.)
Finally, a UK-average value for the long term climate change component of MSL change, estimated from a comparison of tide gauge and geological rates at a number of UK sites, was added to make the time series in (b). This average long term trend is estimated as 1.4 ± 0.2 mm yr−1 which is slightly lower than the 1.7 mm yr−1 consensus value for global sea level change over a similar period.
https://ntslf.org/products/sea-level-trends
might expect, their claims are all over the map. Regarding the North Atlantic, for example, they say that the emergence of modern rates of sea-level rise occurred “earliest in the mid-Atlantic [US] region (1872–1894
Nice one, WE. I have found a lot of ‘neat’ stuff in paper supplementary info from the Nature stable and Science . Mostly clearcut academic misconduct. Fabricius pH coral disaster caused by hydrogen sulfide. O’Leary’s Eemian tipping point caused by an earthquake. Marcott’s hockey stick created by core top redating when in the paper he said he hadn’t.
Now you have found a tilted Atlantic Ocean ‘caused’ by an encabulator. About as plausible as Rep.Hank Johnson’s concern that Guam would capsize if we sent more troops to the island because the navy base there is on Apra harbor on one side, with Anderson AFB close by on the same side.
Land surfaces can go up and down just as much as Sea Level does.
That’s the reason why such people do hard work:
https://www.sonel.org/spip.php?page=cgps
Of course: the GPD data is very recent, and no one can be sure that vertical land movement velocities measured/computed in 2010 are valid for the past. No one is naive enough to think that way.
But accepting this scheme at least allow you to see by how much the sea level rise is changed when taking these velocities as constant over time (what anyway is certainly the case for glacial isostatic rebound):
The blue lines lack any correction for vertical land movement.
Now look at the US East coast:
As you can see, the situation is the inverse, because the US East coast is dominated by subsidence, while for the Globe, the glacial isostatic rebound in the NH dominates the rest on average.
I guess it’s back to the drawing board on the search for the hockey stick sea level rise reconstruction…
What is most shocking is the time and money squandered in producing such garbage studies when it could be well spent on research on practical ways to adapt to and even benefit from climate changes.
For a person only sea level change within your local area and within your lifetime is of any importance.
Does the “spatiotemporal empirical hierarchical model” take into account post-glacial rebound? In a high number of sites shown, land rise may compete with sea level rise. The sites shown above don’t appear to have been chosen to represent the entire ocean.
This study is a perfect example of torturing the numbers until you get the answers you want.
Change from 1863.
Few gauges are open for that long evaluation.
Here is one:
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=140-012
And the evaluation of the trend:
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?plot=50yr&id=140-012
No CO2 correlation as I can see!
Nature published this clap trap of a study? That is very depressing.
Sigh. Here we go again with yet another “let’s just make fun of the data because we don’t want to accept it” ideological screed from Eisenbach.
Even from that really messy graph of the raw data, one can discern a general overall sea level rise of something on the order of 2000 to 3000 millimeters over the past 3000 years. That’s a rise rate of somewhere in the vicinity of 0.6 to 1.0 mm/yr. Today’s global rise rate, in contrast, is 3.5 mm/yr (per AVISO), which is three to six times faster, and still speeding up.
Even from this noisy a dataset, the notion that global sea level rise rate was relatively small over the past 3000 years but is now much more rapid is not at all an unreasonable conclusion.
Even sillier was Eisenbach’s quip about the Atlantic Ocean being “tilted”. Oh please. Anyone who has done any reading at all on sea levels knows that the oceans do not behave like a quiescent bath tub, which is apparently what Eisenbach was trying to pretend. Differences in winds, currents, and temperatures can and do make for different sea level changes at different locations within the same ocean.
MGC March 20, 2022 3:53 pm
Sigh. Here we go again with another bunch of vague handwaving accusations from someone who can’t be bothered to
• actually QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS that he thinks are wrong as requested over and over, or
• learn to spell my name, or
• have the albondigas to sign his own name to his own words.
MGC, come back when you decide to do some actual science. For example, if you think that you can “discern a general overall sea-level rise of something on the order of 2000 to 3000 millimeters over the past 3000 years” from the data in Figure 2, how about you actually do the work to calculate it from the data and give us a graph with an associated uncertainty?
Because squinting at that from across the room and claiming you can detect a 0.6 mm to 1 mm/year sea-level rise is idiocy beyond belief. Even the authors don’t make that claim, they
say that you need a hypercritical polychromatic heuristic climate model to do that …
Lead, follow, or get out of the way, but please, spare us your ludicrous claims disguised as actual science. For example, you say “Differences in winds, currents, and temperatures can and do make for different sea-level changes at different locations within the same ocean.”
OK, so how about a link to actual data showing one side of an actual ocean that actually started to rise, at 2-3 mm per year, fifty years before the other side of the ocean.
Because guess what? Very few people reading this site are foolish enough to take your word for it, and in fact, most of them, like me, are just going to point and laugh at your pseudo-scientific puffery.
w.
OMG LOL Willy Boy !! What a truly comical “response” !!
But, ahem, seriously. Sorry. I must truly apologize. Mea Culpa. I realize now that I just didn’t make it simple enough for you to comprehend.
I didn’t include a little piece of detail in my previous comment … which is this:
Forget all that “hypercritical polychromatic heuristic climate models” mumbo jumbo and simply LOOK at that very noisy dataset. One can discern, beyond any reasonable doubt whatever, that the MAXIMUM POSSIBLE MEAN HISTORIC GLOBAL SEA LEVEL RISE RATE OVER THE PAST 3000 YEARS that can be derived from that dataset cannot in any way be much more than about 1 mm/yr. Go look for yourself. If anyone wants to try claiming anything much beyond that mean rise rate over the past 3000 years, then they truly need to have their head examined.
But current global sea level mean rise rate is far beyond 3 mm/yr., well over three times faster, and is still increasing. Thus, there is more than ample evidence to conclude that today’s rise rate is much higher than what had occurred over the past 3000 years.
How sad it is to see that, apparently, anti-science denier ideology has rendered you so totally incapable of accepting such an obvious conclusion.
And now on to the second point you raised. Again, in all seriousness, I am beyond dumbfounded to find that (I really still can’t believe this!) you are actually “challenging” the well known FACT (FACT FACT FACT FACT FACT) that sea levels do vary, fairly significantly, because of differences from location to location in winds, currents, and ocean temperatures.
It is so comical (yet also so utterly tragic) to watch you pretend for your audience of willfully ignorant WUWT sheeple that you are supposedly some kind of high and mighty climate “expert”, yet you have so pathetically demonstrated that you are not aware of even the simple well known fact that, yes, oceans most certainly can and actually do “tilt”.
OMG LOL! Do yourself a favor and, hey, just this once, actually learn some REAL SCIENCE for a change.
OMG LOL !! OMG LOL !! OMG LOL !! OMG LOL !!
Tell me: how does it feel to be so, so, so, so, SO TOTALLY OWNED, Willy Boy?
I look forward to our next encounter, son!
Regards, Pal!
“MGC”
MGC March 21, 2022 9:57 pm
Actually, I just took a straight average of the proxies. It gives an average annual change over the last fifty years (1965-2014) of 4.4 mm per year, and an average over the last ten years (2005-2014) of 16.9 mm/year.
My advice? RUN THE NUMBERS BEFORE RUNNING YOUR MOUTH!
Next, you make an amazing claim, viz:
I know of no place on earth where that is true of the absolute sea-level rise. Link?
w.
PS—It appears you don’t understand that your endless stream of insults only has one effect—it makes folks point at you and laugh. Like me, most people here know that when a man starts throwing mud as you are doing … it’s a surefire sign that they’re out of real ammunition.
So please, dial back on the aggro and snark. It just makes you look like an impotent grade-school bully, and I doubt that’s the image you want to project.
Willis says:
“I just took a straight average of the proxies. It gives an average annual change over the last fifty years (1965-2014) of 4.4 mm per year … etc etc.”
So you are directly confirming my statement, thank you very much, that current rise rate is much higher than the mean rise rate was going back the previous 3000 years, which, just by looking at the graph, could not possibly have been any much more than around 1 mm/yr.
But go ahead: actually straight average the proxy data going back the last 3000 years, and then compare that value to the recent rise rates that you just stated. You’ll have no choice but to agree that I’m absolutely correct. Just like the researchers who wrote the study itself; the ones you childishly made so much fun of in your article.
“I know of no place on earth where that (over 3 mm/yr rise rate) is true”
Say what? The current mean global rise rate as measured by satellite altimetry is around 3.5 mm/yr. (see following link.) And didn’t you *just* say that even the proxies give a rise rate higher than that? You seem to be all over the place here, son! You sure you know what you’re talking about?
https://www.aviso.altimetry.fr/en/data/products/ocean-indicators-products/mean-sea-level/data-acces.html#c12195
Willis also says: “So please, dial back on the aggro and snark”
Heed your own advice, pal. My attention was drawn to your article precisely because it was itself so chock full of ignorant, juvenile “aggro and snark”.
Not to mention that its “conclusions” were all wildly wrong, too, LOL!
“MGC”
Funny how you forgot to mention the part of my comment where I pointed out that it gives “an average over the last ten years (2005-2014) of 16.9 mm/year.”
And since that is ludicrously impossible by an order of magnitude or so, anyone who believes in the rest of the time periods is just making things up. So no, I’m NOT “confirming your statement”. The numbers are ridiculous end to end.
As to your incorrect claims about satellite altimetry, it’s the result of bogus splicing of four satellite datasets. See “Munging The Sea Level Data” for the facts. If you disagree with anything I said there, QUOTE WHAT YOU THINK IS WRONG and demonstrate, not claim but show, exactly what is wrong.
w.
What is truly and genuinely “ridiculous” here, Willy Boy, is that laughably pompous “Munging the Sea Level Data” reference you provided, that is so chock full of tired old knee jerk denier talking points that are just flat out wrong. Falsehoods like this one:
“satellite-based sea-level data show that the sea level is rising so much faster than the rise measured at tidal stations on the coastlines”
Totally wrong, and here’s why: you compared the satellite rise rate data, from 1993 onward, with tidal gage data prior to 1993 … and you simply assumed that the rise rates measured by tidal gages would remain more or less constant going forward into the satellite era, post 1993. But they didn’t.
Yes, as it turns out, the rise rates measured at tidal stations also started increasing significantly. At many locations, this increase actually began a few years to perhaps a decade before satellite measurements started coming on line.
Some examples: rise rate measured at Boston Harbor was on average somewhere around 2.5 mm/yr prior to the start of satellite data in 1993. Since 1993 its been closer to 4.5 mm/yr. At Brest France, the oldest and longest continually running tidal gage in the world, the rise rate has been over 5 mm/yr since 1993. And the rise rate since 1993 in NY Harbor has been closer to 6 mm/yr. whereas previously it had only been around 3 mm/yr.
Once satellite data came online, the global mean rise rate as calculated by tidal station data stopped being routinely published, but it is still out there if you look for it. And what it has shown is AGREEMENT during the satellite era between satellite data and ground station data.
But what is perhaps the MOST truly laughable aspect of your ignorant pretending that the increase in sea level rise rate as measured by satellites must simply be due to poor measurement calibration, and that the satellite data “doesn’t” agree with ground station data, is that the satellite measurement calibrations include MAKING COMPARISONS TO GROUND STATION DATA.
YES, THEY’VE ROUTINELY CHECKED THAT THE SATELLITE DATA AGREES WITH GROUND STATION DATA.
Oops! Your silly “conclusions” just went totally, totally up in smoke.
Now, you never bothered to look into *any* of these vitally important details, did you? No, of course you didn’t. You have an anti-science denier agenda to peddle to your intentionally ignorant WUWT sheeple, and these annoyingly pesky facts just flat out ruin your little climate crackpot crusade.
So I’m sorry to say this, pal, but yet again, you’ve been so so so so so so SO totally OWNED.
I look forward to our next encounter, son! If it’s anything like this one, it should be a real hoot!
“MGC”
I suppose you could be slimier and nastier, but you’d have to work hard to beat that comment.
Come back when you can keep a civil tongue in your head. At that point, we can discuss it.
In the meantime, you merely ASSUME that I haven’t looked at the change in tide gauge data. But in fact, I had looked at it in detail in my 2018 post Inside The Acceleration Factory. Here’s the problem. First, the difference in the Church/White data pre and post 1993 is a full 2.1 mm/year.
But that is NOT the case with the tide gauge data. You’ve picked an extreme example in Boston. But there are plenty that go the other way.
What I’d looked at in 2018 is the post-1993 trends minus the pre 1993 trends.
The result? Yes, there’s been a slight increase post 1993. This is not a particular surprise, as it shows up in the 30-year trailing acceleration data. Pick a different time period, you’ll find the opposite.
But the amount of the increase in the trend is far too small to explain the 2.1 mm/year jump.
[ORIGINAL CAPTION, 2018 POST] Figure 6. Comparison between the values and the errors of the difference between the 21-year trend before the 1993 start of the satellite record, and the succeeding 21-year trend from 1993 to the end of the Church and White records. The C&W trends are shown in Figure 3 above.
Finally, as I pointed out in my post Inside The Acceleration Factory, I’m not the only one to notice this discrepancy:
[ORIGINAL CAPTION, 2018 POST] Figure 7. Different results for the satellite era depending on whether or not the satellite data is illegitimately spliced into the tide gauge records. SOURCE
So I stand by my claim that the ground data has been corrupted by the inclusion of satellite data.
My advice? Emulate the rooster, and make sure it’s actually sunrise before you start crowing. You didn’t do your homework, so you didn’t realize I’d actually done what you so joyously, unpleasantly, and totally incorrectly accused me of not doing …
w.
Thanks for so clearly demonstrating that you talk out of both sides of your mouth, Willis. In this most recent article, you tried to pretend away SLR acceleration by childishly making fun of proxy datasets. But in your 2018 article, you admitted that your very own calculations did show some acceleration, though you claimed that it was smaller than what had been reported by C&W.
By the way, going back to your 2018 article, there are a multitude of possible reasons (other than your unhinged, unsubstantiated, loony tunes, “slimy and nasty” conspiracy theory twaddle that C&W were lying on purpose) for why your simple average of the PSMSL datasets would differ from the C&W estimate. One possibility is that because tidal gauges are not randomly distributed across the globe, your simple averaging does not provide a valid representation, but C&W very likely did correct for the non-random nature of tidal gauge locations.
I’ll also suggest, again, that if you want to try to pretend that the satellite measurements are miscalibrated, then you might want to at least start with learning about how the calibrations of those measurements are actually conducted, instead of starting as you did, with the misguided knee-jerk assumption that some of the best trained scientific measurement professionals in the entire world are all incompetent and wrong, and that your little bit of weekend analysis somehow allows you and you alone to pompously “know better” than all of them.
MGC, you falsely claimed that I had not examined the individual tide records when I stated that the Church/White data regarding the recent sea-level rise rates was affected by the satellite data.
But when I showed just above that I’d done that exact thing, you don’t have the balls to admit that your claim was 100% wrong.
Come back when your testicles descend far enough for you to admit that you were completely wrong and that your claim that I hadn’t investigated the individual tide stations was complete nonsense.
Also, I didn’t say that C&W were “lying on purpose”. That’s all you trying to blacken my name. I didn’t use the word at all.
I’m done with you. Go bother someone else. I’m tired of your endless ugliness and misrepresentations. In future, don’t waste time responding to me. I’m just going to point and laugh.
Willis, yes, it turns out that you did happen to look at the tidal gauge records. Happy now? I’d assumed you hadn’t because your claims didn’t jive with having actually looked at them (and still don’t).
And although you didn’t explicitly use the word “lying” when speaking of C&W, that is precisely what you implied when you titled your article “The Acceleration Factory”, further claimed that they were “manufacturing sea level acceleration where none exists”, and called them “bad scientists”, all the while overlooking entirely plausible reasons that would justify their analysis being correct.
You’ve also tried to pretend that satellite SLR measurement professionals are incompetent and their measurements are miscalibrated, without even knowing how those measurements are calibrated to begin with.
In my book, all of that stuff is what wins top billing in the “ugliness and misrepresentation” category.
“MGC”
PS – still haven’t explained (in “Climate Models Don’t, March 16, 2022”) why your representation of the CMIP6 climate model track record is in massive discrepancy with other public records of the same datasets.
Pass. You’ve burned your bridges with me. You falsely accused me of scientific malpractice by making claims when I hadn’t looked at the data.
When I pointed out that I had, you ignored it. When I pointed out that you’d ignored it, rather than apologizing like decent person would, you grudgingly said yes, I had looked at the data. But no apology for your scummy behavior in accusing me.
Clearly, you don’t understand that how it’s generally done is you say “Willis, did you look at the data?”, I say “Yes, I did, here’s the link”. And we’d move forwards.
But NOOO, you have to make it into a big accusation that I’m incompetent, and load on a bunch more insults, then ignore when you’re shown wrong, and never even attempt to apologize or learn from your colossal ignorance.
And then, without drawing breath, you jump directly to the next accusation. Sorry, talk to the hand, ’cause the head’s not listening. Discussing science with you is like discussing philosophy with a wolverine, and I’m not interested in getting bit again.
In short? Piss off. I’m done with you. Go try your ugly tricks on someone else. Not interested. This is the last answer you’ll get from me. I’ll repeat it again as necessary.
Go away. Don’t go away mad. Just go away. I wish you well wherever you go, and I’m done with dealing with you.
w.
By the way, on another topic, you still haven’t explained (in “Climate Models Don’t, March 16, 2022”) why your representation of the CMIP6 climate model track record is in massive discrepancy with other public records of the same datasets.
Pass. You’ve burned your bridges with me. You falsely accused me of scientific malpractice by making claims when I hadn’t looked at the data.
When I pointed out that I had, you ignored it. When I pointed out that you’d ignored it, rather than apologizing like decent person would, you grudgingly said yes, I had looked at the data. But no apology for your scummy behavior in accusing me.
Clearly, you don’t understand that how it’s generally done is you say “Willis, did you look at the data?”, I say “Yes, I did, here’s the link”. And we’d move forwards.
But NOOO, you have to make it into a big accusation that I’m incompetent, and load on a bunch more insults, then ignore when you’re shown wrong, and never even attempt to apologize or learn from your colossal ignorance.
And then, without drawing breath, you jump directly to the next accusation. Sorry, talk to the hand, ’cause the head’s not listening. Discussing science with you is like discussing philosophy with a wolverine, and I’m not interested in getting bit again.
In short? Piss off. I’m done with you. Go try your ugly tricks on someone else. Not interested. This is the last answer you’ll get from me. I’ll repeat it again as necessary.
Go away. Don’t go away mad. Just go away. I wish you well wherever you go, and I’m done with dealing with you.
w.
re: “You falsely accused me of scientific malpractice, etc. etc.”
Sounds exactly like what lots and lots of scientific professionals could say about your claims regarding them, pal. How does it feel to have a taste of your own medicine?
You want to be treated with some respect? Show some respect to the worldwide professional scientific community yourself. Quit trying to pretend that they’re all a bunch of ignorant incompetents engaged in some kind of massive “conspiracy”.
Pass. You’ve burned your bridges with me. You falsely accused me of scientific malpractice by making claims when I hadn’t looked at the data.
When I pointed out that I had, you ignored it. When I pointed out that you’d ignored it, rather than apologizing like decent person would, you grudgingly said yes, I had looked at the data. But no apology for your scummy behavior in accusing me.
Clearly, you don’t understand that how it’s generally done is you say “Willis, did you look at the data?”, I say “Yes, I did, here’s the link”. And we’d move forwards.
But NOOO, you have to make it into a big accusation that I’m incompetent, and load on a bunch more insults, then ignore when you’re shown wrong, and never even attempt to apologize or learn from your colossal ignorance.
And then, without drawing breath, you jump directly to the next accusation. Sorry, talk to the hand, ’cause the head’s not listening. Discussing science with you is like discussing philosophy with a wolverine, and I’m not interested in getting bit again.
In short? Piss off. I’m done with you. Go try your ugly tricks on someone else. Not interested. This is the last answer you’ll get from me. I’ll repeat it again as necessary.
Go away. Don’t go away mad. Just go away. I wish you well wherever you go, and I’m done with dealing with you.
w.