Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Those who read my work may recall my post called “Munging the Sea Level Data“. In it, I showed that the apparent acceleration in the satellite sea level was merely an artifact of the combining of the four satellite records, viz:
Original Caption: NOAA sea level data, showing the trend of each of the full individual satellite records and the overall trend. SOURCE: NOAA Excel Spreadsheet
Despite the obvious differences between the first and last halves of the record, scientists merely spliced them together and obscured the splice. My conclusion in that post was:
There’s no evidence of any acceleration in the rate of sea-level rise in either the tide gauge or the shabbily-spliced satellite records.
So today I stumbled across a paper published in Nature magazine entitled A revised acceleration rate from the altimetry-derived global mean sea level record. Care to guess what the paper says?
Yep. You’re right. They conclude that once they took a hard look at the satellite records, the problem was disagreement between the satellites … and once they applied their correction methods to the TOPEX satellite records, they found:
Based on four different weighting methods used in a tide-gauge comparison it is determined that TOPEX is drifting and not ERS. Therefore, we suggest to calibrate the TOPEX GMSL record with the crossover of ERS1&2 after the removal of cal-1. The calibration reduces the observed acceleration in GMSL, so that it becomes statistically equivalent to zero at the 95%-confidence level.
The observed acceleration in satellite-observed GMSL (global mean sea level) is “statistically equivalent to zero” … go figure.
[UPDATE] An alert commenter pointed out what I had missed, which was that the article is not new. It was only last week’s media article describing their work that was new—their study was published before mine. Mea maxima culpa. However, my work uses a totally different method, but comes to the same conclusion, so it appears I was confirming their work, rather than them confirming my work—science as it should work.]
Here where I live on the northern California coast, we’re getting the blessing of an “atmospheric river”, which is a phenomenon where lots of moisture comes from the tropics up to the west coast in a narrow band. It used to be called the “Pineapple Express”, but I suppose that was determined to be racist against pineapples or something …
Given the several years of the recent drought, this is more than welcome. We got 3-1/2 inches (9 cm) of rain yesterday, with more expected tonight.
So, wet blessings to all.
w.
WUWT is ahead of the game, as always.
Willis is ahead of the game, as usual.
Doesn’t atmospheric river sound a tad more scary?
Not as bad as “Category Three Atmospheric River” as several lamestream misleadia sources have called it.
It seems to me those should require a naming convention to enable the media to better hyperventilate and stoke anxiety and fear among the public school de-educated public.
Worth a Monbiot award!
A monbiot ought to be a unit of climate dishonesty.tt
Raining pineapples sounds a lot more scary to me.
Considering that “pineapple” is a WW II slang for “hand grenade”, you ain’t kidding!
From my experience in the military the “pineapple” was an anti-personal mine that originated back in WW2 🙂
Well, more to the point, they’ll can’t use the HISTORICAL “names” for WEATHER phenomena, because that would be a “tell” that IT ISN’T ANYTHING NEW, which would undermine their propaganda about it being “caused by Climate Change (TM)” as opposed to business as usual.
No one would donate money to save jungles and swamps.
But they will donate money to save rain forests and wetlands.
Used to be called a cold front.
Happy Holidays, Willis!
Careful with pineapple jokes; they are notoriously sensitive and thin-skinned!
Prickly characters…
Wasn’t it Noriega who had people executed for calling him pineapple face?
As opposed to the darker skinned apples that can take and give as good as they get. The most problematic of this group being the winesap. Band of drunks that lot. A Winesap Express would more than likely miss the mark an soak Nevada.
I like winesaps!
I like the Arkansas Black Twig even better. It’s a larger darker colored sweeter winesap.
Honeycrisps suffice when black twigs aren’t available.
But the satellite measurements are still higher than tide gauges. Grafting those readings onto tide gauge records also gives the false impression of acceleration in rise rate.
Grafting has always been central to the climate graft.
Recall poor Phil Jones who contemplated suicide after being caught out grafting thermometer data on to the end of proxy data, using the same coloured line to totally obscur that fact it was not even a compatible data source?
His graphic made the 2000 WMO cover image and was circulated around the world as the poster of AGW. Delivered to every household in Canada, IIRC.
You know, like “Mikes’ Nature trick” ™
Wasn’t that Michael Mann and his infamous “hockey stick chart”?
Yup, grafting instrument records onto proxies when the proxies showed temperatures starting to DECREASE instead of increase.
Which to any “scientist” worthy of the title would have told said “scientist” that the tree ring “proxies” should be discarded since they obviously are faulty as temperature “proxies” given their stark disagreement with instrument records where they overlap.
Of course, Mann is not worthy of the title “scientist” so he kept the parts of the “proxy” data he liked, tacked on instrument data, and discarded the part of the “proxy” data that revealed it NOT to be a good “proxy.” Because for Mann it was all a out pushing “The Cause,” not about conducting scientific inquiry.
Even with Mann’s many faults, the blade part of his hockey stick is true, if anything understated. It is HadCRUT2. HadCRUT4 shows more warming than HadCRUT2, and HadCRUT4 is not overstated according to the ERA Interim and JRA-55 reanalysis datasets. For that matter, Ryan Maue’s favorite dataset is the ERA5 reanalysis dataset, and that indicates HadCRUT4 slightly understates warming (and HadCRUT5 overstates warming). The problem with Mann’s hockey stick is his proxy data, which falsely says the “handle” is straight along with disagreeing with instrumental data during the time when both exist.
The “hockey stick” is a pure graphical scaling issue, not an actual issue. Change the scaling to absolute temps and the hockey stick becomes 1/15 = 7% increase, not a 200 – 300% increase. It is so low that no one, and I repeat no one, can walk outside and tell you accurately what the temperature is. There is probably only 1 out of 100 who could recognize a 1 degree change.
Yes – his “proxy” data is garbage. And as a result, so is his “reconstruction” in its entirety.
Phil Jones was the CRU scientist who urged colleagues to delete certain emails before the Freedom of Information chap arrived. The four ‘investigations’ examined by Ross McKitrick generally whitewashed ‘Climategate’ and Jones was never pressed on this illegal action. On Hide the Decline do see Steve McIntyre’s climateaudit.org, it’s a disgraceful story which alarmists have ‘firgotten’
What in your opinion is the most important to know:
Given the nature of water, having two different sections of the oceans have a sustained rate of rise that is substantially different than other areas, is physically impossible.
If satellite data, given the many problems with it, differs from ground based data, I’d take the ground based data almost every time.
Check out this inconvenient ground based datum from Churchill Manitoba:
https://www.sealevel.info/MSL_graph.php?id=970-141
Interesting that you picked a location which is the center of post glacial uplift since the Laurentide melting. Recently rising at about 11mm/year.
Just think, In a couple of centuries, the “far-offshore” ocean sea level will be metres higher than at the coastline. 😉
Here is what NOAA claim for cumulative level changes since 1993
There are features that require explanation.
Gravity anomalies, go ask any exploration geologist. The Earth’s crust and mantle are not homogeneous.
If only the technology was that accurate… It’s not.
Yeah there’s the rub. It is only RELATIVE (that is, relative TO LAND) sea level rise that matters.
Any other meaningless sea level rise “metric” is just (a) “sea level ruse.”
“Pineapple Express” was coined when Hawaiʻi was called Hawaii and pineapples were grown there in great numbers. That was in the 1930s but now is down to about 10% of world production. Us old folks had to get re-educated about this “atmospheric river” thing — and a number of other climate terms.
Washington State is, also, getting much wind, rain and snow. Some flooding, lots of limbs on power lines, and melted ice cream.
Oregon looks like being 3+ inches above normal rainfall this month too.
Whatever will they do when they have to stop screaming “400 year drought!!!”
No worries on that score. In the world of Newthink and Climatespeak, it’s perfectly possible for permanent drought and recurring severe floods to coexist at the same time and in the same places. They already have this pattern well established in Australia. The recent floods in NSW could have been mitigated to some extent if they had built more dams and restricted building on flood plains, but they didn’t because there was no point in planning for rain that will never come. See the logic? (/sarc)
And of course it’s all our fault for driving SUVs.
Well, the trouble is trying to attribute it all to the same “Climate Change™”, when in the real world, that’s what has always happened. There is a fantastic ruin in Arizona, done by the Anasazi natives, a cliff dweller people. The ruin was occupied for only 8(? I could remember that number wrong, and I’m not going to go look it up, it’s not the point of the story) years, less than a generation, before it had to be abandoned. The reason? It was located on a cliff above a normally dry creek bed. The dwellings became occupied at a time that coincided with the beginning of a drought. After an extended period of drought enough of the vegetation had died that when it did rain, there was no longer a root mat to hold the earth in place, and it washed away rapidly. It wasn’t long before the required ladders to access their dwellings became so large, they could not be pulled up anymore to protect the village from attacks, so they had to abandon it. During normal times (we are led to believe) the erosion rate would have been far less, and the village could have been occupied for several generations. Or maybe the village elders committed the same mistake so many “urban planners” make today, and failed to take into account normal changes of nature known as erosion. Take almost any bridge over a waterway and look how hard the highway crew has to work to keep the waterway in the same place it was when the bridge was built. No body of water wants to do that naturally.
From the article: “It used to be called the “Pineapple Express”, but I suppose that was determined to be racist against pineapples or something”
Pineapple Express is not scary sounding enough.
Words are important to climate change propagandists. They are looking for the maximum fear factor.
About an hour ago, I saw the current Pineapple Express described as a Category 4 Atmospheric River.
The Climate Alarmist Fearmongers are trying to equate the Pineapple Express to a hurricane.
It’s one lie/distortion after another from climate alarmists.
It would be nice if somebody (you) would compare the USCRN to a graph of the, in the US,
Anthony Watts-approved stations that HADCRUT uses.
Salute!
What’s funny is that Dole and DelMonte scaled down their pineapple production 40 years ago, with Dole finally
bailing out altogether, if I recall.
Thailand might be the largest exporter, and I didn’t realize how cheap and easy it was to have a few chunks as a breakfast side during my tours over there. Here, along the Gulf Coast, we can get fresh, fairly cheap whole pineapples to use when roasting our pork and chunks on the kabob skewers. Canned stuff doesn’t hack it. Be sure to stack the pineapple chunks next to the shrimp or tuna chunks, with the onion on the other side of the meat, and then the bell pepper, and so on!
The “woke” folks will never fail to find some reference or connection to “racism”, true or false. What a lot of people in Louisiana are called might be deleted here, but most of us ( I am one) took it as a point of pride. The “woke” folks had our militia remove the slogan from their planes and the term is now being “canceled”. So go look up “c**nass”.
Gums sends…
No one has called pineapple express racist… it was ‘hyperbole’ not to be taken seriously A bit like ‘guns dont kill people’
Very interesting, Willis. Thank you, and may you enjoy a good soaking in that atmospheric river. The emergent climate phenomena are amazing to watch. And Happy New Year to you and yours.
“emergent climate phenomena” ?
I read that as NEW climate phenomena, which is PART of Definition 4 from Webster’s, “newly formed or prominent” as in “newly formed”, as in a new climate phenomenon.
I guess ‘prominent” would make the sentence valid, but MY first reading had me calling BS because this is not something new. Thus my visit to a dictionary to check myself before commenting.
And of course emergent CAN apply to the starting of an atmospheric river, which I think of as a weather phenomena, not a “climate” phenomena since it takes 30 years, and not a minute more, unless it helps the religion, to be considered “climate” don’t you know./sarc!
English, what a wonderful language.
Perhaps you are relatively new here at WUWT. Welcome. “Emergent climate phenomena” is how Willis Eschenbach describes such things as thunderstorms, dust devils, and a host of other things of dynamic nature; i.e. emergent responses to conditions in our climate system. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/07/emergent-climate-phenomena/
Excellent results Willis!! Congratulations on being an expert that uses science data instead of climate alarmist politics, contrived “studies” and flawed “models”.
Obtaining a similar result using a different method does not constitute plagiarism.
WUWT not quite “ahead of the game.:”
Article was published July 29, 2019.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-47340-z
plagiarism?
Ah, my bad. I read it and thought it was a new article. However, your accusation of plagiarism is unpleasant, uncharitable, and most importantly, obviously untrue. My analysis looked at the data from a totally different angle than theirs did
Is there some pathological reason that you find it necessary to be so damn ugly, or is it a gift you were born with?
w.
Oh, I like that insult! A lot like “Answer yes or no: Have you stopped beating your wife?”
Thou doth protest too much,
Just asked the question.
I try to verify all climate articles, trying to find the actual reports/studies, both sides.
I do the same for surveys in the news, try to find actual survey so I can see the actual survey results, not just rely on reporters interpretation.
The same for health issues, I have multiple myeloma. I always look at the date to see how recent the research/data is.
Looks like an open wound was hit.
Just saying, make sure of the facts before posting an article.
OK, you’re right, I apologize for hitting your open wound.
w.
Throwing out the word “plagiarism” is a very serious accusation and is certainly not appropriate here. Plagiarism is claiming someone else’s work for your own. The mix-up here was primacy, and the fact that two different methodologies were employed further separates any sense of copying another’s work. Try acting like a human being and apologizing.
So making ignorant accusations you can’t back up is just a skill you were born with?
If the 2019 paper had shown an increased acceleration in SL rise, nobody in the world would have missed it.
And that really is the takeaway point.
Willis says he saw the article today for the first time and, since there’s been relentless propaganda about sea-level acceleration since 2019 in the MSM, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. What’s your problem?
Click the link, the date of publication is on the article. Not rocket science.
Plagiarism is a terrible crime in academia, and by not checking yourself, you just commited the equivalent of crimen injuria, I believe.
Not cool.
I did NOT “plagiarize” their work, I’d never seen it. And even if I had (which I hadn’t) my analysis has nothing to do with theirs. It uses a totally different method which bears no resemblance to theirs. That’s how science works. In addition, I’ve added an update to the head post noting my error. That’s how I work—when I screw up, I admit it publicly.
So you’re welcome to gently place your false accusation of “crimen injuria” as far up the distal end of your alimentary canal as you wish.
w.
PS—”crimen injuria” is a crime … in South Africa. It means injuring someone’s dignity. In more sane countries like the US, there is no such crime. So you’ve accused me of an imaginary crime, just to puff up your own imaginary dignity … well done!
Cilo was defending you, his comment was to kat14wuwt
Not understanding what “Plagiarism” is ….. is a terrible crime in academia.
Take another face-plant, cilo. !
Willis
It’s good that someone has had the good sense to follow up on your work
Actually, it turns out that unnoticed by me, their work preceded mine. I got fooled by a popular article a week ago talking as if their work was new. Last time I’ll make that mistake.
But it’s good that I followed up on their work two years ago, even though I’d never heard of it until today.
w.
The earlier date for this paper, just makes it that much more unsupportable, that the alarmists continue to claim that SLR is accelerating.
A very good point, Mark W..
It appears the climate scammers don’t read the scientific literature.
“can’t”,as in not intellectually able, not “don’t”…..
Well, they read it “selectively.” Anything that appears to support the propaganda, they shout from the hilltops; anything that undermines the propaganda will of course be ignored, swept under the rug, and ultimately memory holed.
Perhaps you should say, “even though the “media” made sure you didn’t hear about it when their work was done two years ago.”
Because anything that doesn’t appear to provide fodder for climate porn will be willfully ignored and, if possible, memory holed with all possible dispatch.
Hyperbole catches up with the Guardian
“”There’s no such thing as ‘freak’ weather any more – and 2023 already looks like a disaster movie
…
Scientists have yet to calculate the degree to which it might be linked to human actions and increased CO2 levels, but it clearly fits…””
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/29/no-such-thing-freak-weather-2023-storm-elliott
Well, when you start from that position, there’s no need to “calculate” anything. I’m sure it will turn out to be 97%!
Regarding 97%: Gold Star for that!
When I was a kid the standard against what everything else was compared was Ivory Soap.
Ivory’s first slogan, “It Floats!”, was introduced in 1891. The product’s other well-known slogan, “99+44⁄100% Pure”, was in use by 1895.
That lasted until the 97% standard was introduced.
Because a bar of Ivory soap floats, we all believed the “99+44⁄100% Pure” part without any way of testing that claim.
Because I know the 97% claim is nonsense, I still prefer the Ivory standard – except regarding “climate cult” claims.
The question they never answered was, Pure what?
“I know the 97% claim is nonsense”
The 97% claim is true, if interpreted properly, although at least 99% would be more accurate than 97%.
At least 99% of scientists believe humans can have some effect on climate change.
The biased survey results are spun to claim 97% believe the IPCCs claim of CAGW in the future. Not the general belief that AGW exists.
Unfortunately, a recent poll found that about 59% of scientists do believe global warming will be dangerous, which is the IPCC position from 1988 forward.
That 59% poll result is sad, because humans have a terrible track record of predicting the future climate, and CAGW is nothing more than a scary prediction of the future climate. CAGW is not reality.
That means 59% of scientists believe in a scary climate prediction, which began in the late 1970s, in the absence of observations and data to show that CAGW (or CGW) has ever existed on this planet.
Thanks, I need a good science post.
Vindication! I’ve been saying this for years, though in relation to the sudden acceleration claimed beginning around 2000 when satellite-derived sea level data (3-ish mm per year) replaced the tide gauge data (2-ish mm per year). No one mentioned the fact that there wasn’t a gradual acceleration but a sudden jump because a different data set was used. Same apparently is true for using data from different satellites as Willis pointed out.
Here’s a collection of tide gauge data analysis where the highest rate is 2.8 ± 0.8 mm/yr (2-ish) over the same period as satellites beginning in 1993.
https://sealevel.colorado.edu/tide-gauge-sea-level
The satellite data over the same period shows a higher 3.4 ± 0.4mm/yr (3-ish) rate.
https://sealevel.colorado.edu
QED
2.8+0.8=3.6 > 3.4-0.4=3.0
There is obviously an overlap and it may not be a statistically significant difference.
Antarctica ice is not melting, and can not melt from rising greenhouse gases, so sea level rise acceleration in the long run is impossible.
Rising atmospheric carbon dioxide actually cools part of Antarctica | Science | AAAS
w. ==> While I like their main finding, Kleinherenbrink et al. are still muddling around while ignoring error bars orders of magnitude larger than the signal they report finding (or, maybe, not finding).
SLR acceleration has always been a mugs game — and still is.
This paragraph on Tide Gauge Comparisons is enough to set my teeth on edge:
“Vertical land motion is estimated at the tide gauges using either nearby Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver or the sum of modeled GIA and present-day mass redistribution trends. The GNSS trends are extracted from the extensive NGL database. These trends are estimated with the robust MIDAS estimator22. The considered GNSS trends have an uncertainty better than 1 mm yr−1. If multiple trends meet the requirements
within 50 km from the tide gauge the median of is taken. If no GNSS trends meet the requirements, the ICE-6G_C VM5a GIA model23 is used together with modelled vertical land motion due to present-day mass redistribution24,25. Since the GNSS trends are not computed over the same time span as TOPEX, non-linear behavior due to present-day mass redistribution causes a small discrepancy. Therefore, the modeled vertical land motion is also
used to correct GNSS trends24.”
Instead of using the growing number of tide gauges with Continuous Operating GPS station mounted on the same structure as the tide gauge (CGPS@TG) , which give sea level measurements already corrected to actual real Vertical Land Movement (more exactly, vertical movement of the tide gauge itself), the estimate VLM using nearby GNSS stations (nearby can be miles away) OR modeled GIA……if all else fails, the modeled vertical land motion is also used to correct the GNSS….which was estimated in the first place….
Actual measured VLM at tide gauges is often equal to or greater than change in sea level.
It is worse than we think — satellites do not and cannot measure sea levels near land, so they extrapolate and estimate what the tide gauge (uncorrected) might have to say about sea level 30 km out to sea…..
Madness heaped upon madness.
SLR acceleration based on time periods less than 100 years is not worth the paper it is written on. Nerem has made statements like “30 years is sufficient” and “the acceleration has leveled off” or words to that effect. Rubbish.
If you missed my 2 essays on this they can be found as referenced below.
The first appears in
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/05/14/sea-level-rise-acceleration-an-alternative-hypothesis/
It illustrates the unacceptable use of quadratic curve fitting and subsequent long-term extrapolation.
The second paper appears in
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/06/28/sea-level-rise-acceleration-an-alternative-hypothesis-part-2/
It addresses many data sets and shows how the length time the data set covered greatly affects the maximum “accelerations” derived.
Salute!
Thanks, Alan.
I have often disputed the arbitrary 30 year interval of data follwed by graphs of “anomalies” versus pure data values. PLEASE. Let me smooth and choose the intervals for each data oint and the scaling and so forth.
As far as the interval goes, I posted a memory of an article about possible onset of glaciation periods a few days ago. Upon further review, I found several glacier references that claimed the continental glaciers could begin to form within less than 200 years the way I described. So Alan’s basis for the very short data/observation period fits right in.
Lastly, I would like a crude poll of what most contributers here feel that graphical data of sea level, C02, temperature, etc should be presented in raw values versus “anomalies”. I complain because I could use some data from 1933/1934 or so and present last 30 years anomalies with respect to 1934. Dr Spencer has been known now and then to present absolute data versus anomalies to make his points.
Gums sends…
Your doubt about anomalies is right on target. The argument you always hear is that anomalies allow comparison of temperature growth at different locations.
When was the last time you saw a paper on regional temperatures that used anomalies as the base and not actual temperatures?
Averages, especially globally, have no need for anomalies since the “absolute” mean value will change just as reliably as anomalies.
The real issue is that “anomalies” allows a calculating a much smaller “error” value that suggests temperatures have been measured to the one-hundredths or even one-thousandth of degree by calculating a commensurately small Standard Error of the Mean.
When questioned about values that are so far below the actual measurements, all you hear is the Law of Large Numbers and the Central Limit Theory allows this. What a load of BS.
Jim Gorman December 30, 2022 5:17 am
This is not true. IF (and it’s a big if) the anomalies are properly calculated, the error of the anomalies is the same as the error in the underlying data.
The problem is that far too many folks treat the anomalies as if they were raw data, rather than carrying through the error that arises from calculating the anomalies. In other words, the monthly means are subtracted from each corresponding month, but without carrying forwards the errors of the monthly means.
(There’s a second and often far larger error from ignoring the long-term persistence (autocorrelation) of the data, but that’s a separate question.)
w.
I agree with your assessment of errors. I just didn’t want to get into the weeds about uncertainty.
I have another concern related to errors and that is variances are ignored from daily midrange temps to monthly averages to annual averages. I have been asking some of the promoters of anomalies about the variances. An arithmetic mean has no meaning without knowing the parameters of the distribution used to calculate the mean. I have yet to hear an answer which tells me variance, IID, and any number of statistical parameters have been ignored.
To me the simple point is that the way anomalies are being used is for a metric. An anomaly is not a measurement nor is it a real temperature. It really bugs me when people who should know better treat it as a temperature.
Calculating an anomaly has provided an unwarrented opportunity to overstate the resolution of the original measurements, and boy that is an understatement. There is no reason a simple arithmetic mean of “absolute” temperatures can’t be used to show growth – other than the original measurement resolutions become readily obvious and added fictional decimal places are obvious to all. The mean of absolute temperatures won’t be a real temperature either, but it will be just as good a metric as an anomaly.
Just as good, yes, but it doesn’t allow how significant the error ranges are vs. the supposed change being “quantified,” and of course that will not do when the objective is pushing propaganda.
This is in total agreement with you, in case anyone has a doubt… I still can’t figure how anyone can even find a GMSL rise (or drop) of 2 mm/year, when the tide variation alone can reach as much as 16 m (reference Bay of Fundy), and that happens twice a day (usually)! And didn’t I read that “isostatic rebound” from the last ice age, where the land was compressed by the ice so now that the ice has gone the earth is “expanding” again, sort of like a sponge after you squeeze it, can be 7 mm/year? Or was it 7 cm? Don’t ask me how they measure that either, I’m baffled.
Well, I think they use a commonly-understood reference height, that being the height of a standard single pile of recently-deposited bullshit in a paddock.
And have they corrected for the 18.6-yearly Luna Nodal cycle?
The Dutch seems to have found it.
Local Relative Sea Level
To determine the relevance of the nodal cycle at the Dutch coast, a spectral analysis was carried out on the yearly means of six main tidal gauges for the period 1890–2008. The data were corrected for atmospheric pressure variation using an inverse barometer correction. The spectral density shows a clear peak at the 18.6 -year period (Figure 1). The multiple linear regression yields a sea-level rise (b1) of 0.19 +/- 0.015 cm y-1 (95%), an amplitude (A) of 1.2 +/- 0.92 cm, and a phase (w) of -1.16 (with 1970 as 0), resulting in a peak in February 2005 (Figure 2). No significant acceleration (inclusion of b2) was found.
CONCLUSIONS
Coastal management requires estimates of the rate of sealevel rise. The trends found locally for the Dutch coast are the same as have been found in the past 50 years (Deltacommissie, 1960; Dillingh et al., 1993). Even though including the nodal cycle made it more likely that the high-level scenarios would become apparent in the observations, no acceleration in the rate of sea-level rise was found. The higher, recent rise (van den Hurk et al., 2007) coincides with the up phase of the nodal cycle. For the period 2005 through 2011, the Dutch mean sea-level is expected to drop because the lunar cycle is in the down phase. This shows the importance of including the 18.6-year cycle in regional sea-level estimates. Not doing so on a regional or local scale for decadal length projections leads to inaccuracies.
http://www.bioone.org/doi/pdf/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-11-00169.1
Linear trend lines on sinusoidal curves are very time dependent.
Are they also playing the political correctness card? Just after “zero at the 95%-confidence level” they say: “Note that we do not claim an acceleration in GMSL is absent, rather that a positive acceleration in GMSL based on the altimetry-derived record is likely“.
Of course. When they don’t get results that appear to support the propaganda, that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. When they do get results that appear to support the propaganda, that will instantly be deemed a scientific certainty which of course “proves” them right.
A new NASA satellite will measure earth’s rising seas ….named SWOT….will it be able to measure any falling seas? NASA must have an unlimited budget.
Nice Willis! Thanks for sharing.
By the way, you are being missed on Twitter. What happened?
Thanks, Arjan. I got a permanent suspension from Twitter just as they were firing the last of the staff. No clue why, I was coloring between the lines. I suspect an embittered Tweep on the way out getting petty revenge.
I’ve been waiting to be reinstated as part of the overall rehabilitation of all suspendees. However, I suspect they’re doing people in order of either how long they’ve been suspended, or how many followers they have. In either case I’m near the end of the list …
But Twitter announced today that everyone will be reinstated within 30 days, so hope springs eternal …
In the meantime, you might enjoy my open letter to Elon Musk.
Best to you and yours,
w.
Willis;
Your link returns a “Hmmm… can’t reach this page.” in Microsoft Edge. When I hover over it, it looks like part of the URL is missing.
Thanks, D. J., fixed.
w.
Willis,
Personal preference, I decided never to use Twitter soon after it burst on the scene. If one wanted to report advances in science, existing outlets were adequate and Twitter not needed.
Because I have never used Twitter to originate anything, I do not know how useful it is. In your enforced absence, have you considered dropping it?
BTW, the Establishment have yet to resolve how stated poor accuracy from satellite measurements can be reconciled with claimed ability to be accurate enough. Geoff S
Thanks, Geoff. Took me a while to try Twitter, but I like it a lot because it gives me much greater reach for my thoughts and my scientific ideas, discussions, and posts.
w.
“ no clue why…..”
I’m thinking the Mohammed paedophile commentary on your website is wot dun it…..
Thanks, D. All things are possible. However, I’ve not heard of folks being suspended for writings on their own blogs, and there’s nothing about that in the Twitter Rules that I was alleged to have broken.
I do confess, however, to having published a less-than-flattering analysis of Islam, complete with forbidden cartoons of the Prophet … and worse than that, I make no apologies for doing it.
w.
Interesting, I made a comment about your “no clue why” and certain comments on your website and it was rejected despite it’s historical accuracy. So somebody’s non-free AI works….
European Sickness being the one.
No, it showed up and I answered it above.
Folks need to remember that all comments are moderated, that all the moderators are volunteers, and that moderation needs to go on 24/7 because of the worldwide reach of the site.
So sometimes, it takes some time …
Regards,
w.
Willis, I thought of you as I read this
https://atmos.washington.edu/~dennis/Sokol&Hartmann_Congestus_2022.pdf
Thanks, D, interesting.
w.
So. Are the seas rising, or is it going down or are we ‘level’?
See my old guest post here, “sea level rise, acceleration, and closure”. Best estimate is rising about 2.2mm/year with no acceleration. 2.2 closes with thermosteric rise plus Greenland/Antarctic ice sheet loss estimates. The closure proves the NASA satellite stuff is just wrong. See my old post about “Satalt, fit for purpose?” for the reasons why.
OK. Thanks.
Thanks, Rud. For those interested, Rud’s post is here, well worth reading.
w.
Henry ==> If you want to be safe and land in the middle of the pack — “Sea Level is probably rising, globally, at a rate between 1 and 3 mm per year, but not evenly in either space or time.” and “Sea level rise is not an important issue for most localities. Only those that have built infrastructure (homes. businesses) nominally at or already below sea level need worry. Those localities need to adapt and mitigate immediately (or 20 years ago).”
See “Miami’s Vice“
This is terrible. First California has a permanent drought and now it’s raining pineapples. It must be climate change, and the end of the world is nigh.
Climate change may now be turning to 1862 California.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Flood_of_1862
No acceleration in the sea level rise = No catastrophic ice thawing = No climate change
I nominate Willis to be the next Director of the National Science Foundation.
Dear God, what did Willis ever do to you that you should wish him such a fate?!? I confess to a morbid fascination in the ensuing pyrotechnics, however.
Wasn’t this covered with GRASP. They simply can’t account for the random walk in the vertical positioning of topex and the Jason satellites?.
This article fails to predict when Manhattan will be underwater from sea level rise.
That date is especially important to me.
Because I have invested my life savings ($129) in Al Gores Manhattan Gondola Line intended to ferry Wall Street executives to work when Manhattan streets arer all flooded from climate change sea level rise.
I have a 1% share of Al’s company. Al Gore told me yesterday that he has 1,845 one percent shares still available for sale, at $1,000 each.
Thank you for this, Willis!
Measurement of sea-level by satellite altimetry has many challenges, including:
● The fact that there are no geodesic markers in space against which the locations of the measurement instruments can be referenced; and
● The fact that the measurement records are typically only about a decade long, which necessitates splicing records made with different instruments, with different orbits and coverage, at different times; and
● Satellite altimetry is incapable of measuring sea-level at the coast, where it matters; and
● The fact that there are many potential sources of error which give grounds for “corrections” to the measurements long after they’ve been taken — and some of those corrections are drastic:
https://sealevel.info/satellite_altimetry.html
Unless you’re interested in sea-level far out to sea (why??), the coastal (tide gauge) measurements of sea-level are much better (and much less expensive). Many of the coastal measurement records are more than a century long, and they are referenced to geodesic survey markers, so there’s no issue with splicing data records, and they enable us to make robust comparisons between sea-level trends before and after commencement of mankind’s large-scale greenhouse gas emissions — and those comparisons show that there’s not much difference. Mankind’s GHG emissions have caused hardly any change in sea-level trends.
https://sealevel.info/learnmore.html?0=sealevel#sealevel
Here’s the average five widely distributed, especially high-quality, long, coastal, sea-level measurement records:
https://sealevel.info/MSL_weighted.php?id=Honolulu,%20San%20Francisco,%20Harlingen,%20Battery,%20Sydney&c_date=1925/1-2024/12
Their average acceleration since 1925 is de minimis: just 0.00892 ±0.00727 mm/yr².
That’s negligible. It is barely statistically significant, and of no practical consequence. An acceleration of 0.00892 mm/yr², if it persisted for 200 years, would add just seven inches to sea-level.
The best studies of coastal (tide gauge) sea-level measurements vary only slightly. Some show negligible acceleration in sea-level trend over the last century, and others show none at all. Houston (2021) summarized ten of those studies:
As you can see, the measurements are incompatible with the wildly accelerated sea-level rise predicted by alarmists. The largest acceleration reported by any of those ten studies was only 0.0128 ± 0.0064 mm/yr².
If that amount of acceleration were to persist for 150 years it would add a grand total of just 5.7 inches to global (average) sea-level.
Without a large acceleration in sea-level trend, the supposed threat of sea-level rise is a great big nothingburger.
The current sea-level trend is so miniscule that in many places it’s dwarfed by local factors, like erosion, sedimentation, and vertical land motion. Greta’s hometown of Stockholm is one such place.
https://sealevel.info/MSL_graph.php?id=stockholm
If sea-level rise would to substantially accelerate, it would be good news for Stockholm Harbor, because it would reduce their dredging expenses.
The bottom line is that hand-wringing over sea-level rise from climate change is irrational.
It is plainly dishonest for climate industry propagandists to keep pumping out sea-level rise “climate porn” like THIS
When reality is THIS
https://sealevel.info/MSL_graph.php?id=150-021&boxcar=1&boxwidth=5
Happy Holidays Willis – thanks for all your good work!
Best to you as well, Allan, and thanks for all your contributions.
w.
The most important thing is to learn honestly. A fact confirmed by two independent studies (satellite orbits can change) is honest science.
Nino34 is a good predictor of global average temperature ~4 months in the future.
Nino34 Index below -0.5 indicates a “la Nina” condition. It is now about -1.0.
There is a lack of any warming throughout the southern hemisphere and the tropics.
Temperature jumps at the pole indicate the ripples of the polar vortex.
Re the figure legend:
Is that a sea level anomaly or a satelite anomaly?
I did some investigation some time ago about the Jason satellites and was surprised to find that satellites drift a lot. If I remember correctly, to the tune of 10 – 12 feet. This compromises the actual readings and requires correction. Some of the drift is caused by gravity variations in the orbit.
The problem I found is that their measurements error was reduced by averaging over a months time. Each averaging period “reduced” the error in each actual reading. Does that remind anyone of another set of data being averaged?
With claiming millimeter accuracy, I had to wonder how, with that much drift they could separate satellite drift from sea level variation.
IIRC, the Jason manual only claims 25 mm accuracy, about 1/2 a wavelength. Anything more than the designers claim is going to be the result of statistical analysis.
Take a 1000 readings randomly accurate within 25 mm with say a tape measure, and suddenly you believe you are accurate to 1/sqrt(1000) times your previous accuracy.
Of course it is complete bullscheidt with radar since your equipment is already taking millions of wavelength samples per second.
Statistics can’t add resolution that isn’t there in each measurement. Mathematicians believe that, no discipline in the physical sciences believes that.
Statistics with the correct conditions can remove errors and get you a true value but it can’t add significant digits to that true value.
There is the matter of what Willis E. said in https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/17/inside-the-acceleration-factory/
He demonstrated that tide gauge data without satellite data indicated that the sea level rise rate in 1993-2013 was .76 mm/year more than in 1972-1992, for countering the statement of 2.1 mm/year faster sea level rise if satellite data is included. However, he found some need to state in bold “manufacturing sea level acceleration where none exists”, as if .76 being a correct replacement for 2.1 (mm/year per 21 years) = zero.
Thanks, Don. I fear my wording wasn’t clear.
The scientists have increased an actual short-term trend difference of 0.76 mm/year by artificially manufacturing an imaginary increase of 1.34 mm/year. They did this by improperly splicing the satellite record onto the tide gauges, thus manufacturing 1.34 mm/year of sea level rise where no such rise actually exists. My apologies for my lack of clarity.
Finally, although there indeed is recent short-term (30 year) acceleration in tide gauge records, I fear that is meaningless. Here’s trailing 30-year acceleration and deceleration of sea level for the full period of three different sea level records.
Is it accelerating or decelerating? Well … both.
My best to you,
w.
From the paper we have
Fitting a curve is not science.
Sea level rise is not accelerating because the TOA radiative imbalance isn’t accelerating. If the energy available to melt ice and warm the oceans isn’t accelerating, then the ocean sea level cant be accelerating. Nor is it expected to.