Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
In his recent post entitled Aussie Sea Level Rise Building Permit Chaos, Eric Worrall discussed how people in southern Australia are being prevented from building seaside structures due to fears of sea level rise.
So I thought I’d see what the data has to say. There are not a lot of long-term tide gauges in southern Australia. Here’s a map of their locations.
Figure 1. Long-term southern Australian tide stations. SOURCE: NOAA
Here’s a look at the data. All of these are from the source above.
Figures 2 [1-6]. Tide gauge records at the stations indicated by the green arrows in Fig. 1
Given all of those, just how fast is the sea level rising around Australia? Figure 3 shows that result, in units of sea level rise per century.
Figure 3. Historical sea level rise rates, all long-term southern Australia stations
Gotta say … I don’t see anything there to worry about.
“But … but … but what about the dreaded acceleration in sea level rise they’ve been warning us about for forty years!!”, I hear you thinking.
Well, to start with, look at the actual records above … see any dangerous acceleration there? Because I sure don’t.
Next, I’ve discussed sea level rise in detail in my posts Inside The Acceleration Factory, Munging the Sea Level Data, Proxy Rates Of Sea Level Rise, Science Catches Up With WUWT, and The Uneasy Sea. Basically, what’s happening is that the rate of sea level rise periodically oscillates between acceleration and deceleration. Here, from The Uneasy Sea, are the thirty-year trailing acceleration of three global sea level records, along with the trailing acceleration calculated from long-term station trends.
Figure 4. 30-year trailing acceleration, by dates of the end of the 30-year periods.
As you can see, the rate of sea level rise regularly accelerates, with no overall acceleration. Does this extend to the Australian sea levels as well? Here’s the same data, for the Sydney tide gauge.
Figure 5. 30-year trailing acceleration of sea level rise, Sydney Fort Dennison tide gauge.
As with the data in Figure 4, the rate of sea level rise in Sydney Harbour has repeatedly varied between acceleration and deceleration. And the variations in Sydney match reasonably well with the global data.
However, the Sydney data in Figure 5 goes up to the end of 2021, compared to around 2017 in Figure 4 … and in the last few years, the change in the rate of sea level rise has gone from acceleration to … well, about zero.
The fact is that despite general warming over the last 120 years or so, and despite endless warnings of dire sea level rise drowning cities, there has been no overall acceleration of the rate of sea level rise. And as a result, the most reasonable prediction for the future is a continuation of the past, as shown in Figure 3 … in other words, the Aussies can stop the auto-flagellation and get back to building by the sea.
My regards to all from rainy Northern California,
w.
As Usual: I politely ask that when you comment you quote the exact words you’re discussing. It avoids endless misunderstandings. And if you don’t do that, I may be unpolite.
Unhinged is a better descriptor.
Funny results for “acceleration”. Almost as funny as Feynman’s story about velocity when a speeding driver says “how could I be driving at 100 mph? I only departed 10 minutes ago”
“”So I thought I’d see what the data has to say. “”
Big mistake!
The purveyors of the narrative aren’t interested in data – that tends to rubbish it
Valid point strat, they are not interested in data from the standpoint of accuracy but they have become very interested, since we crossed that bridge to the 21st century, in manipulating it to fit their false narrative.
The politically woke crowd screams “follow the science” too undereducated and over indoctrinated to realize that they are following the Bureaucrats who pay the scientists for the best data taxpayer money can buy. Only those of us that escaped 21st century public school indoctrination have the common sense to see it for the rubbish it is.
“in other words, the Aussies can stop the auto-flagellation and get back to building by the sea”
What is missing here is any facts about what Australians are doing, and what they are prevented from doing. It was missing from Eric’s beat-up too.
In fact, Victorians are building many houses near the coast. The limitation is that the floor level must be higher than 0.8m above the previous max high tide. That does not seem like auto-flagellation. It sounds like modest prudence.
Thanks, Nick. The immediate problem is that the various local councils are imposing very different rules than those of the Victorian authorities. Some places it’s 0.8 meters, some places it’s higher. So people buy properties thinking they can build, and it turns out they can’t because of local regs. No bueno.
As to the 0.8m regulation, I don’t understand why there is any regulation. If some fool wants to build at a much lower level, so what? Why is that any business of his neighbors or the local councils? He’s the one who will be the loser if sea levels suddenly rise, not the local council.
This nanny-statism has gotten completely out of control worldwide, and Australia is the poster child for people trying to put their noses in other people’s business.
But if you are going to regulate, the historical data shows a likely rise of 0.2 meters in 100 years. Given that, 0.8 meters is NOT “modest prudence”. That’s four times what the rise might be when all of us are dead. It’s just another example of the government wanting to control the populace.
Not sure why you support that, but I sure don’t. The government has no business trying to save me from myself.
w.
Willis,
Any decision by local councils can be appealed to VCAT, which will apply the state rules.
Sure, Nick, appeal to Victoria. Here’s the Victoria lunacy:
That’s a totally insane regulation. It’s 17 years to 2040. To get there, sea levels would have to rise linearly starting tomorrow by ELEVEN POINT SEVEN FREAKING MILLIMETERS PER YEAR!!
So no, Nick, appealing to the Victorian authorities just gets you more lunacy.
And of course, sea level rise couldn’t just jump immediately to 11.7 mm per year. They’d have to accelerate every year. And if they did that, in the year 1939 the sea level would have to be rising at 14.4 mm per year. Yeah, like that’s gonna happen …
And the problem is even worse with the 0.8 regulation. A steady acceleration of sea level rise to get to 800 mm rise by 2100 requires that in the final year, the sea level would have to rise by 52 mm … that’s the rate of rise during Meltwater Pulse 1a during the deglaciation 14,000 years ago, when miles-thick land ice over most northern continents were melting and raising sea levels. It’s totally impossible today, there are no miles-thick ice masses over northern continents.
In other words, the Victorian authorities are just picking numbers out of thin air, and they are so innumerate that they don’t realize the impossibility of their fevered green nightmares actually happening.
But that’s not the surprising part to me. The surprising part is that you’re carrying their water. You’re a smart guy, run the numbers yourself and see how impossible they are.
w.
Willis,
As you commonly remark re SLR, 0.2m isn’t much. It’s about 8 inches, and it isn’t much in a building context either. It isn’t oppressing the Victorian public.
Dang, bro, miss the point much?
The point was that for the sea level to rise that much in that short a time, it would be rising 14 mm/year … and you ignore that and tell us that you don’t own a dog?
w.
Dear Willis,
There are many more tide gauge datasets available than those from PSMSL. You could look here for example:
Australian Baseline Sea Level Monitoring Project Monthly Sea Level and Meteorological Statistics (bom.gov.au) for Stony Point, Lorne and Portland. There is also a dataset for Westernport Bay (somewhere – I’ll try to find it).
I also have many datasets for Queensland, and I analysed and reported on Cooktown and Townsville on http://www.bomwatch.com.au (see below; there are detailed reports linked into the frontstory summaries).
Despite what has been claimed there is no declarable sea level rise in ABSLMP data.
At Cooktown, sea level increased because they changed the averaging algorithm in the logger during an up-grade, also because when they resurfaced the wharf it sank further into the mud.
At Rosslyn bay I have an aerial photograph showing a suction dredge operating beside the piles holding-up the tide gauge. They changed the logger there too at the same time as Cooktown so both gauges show the same up-step. There is also a surprising correlation between sea-level-gauge data and rainfall, that reflects connectivity between terrestrial hydrology and sub-surfae and surface outflows to the coastal ocean.
I also have historic aerial photographs from the 1950s and 1960s that show wetting fronts at hard-points on beaches are the same now as they were then and earlier (see the photo-comparison for Cooktown). I have some for Victoria and WA too.
Claims made in relation to sea level rise by Church, White and others in CSIRO, on which all this is based, were deliberately made to stir alarm and are outrageous. They never took account of in-filling of Sydney Harbour or changes in the sub-surface water balance of the lands surrounding the estuary, particularly urban irrigation and leakage from aging pipes for example.
(Aerial photographs going back to the 1940s of hard-points around the Harbour, Point Piper for example, Waverton and Balmoral Beach, show no material change in sea level.)
My final point is in order to discern trend (or acceleration), you need to break down the total signal into components – mainly you need to remove the non-trending cycles and deal with the underlying anomaly data. Showing graphs dominated by cycles is very confusing and therefore not recommended.
Kind Regards,
Dr Bill Johnston
(scientist@bomwatch.com.au)
References:
https://www.bomwatch.com.au/bureau-of-meteorology/trends-in-sea-level-at-cooktown-great-barrier-reef/
https://www.bomwatch.com.au/bureau-of-meteorology/trends-in-sea-level-at-townsville-great-barrier-reef/
Additional tide gauge data:
Tide Gauge Metadata and Observed Monthly Sea Levels and Statistics (bom.gov.au)
Don’t calculate trend before removing cycles and changes caused by digitisation, loggers etc.
So while some datasets go back 40 years (Westernport for instance), early data were hand-digitised at 30-minute intervals, while recent data is high-frequency radar or sonic gauge data where they use averaging algorithms to create N-samples/day. The gauge probably also re-located from time to time.
Cheers,
Bill
Thanks for all of that, Bill, most interesting. I’ll look at it when I get that most precious resource … time …
w.
Took a look, Dr. Bill. Stony Point, Lorne, and Portland only have ~30 years of data, far too short for trend analysis with the needed accuracy.
Next, you say:
I fear that’s like saying that to study the sunspot cycles, you first have to remove the cycles …
In any case, I just used CEEMD to analyze the cycles in the Sydney sea level data. Here’s the result:
As you can see, there are cycles that are so long that the data length can’t encompass them all … empirical mode C9 still has power all the way out to the full length of the dataset.
And once every one of those non-trending cycles is removed, the remaining residual trend looks like this:
Up to 1950, the sea level rise was accelerating … and since then it’s been decelerating. This is the opposite of what the alarmists claim. Go figure.
Like I said, the cycles are longer than the dataset, so we cannot do what you suggest and simply “remove the non-trending cycles”.
My best regards to you,
w.
The most important cycles are the 18.61 year nodal cycle and the 8.85 year cycle of lunar perigee (quasi 4.4 yr.. – see Haigh et al below). Both can be detected in a 30-year dataset. There is also a monthly seasonal cycle too. Unless these are broken down, one cannot analyze step-changes caused by other factors, such as changes in methods and loggers, and the climate.
I checked metadata for Westernport. Early data was digitised from chart recorders on the hour.
Similarly at Fort Denison, where the earliest (1800s) data was from tide-staff observations. They now use a SONIC water level sensor but there is no sampling info. According to https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/www-data.manly.hydraulics.works/www/publications/oeh/reports/mhl2179%20tide%20gauge%20histories%20metadata%20report%20final.pdf Page 12, data was unreliable before 1914.
There was an important climate shift involving the sub-tropical ridge in 1947 that affected tide data because of the effect it had on average air pressure. It is well documented that Sydney was practically out of water from 1943 to 1947. The situation totally reversed in 1947/48, then there was a wet period that lasted through the 1950s to about 1965.
The catchment of Sydney Harbour is actually quite restricted in area, the area of the Harbour is also not extensive. Without accounting for changes in the water balance etc. apparent SL rise measured by a gauge is confounded with with other factors.
The attached picture is Figure 3 from https://www.sealevel.info/You_Zai-Jin_et_al_2009.pdf, where they confuse the effect of the shift in the sub-tropical ridge (which was real) with the groups doing the digitising. Obviously between 1886 and 2006, data consisted of two non-trending segments with some natural cycles added in.
The problem with ‘long’ cycles is that they may not be cycles at all. They may just reflect a change – say the 1947 shift in the average position (latitude) of the sub-tropical ridge over Australia.Software won’t be able to tell the difference.
Yours sincerely,
Bill Johnston
Reference: Haigh, I. D., M. Eliot, and C. Pattiaratchi (2011), Global influences of the 18.61 year nodal cycle and 8.85 year cycle of lunar perigee on high tidal levels, J. Geophys. Res., 116, C06025, doi:10.1029/2010JC006645.
https://www.cmar.csiro.au/e-print/open/Div_Fish_Tech_Paper_15.pdf
Dear Willis,
Do you have a reference for CEEMD?
Also, you say “I fear that’s like saying that to study the sunspot cycles, you first have to remove the cycles …”
Is it not true that if one is primarily interested in cycles, one would remove any interfering trend, which complicates the picture; and if one is primarily interested in trend and other linearly additive effects, one would remove the cycles?
Before analysing data using a Lomb periodogram, data are automatically detrended for instance. While I don’t want to delve into it now, it seems to me that your C9 wave for Sydney is actually the 1947 shift! As the shift was stochastic, I doubt it will ever tail-out as a cycle.
Kind regards,
Bill
Good questions, Bill, thanks. For CEEMD, see my posts “Noise Assisted Data Analysis” and “Complete Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition“. I give an example of how it’s used in my post “CEEMD And Sunspots“.
Next, there is a widespread misunderstanding of the tides. They don’t follow the lunar nodal cycle of ~18.6 years. Instead, they follow the Saros Cycle, which also rules eclipses. The Saros Cycle is 18.03 years long. And we know that the sun and moon are returning to their previous positions, otherwise, there wouldn’t be repeating eclipses on that cycle. See e.g. The 1,800 Year Tidal Cycle.
Next, you say:
True indeed … but in my analysis of acceleration above, I was interested in showing that there is a huge variation in acceleration.
Finally, you say:
I fear you’ve lost me. What was the “1947 shift”?
And as to whether it will “tail out”, here’s the graph of the residual from above.
It shows sea level bottoming out near the start, then a gradual acceleration, followed by a gradual deceleration. The change from acceleration to deceleration occurs in March 1956, so it’s unlikely it was from the “1947 shift”, whatever that was.
Will the deceleration continue? Unknown. From the graph of the 30-year trailing acceleration, it’s clear that these changes in acceleration/deceleration are by no means regular cycles.
The main problem is that we simply don’t have long enough sea level records to establish longer-term cycles.
w.
Dear Willis,
While this is a diversion from the thrust of your Post, I was looking at long-term datasets in about 2016 and I tried to get a paper published but with no luck. Publication was refused for spurious reasons.
My main reference was Pugh (1996) Tides, surges and mean sea level, a fairly weighty tome available here: https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/19157/1/sea-level.pdf.
Looking back, I don’t think it would be possible to cut-and-dice between 18.6 and 18.03 years using periodograms/spectral analysis. What I did (and still do) is to cross-check using sinusoidal regression. Results are usually pretty close but never exact.
You say “changes in acceleration/deceleration are by no means regular cycles“, then what are they? If they are not cycles, they can’t be presumed to be cycles, which is why I recommend pulling out the ‘real’ cycles first, starting with the loudest ones. (I don’t pretend to be an expert in tide analysis by the way!)
The drought from 1939 and the 1947 shift were real events – the average latitude of the STR moved north, it rained like heck for a decade or or so average air pressure declined and sea level increased. (Runoff and groundwater outflow would also have increased.)
Due to extremely heavy rain, local flooding and a corresponding storm surge, I remember as a child being evacuated from Balmoral Infants school by Navy personnel from the nearby submarine base, HMAS Platypus, probably in 1956.
Confounded with gauge changes, there can be no doubt that in enclosed waters, such as Sydney Harbour (which I know well), tide gauge data inherit much more systematic noise than tidal oscillations alone.
All the best,
Bill Johnston
Reference: https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.1196
Bill, you say:
Here are the empirical modes of the Sydney tides.
As you can see, there are cycles … but they are far from regular.
This is one of the advantages of CEEMD over Fourier decompositions. Fourier would say there is a regular cycle with a period of ~21 years, visible above as empirical mode C8.
But the CEEMD analysis shows that the cycle is not regular by any means.
The times between the peaks of empirical mode C8 are 24.3, 19.2, 18.1, and 24.6 years. The times between the troughs are 22.8, 18.0, and 23.0 years. It’s a cycle all right, but hardly regular.
My best to you,
w.
Thanks Willis,
I read through your 2015 posts and had a brief look at the R packages, but I’m afraid without a lot more reading and study CEEMD is beyond my current skill-set. My approach is more ‘classic’. I start with data, then peel back as many significant layers as possible by working in sequence with residuals.
Back in 2016, I arranged for the National Tide Centre to supply monthly Lat-Hat (lowest and highest astronomical tide) values for all the ABSLMP sites (which they did, projected to 2018 if I recall), and calculated monthly anomalies from those. However, after my experience trying to get something published and having worked through many datasets, my enthusiasm waned.
(I’m only talking here from a trend perspective – as I said trend gets in the way of visualizing cycles, and cycles get in the way of determining valid trend, where inference requires independent, normally distributed equi-variance residuals.)
The other major problem with assuming that all systematic signals are cycles is that often they are NOT. The step-change in the picture that I sent previously, was neither a trend, nor a cycle but a step-change attributable to an unrelated event, which blind analysis would be unlikely to detect. Similarly, there were step-changes related to site (and logger) changes at Cooktown, also Townsville, Rosslyn Bay, and Port Alma (Rockhampton). Also at Port Kembla, Eden and Westernport (Stony Point).
Ignoring something changed when it actually did results in a classic ‘false positive’ or Type 1 error, which is a danger when data are analyzed by “the machine” and not hands-on.
The Cooktown and Townsville studies published on http://www.bomwatch.com.au took months to research, analyse and write-up. However, had I tossed the data into a machine I would be none-the-wiser about what actually happened. At Cooktown I used aerial photographs and satellite images to corroborate the outcome.
However, we arrive at the same place – there is no sea level rise due to melting glaciers, CO2, coalmining, electricity generation or anything else.
Yours sincerely,
Bill Johnston
(Due to other pressures I am retiring at this point.)
Thanks, Bill, your thoughtful and fact-filled contributions are much appreciated.
w.
But wait, there’s more!
Just briefly reviewing out interactions, C1 in your Figure above shows a change in variance in about 1947/48, that deserves investigation.
What actually is C!, is it a weekly or monthly cycle or the 18.1-yr cycle? – or just the most important (loudest) compound cycle?
Also, acceleration is defined as the interval-to-interval change in velocity of the process. That change could be random (i.e., ns) or it could be constant (i.e., show steady trend), or show variable trend.
I believe it is best graphed not as acceleration (V^2), but as interval-to-interval differences (i.e., as first differences).
Delta(V) on the left axis should pin-point just where the vertex (vertices) or changepoint(s) lies which otherwise you can only guess from your acceleration graph.
All the best,
Bill Johnston
(scientist@bomwatch.com.au)
Great stuff Bill keep up the good work, the more reliable data the better so we can try to keep the real science in front of the bureaucrats and politicians, so they can’t just fob us off with platitudes.
“0.8m above the previous max high tide” – It may be that high tides are more important than sea level rise. I don’t know if storm swell is considered a high tide or not but some of the residents of Fort Myers in Florida really got washed away by the swell. Hurricane insurance didn’t cover water damage. All in all I don’t think .8m is unreasonable.
And yes, I don’t see where we should be dictating how high you build, but just don’t expect the government to protect you unless you are one of the protected class..
Taking into account storm surge and wave action .8 meters feels low to this retired engineer
Dean, the 0.8 meters is on top of the current mark, which includes storm surge and wave action.
w.
“So people buy properties thinking they can build, and it turns out they can’t because of local regs.”
Just curious, but why don’t they check the regs before buying? Presumably if the regs change after they buy the property, they are “grandfathered”.
Because he will sell it? And any dubious details will be shuffled to addendum 47/a in small font. So, having hard standards can cut down on scams and tiresome conflicts.
Then, local councils presumably with some skin in the game are less likely to mess it up than a centralized body of bureaucrats legislating from the desk their opinions on how a spherical cow in vacuum “should” look like.
Of course, nothing can be truly foolproof if left in the hands of fools indefinitely.
It’s one thing when the locals act in their long-term interests, and another when they are just another bunch of bobble-head bureaucrats mostly concerned with not being heckled by some firebrand in press, rather than with real-world problems. Or simply extorted.
Quoth Schlock Mercenary, «Because “Needs no maintenance” is a lie. When entropy finally exposes the lie, nobody knows how to do maintenance.» This applies to organizations too.
Dear heavens, another person who thinks I need to be protected from myself!
TB, the elevation of a house is no secret hidden thing. If I want to buy or build a house that’s six inches (150mm) above high tide, how is that any of your damn business?
The Romans had a lovely term, “Caveat emptor”. But noooo … busybodies like you want to make everything your business.
Piss off, get your long nose out of your neighbor’s yard, and I’ll mind my own business, thank you very much.
w.
Here is a Google Map of Inverloch, in the Bass Coast Council region of Victoria. People don’t seem to have trouble building near the sea:
Thing is, that Nick KNOWS that many councils have changed their regulations due to the superstition of the idiotic AGW “sea level rise” claims.
He KNOWS these changes are totally unwarranted.
He is being disingenuous.. as usual.
Nick, are you suggesting that Inverloch’s council might red-tag all houses near the sea?
And then when the price goes down they might pull an “OBAMA” and buy a nice house on the beach? I’m from the government and I’m here to help myself?
Maybe you did address it, but one of his points had to do with what happens to people who bought property BEFORE the new regulation/zoning thing came out.
I know it sounds simple to just build higher, but that cost money. Can they afford it?
It’s not clear there has been a change.
Then why Rick’s original post?
If nothing has changed, then why the change?
I don’t know.
“limitation is that the floor level must be higher than 0.8m above the previous max high tide.”
Does that really mean they build the 1st floor higher – (taller basement? On stilts?) Or does that mean they have to build further back from the coast, on higher ground?
Is it’s the latter, some owners won’t be able to build as their properties won’t be deep enough, front to back, to give them a politically acceptable place to build.
But in the end, that’s ok – the high-earning, non-engineering degreed, supposedly high educated but dim-bulb voters who have fallen for the propaganda of the ‘Watermelons” will have another issue to slap them back to reality.
Going by the case featured in Eric’s post, the lady agreed to raise the floor in the existing location and got her permit.
My limited understanding is that the acceleration claim is not based on tide gauge readings. It is based on the difference between historical tide gauge readings and the new satellite readings which find a higher rate of increase. In short it is a hockey stick trick.
“It is based on the difference between historical tide gauge readings and the new satellite readings which find a higher rate of increase.”
____________________________________________
Colorado University’s Sea Level Research Group says that the acceleration since 1992 is 0.084 mm/year²
Acceleration rates for long term tide gauges (~100 years) centers around zero to 0.01mm/yr² Pretty much what eyeballing WE’s figure 4 shows.
Sea-level-measuring satellites have only been accurate to a few mm. Surely not able to determine these tiny changes in the rate of rise of sea level. The latest satellite, Sentinel-6 is claimed to be the most accurate yet, but they only talk of “cross-calibrating Sentinel-6 against its predecessor Jason-3 to within 1 mm”. If they cross-correlate the new satellite to the old “a few mm inaccuracy” satellite to “within 1mm” what does that prove? To my mind, not much. In any case, Sentinel-6 hasn’t been up long enough to give any useful data on changes in the rate of rise of sea level. Let’s hope it is being run by honest scientists when it can.
What NASA says and the truth in their own documentation are a significant distance apart. See my previous posts on Satellite Altimetry—fit for purpose? (Concerning Jason 3). And Sentinel 6 (two posts).The maximum resolution is not even 3cm, when annual SLR is about 2.2mm. No amount of repeat measurement can fix the basic resolution problem.
“ Let’s hope it is being run by honest scientists …”
________________________________________
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
You’re quite the comedian (-:
Three comments.
First, fig. 3 is probably not vertical land motion corrected. It shows the importance of doing so using proximal dGPS.
Second, because of the decadal acceleration/deceleration, Moerner said a tide gauge record should be over 60 years for a valid rise estimate
Third, there are only about 65 stations meeting both criteria. They show 2.2mm/yr and no acceleration. 2.2mm/yr also closes with the estimated sum of ARGO derived thermosteric rise plus ice sheet loss. That is how we also know the NASA satalt estimate is too high—no closure. Creating ‘acceleration’ by splicing new satalt onto old tide gauge (as Australia’s CSIRO has done) comprises academic misconduct.
Well, I just looked up the average elevation in Sydney, and per Wikipedia it’s 53 meters. At the current rates of sea level rise of somewhere near 2 mm per year, they have nothing to worry about whatsoever for the next 5 or 10 thousand years.
If Rick Will’s onset ice age hypothesis is believable, the earth will be in the depths of a new ice age ten thousand years from now.
In which case new beach front property will be gradually appearing over time around the periphery of Australia, a process which might begin several thousand years from now as the ice age gains steam.
This maybe of interest to understand what the Australian authorities plans are:
https://www.planning.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/103039/Planning-for-sea-level-rise-guidelines.pdf
Fire the local council.
Port Welshpool sea level data graph: http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO70000/IDO70000_60590_SLI.pdf
Interesting ”story tip” from John Daly in regards to a tidal gauge established in 1841 at the Isle of the Dead, Port Arthur in Tasmania.
http://www.john-daly.com/deadisle/
So sea levels accelerated in the 1930s-40s and decelerated in the 1970s-80s. Looks like sea level acceleration might be caused by oceanic thermic expansion and contraction.
Ralph
If only the issue, in Australia and in California, was about scientific fact and not political and economic change.
Councils are protecting their backs .Its called the precautionary principle.Councils don’t want to be blamed if the sea rises .
Cyclone Gabriele caused more than a billion dollars worth of damage to New Zealands North Island in March.
The storm surge pushed the high tide which eroded sand banks on the coasts and destroyed a lot of coastal planting above the beaches. The major damage around the coasts was caused by cliffs collapsing taking houses and destroying other houses built below the cliffs.
Very little damage to sea side houses was caused by the storm surge but if people build on sand that came from the sea, some time in the future the sea will reclaim that sand .
The worst hit region was in the Esk Valley in Hawkes Bay .Stop banks were breached because forestry slash piled up against bridges and the water backed up and the flood soon overflowed the stop banks scouring out channels through them .
The Esk Valley had a disastrous floods in 1938 and stop banks were erected some time after that .
Councils will now be insisting that all forestry slash is treated as a danger to every one who lives below in the valleys .
They have been more alarmed about sea level rise in 200 years time, if at all ,but they have been blind to immediate threats of logs and trees washing down the rivers causing devastation.
And the storm was something not experienced since records have been kept, almost certainly made worse by climate change. (Let’s not forget that little bit)
There was very high rainfall recorded in the ranges to the west of Hastings but Hastings recorded 143 mm and Napier recorded 203mm .heavy but not exceptional and official rain records were never kept in the ranges many years ago .
Lets not forget that the Tongan eruption expelled a total of 146 million tonnes of water into the atmosphere raising the water vapour content by 10% to 15 % which will temporarily raise the earths temperature .Nothing to do with fossil fuel Simon.
If you a really are a Kiwi and you are lucky enough to live in NZ you will know that the weather has changed. When we get rain it is heavier. Aucklands deluge in the early part of the year broke records by upwards of 50%. Unheard of and nothing to do with a volcanic eruption. So not only have we warmed a lot, but the patterns are a concern for farmers. Many kiwis have had their livelihoods ruined by the latest batch of “weather.” Hey but nothing to see here aye. All quite normal. It’s why the D word is so applicable to people who see the world the way you do.
Gosh, Simon, you mean that the weather has changed in the land of the long white cloud! This is shocking! I’m sure this is the first time this has ever happened!
w.
I don’t know where you got your graph from Willis but the month of January 2023 broke records with rainfall totals never seen before.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/nothing-came-close-auckland-records-wettest-month-smashes-previous-1869-record/MKVFLLUX55HCPICA2AQKJSCXWI/
Then along came Gabrielle which looks to have been NZ’s most intense cyclone ever recorded..
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/stronger-than-bola-new-analysis-shows-how-gabrielle-compares/MJ3URXXI3JHQBLSII4SSU4ALFI/
Two huge events….All in the space of a month. But hey look, just a coincidence right?
Simon March 15, 2023 12:03 am
Umm … it says right on the bottom of the graph where I got the data.
Yes, and the rainfall of February 16th, 1985 broke records with a one-day rainfall total never seen before.
It’s called “weather”, Simon, and in part because our weather records are so short, new records of some kind are set somewhere in the world every day. Weather changes.
Perhaps this surprises you, but the rest of us expect it.
w.
…”Unheard of…” yes it would seem that even NIWA hasn’t heard.
Alpha, you don’t understand. Simon is talking about a record like a baseball record of “the most hits by a left-handed rookie redhead third-baseman under 5’6″ in the second week of June” … all you need to do is play with the restrictions and you can find a record anywhere you want.
w.
</sarc>
I’m talking like I’ve lived here for 60 plus years and I have never seen anything like the last two months with regard to rainfall in this country. But hey Willis always knows best. And by the way, you might want to get a more up to date graph….. it stops at 2020….. You will find the new version half way down this page. Take it look. It’s frightening. You are welcome..
https://www.newsroom.co.nz/sustainable-future/aucklands-historic-flooding-explained-in-five-charts#:~:text=The%20record%2Dbreaker&text=The%20245%20mm%20of%20rain,than%2060%20years%20of%20data.
Simon, if you live ANYWHERE for 60 plus years, eventually you will experience new weather records. You seem to think this is important. It is not. Human lives are infinitesimally small compared to geological history. We could never live long enough to be immune from novel weather.
As to the size of the latest rainfall record, again, it’s no surprise to anyone familiar with the field. It even has its own name. You’re seeing what in meteorology is known as the “Noah Effect”. Please see Mandelbrot’s paper “Noah, Joseph, and Operational Hydrology“. In the abstract he says
Regards,
w.
PS: I looked for a more up-to-date graph and couldn’t find one. So sue me. Now I know where to look for NZ data,
https://cliflo.niwa.co.nz/
Thanks for the link.
The trouble with you Simon that you believe all the nonsense that is pushed about global warming .
You can’t see that the Tongan eruption threw 143 million tonnes ,143 billion liters of water into the tropical atmosphere and it was predicted that the effect of that extra water vapour had to cause heavier rain fall and more intense cyclones .
You believe that a trace gas CO2 increasing from 400 ppm to 500 ppm will lead to runaway warming .
The warped unproven theory is that CO2 will cause a warmer atmosphere which will then hold more water which will then cause more warming .
Cyclone Hale and Cyclone Gabriele were the after effects of the Tongan eruption even after a year later ,but the weather will settle back soon .
Just because it does not fit with your beliefs that CO2 is the control knob of the climate .
I am a proud New Zealander and I have been actively farming for 65 years so I have seen all sorts of weather .
So you have this volcano theory…. do you have any evidence/readings on this? I’ve not heard it before.
No, the precautionary principle is “don’t stick your body parts into what may turn out to be moving machinery”. This is simply “scuttle where a priest says, before you taste the lash”.
Graham March 14, 2023 2:57 pm
Nope. It’s not the precautionary principle—it’s simple CYA.
The precautionary principle is one of the most widely misunderstood “principles” in history. See my post “Climate, Caution, and Precaution” for a discussion of the issues.
Best regards,
w.
The other long-term tide gauge in Australia is in Fremantle, Western Australia, on the other side of the continent. Has been there for around 150 years, and has only moved a very short distance from its original location. Its average over its full lifetime is around 1.7mm a year.
In my WUWT article (https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/02/21/further-exploration-of-historical-sea-level-rise-acceleration/) that uses the entire PMSL data set and where acceleration is estimated by fitting a time centered (i.e. not trailing) quadratic polynomial, I got a somewhat time shifted curve. I found that the positive acceleration you show in the 1940s really got going in the 1930s.
As a Melbournian I can honestly say Victoria is the California of Australia. Woke on steriods. Our fearless leader, Daniel Andrews is out of control!