Note by Kip Hansen — 11 August 2024 — 800 words
I was checking to see if the Water Levels at the tide gauge at The Battery, New York had come back into its normal range – it had been running exceptionally high and out of line with the long-term trend:
And, as we can see, the latest datum is right back in line with the trend, as expected. There are reasons for the spike that lasted a couple of months. Savvy readers can inform us in comments.
Since I was in the NOAA Tides and Currents site, I took a look at the database view called “Variation of 50-Year Relative Sea Level Trends”, seldom visited. Here it is for The Battery:
Do you see that interesting wave shape? I do.
What exactly is this? NOAA says:
“Linear relative sea level trends were calculated in overlapping 50-year increments for stations with sufficient historical data. The variation of each 50-year trend, with 95% confidence interval, is plotted against the mid-year of each 50-year period. The solid horizontal line represents the linear relative sea level trend using the entire period of record.”
Curiosity took hold and scrolling down the page, I see that NOAA had supplied the same view for 40 tide gauges around the United States.
Here are 12 selected from the Northeast coast of the United States, first in a PowerPoint slide show, one after another:
They all have the same/similar wave form, or the segment of the wave over shorter time periods. How similar? Let’s see.
Putting all 12 images on top of one another, aligning the vertical scales in millimeters:
Visually, we can see the wave form repeated at each gauge. As we get closer to present time, more tide gauges are added to the mix and we see more variability.
One more look:
In the image above, I have aligned the “linear sea level trend using the entire period of record” for each gauge (the arrow points to that line).
With this view, collectively, we reveal remarkable similarity across the entire range of tide gauges.
It is possible to see what looks like higher Rates of Relative SLR in the 1950s and the 1960s than those we see in the latest 50 year period.
It is also possible to chop off the earliest portions of the chart, leaving only the time period that the tide gauge record shares with the satellite sea level measurement record. Doing that results in graphs like this one from NASA:
This graph starts in 1993…and shows that rising trend in the last three 50-year periods of the tide gauge graph. I have blown up the lower right corner, just because it seemed odd to me that NASA drops the first few data points below zero and they are obscured by the white tick mark for 1993.
Remember, Relative Sea Level Rise is the additive product of Vertical Land Movement (VLM, land moving up or down) and any change in the actual height of the sea surface (up or down). For a tide gauge, the measurements must be taken at the same place on the same structure (pier, dock, wharf): Sea Surface Height by a modern tide gauge and VLM by a Continuously Operating GPS station attached to the same structure. NOAA attributes the differences in RSLR rate to differences in the rate of VLM (in most cases, “negative VLM” or downward).
NASA explains East Coast VLM in an article titled: America’s Sinking East Coast.
The press however, urged on by the major Climate Crisis propaganda outfits, gives us stories like these:
Federal report predicts a foot of sea level rise by 2050, with higher levels in the Northeast
It is an interesting way to look at the NOAA tide gauge records for the Northeast United States and the rate of relative sea level rise revealed in it.
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Author’s Comment:
What do you make of that? I’ll try to get time to do the same for the West Coast, and the Gulf Coast. If I can find similar data, for Europe and Asia as well.
NASA has added the absolutely required “acceleration curve” as a thin red line. That line is entirely subjective, a matter of opinion and some fancy statistical skullduggery – which involves all the primary sins of time series analysis – most importantly, using a very short time period, 30 years, for a phenomenon that operates over centuries.
The graphs of Rates of RSLR from the tide gauges show that there is a cyclical patter to the rate of rise – at least in the NE U.S.
Thanks for reading.
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Below is a similar representation for seven
tide gauges around the world.
Each plotted point represents the rate of
sea level rise for the previous 30 years:
Steve ==> Yes, maybe the same general shape over time. Thank you.
When are they going to tell the Maui planning commission. and their plan to condemn land in Lahaina due to dream of a 3.2 feet of sea level rise.
https://x.com/i/status/1817255384681415157
https://www.ijpr.org/npr-news/2024-08-05/a-year-after-lahainas-fire-residents-want-to-rebuild-but-what-about-rising-seas
“..their plan to condemn land in Lahaina due to dream of a 3.2 feet of sea level rise.”
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Took a few minutes to find the Maui Tide Gauge and calculate the rate of sea
level rise as 2.14 mm/yr with an acceleration of 0.012 mm/yr² which comes to
almost 8 inches by 2100
Steve ==> Quite right — Maui has almost nothing to worry about with sea level — assuming they do something reasonable with building codes, don’t dig canals to bring sea level into everyone’s backyards, and insure that there is adequate buffer zones for storm surges.
My theory is sea level rise slows slightly as the ocean is cooling and rises slightly as the ocean is warming. This all adds up to “Who cares?”
I’m building an ark in my back yard just in case I’m wrong.
Hansen has the best sea level articles here.
Richard ==> It is true that warming increases sea levels and cooling lowers sea levels….in general, of course.
And, thanks….
But Kip,
What is the math to solve for Y?
Over a time period selected for a stated reason:
Rise in mm/year = Y * ocean temperatures change?
Conspicuous for its literary rarity.
……
Also, there continue to be mentions of the measurement uncertainty being larger than the change, that is the ability of the apparatus to deliver neat graphs like these does not exist, some say. The satellite measurement of local land rise or fall is questioned because of inherent errors. Is there a definitive statement on uncertainty?
I am.not disputing your findings, just asking about whether some earlier points of difference have been settled. Geoff S
Geof, add into the uncertainty factor the variety of satellite systems measuring, historically to now, sea surface height. Some varieties include the 6 Jason series, the Sentinel series, and the Copernicus series. Add in the geological processes (“Dynamic Earth”, by Peter Wylie, for example) pushing and shoving everything around, and sea level is in constant flux.
A reminder that sea level rise is one order of magnitude less than the creep on the San Andreas fault.
Geoff ==> Well, there is no such thing as “Ocean Temperature Change”. What ocean, where, what depth, that time period, measured how? Averaged how?
Modern tide gauges are very accurate — measuring a constantly changing level every x seconds, over a range measured in feet/meters (up to two whole digits plus decimal fractions) and then averaged, usually like temps as mean between high and low, though not always. Doesn’t really matter. The best gauges are accurate to 2 cm for each individual measurement.
There are satellite measurements of VLM but these are less than dependable,as you point out. The only reliable VLM measurements are done with permanently mounted CORS stations and the results calculated from long-term records (18-24 months or more), giving millimeteric scale average-over-time VLM.
The satellite SL measurements reported are not actually the change in the height of the sea’s surface,but a calculation with includes a assumed rise plus a lot of other stuff plus the satellite results….I have written this so many times —
The points of difference, say between NASA satellite data and NOAA/PSMSL tide gauge data have never been settled and are unlikely to be settled– they are different animals, they are not measured of the same “thing” and cannot, should not, be compared.
There is even a word for it — thermosteric.
Richard: Even the IPCC agrees with you. AR1 and AR5 both agree that the principle cause of sea level change now that the massive continental ice sheets are (almost entirely) gone is thermal expansion/contraction of the oceans.
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Calculations for acceleration of sea level rise for some long running tide gauges show a remarkable distribution centering around 0.01mm/yr² data collected July 2022:
Steve ==> All these calculations are based on data with uncertainty at least two orders of magnitude greater than the magnitude of the original measurements and three orders of magnitude greater than claimed acceleration found. One one hundredth of a millimeter is far below our ability to reliably measure, even at the tide gauges with the most modern, highest standard equipment.
Can you add the link to the paper producing that graph — I can’t read it in the image. Thanks.
100% agree Kip.
The probity and provenance of all sea temperatures, rises & falls in levels are abysmal, rendering these “measurements” totally unfit for scientific purposes.
Land temps too.
And averages of “global anomalies” have all the informative value of chicken entrails.
Oh! Oh! I know that one! Hieromancy!
Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level Down load the annual data for each tide gauge, graph it out in Excel. Select the the 2nd order Polynomial trend line with “display formula” [✓] checked. Multiply the X² value by 2 to get acceleration. Do that for each of the 67 tide gauges selected. Sort the 67 values and round off to 0.00 and create the histogram..
Your lead off NOAA graph shows change in rate over the years. That means there is acceleration over the short haul. Over the long haul it looks like it evens out to zero. Indeed, all the values in the bar graph except two round off to zero.
The 0.083 ±0.025 mm/yr² Claimed Dr. Nerem’s Sea Level Group and extrapolated out to 2100 to get 0.65 meters of sea level rise isn’t supported by the empirical data.
There isn’t any paper, I could email my Excel spread sheet. If I can find it.
Steve ==> Great – I’d like to see the Excel formulas…what time period have you used?
As I feared, the original Excel file is being elusive. Time period? The entire time series for each of the 67 tide gauges. Formulas? See my post above, I used Excel’s “Display formula on chart” function. It is what it is.
You have to do some dinking around to produce the histogram. But it’s not difficult.
But do it yourself, I did it for Maui above and it came out since 1951 like all the others at 0.01 mm/yr² I posted 0.012mm/yr² but is rounds off to zero as you’ve more or less pointed out.
I may have to eat some crow, on a re-do I’m getting different ie,. larger values for 2*x² values from Excel’s 2nd Order Polynomial display formula on chart” function. The complete redo will take some time.
Actually NO! Redoing 65 tide gauges with long records at least
back to the 1920s produced the same pattern of predominate acceleration of ~0.01 mm/yr². Kips point can be illustrated by
rounding all those values to one significant digit. All but two
turned out to be zero. The file has been sent to Kip.
Steve ==> Thanks….1/100th of a millimeter derived from data with measurement uncertainties in centimeters — that’s three orders of magnitude….
So, yes, rounding to even iffy significant digits — ZERO
Besides that, 0.01mm converts to 0.0004 of an inch.
You can’t measure that with your Mitutoyo Caliper.
A human hair is about two hundredths of a millimeter. I hope NOAA aren’t claiming that they can measure global average sea levels to the thickness of a human hair – let alone half a hair thickness!
NOAA quote “The OFS water level nowcasts and forecasts are accurate to within 6 inches 90% of the time. Occasional very large high or low water level events may cause greater errors.”
6 inches or hundredths of a millimeter – close enough for climate scientists.
Nice to know that the media mongers of disaster haven’t been deprived of some little smidgeon of time which they can then project as The Future. The poor babies must be really depressed at the long-term trends and their lack of headline material.
If my memory serves me correctly, until a couple of years ago there were 50 year trend graphs for all NOAA tidal gauge locations around the globe. Now, they seem to be limited to a much smaller number. I’m not sure what happened but I thought it was an interesting source of data. Some had higher rates more recently but others had higher rates several decades ago.
Denny ==> NOAA has Tides and Currents. It’s purpose is to inform mariners of the depth of the water in various ports and the current in and out of those ports. This is the U.S. Tide Gauge network. Each tide gauge had a time period that it has been operating…they close out and install new ones occasionally.
Not all stations have the link to the datum “Sea Level Trends” at the bottom left (it is greyed-out if not available — though it sometimes works and returns a mostly blank page.)
There are comparison pages like “Relative Sea Level Trends for Northern Atlantic“.
I can verify that central Texas sea level went down in August like it always does due to a larger seasonal difference than daily. I keep seeing statements like we can’t explain it very well.There are faults around, more than tide measurements. I know two born in the 1920’s who keep asking me about when is the beach road existing when they were children going to flood, as predicted. Actually, it has probably been creeping up but wonder how much road traffic weight affects it along with the inadequate construction. It did get flooded from the recent storms but only one small batch had to be repaired. Water and wrack reached the foundation of a new Navigation District Office. Still too much traffic and lack of building competence.
HD ==> What is your nearest Tide Gauge station?
Native Texan here. Of the counties that are considered part of the Central Texas region, the one closest to the coast is Fayette county. The city of La Grange, (Fayette county) is 120 miles from Matagorda. Only the East Texas, Upper Gulf Coast, and South Texas regions reach the coast. I live in Bell county (Central Texas region) and I’m 200 miles from Galveston. Can you be more specific on what part of the Texas coast you are talking about?
KH, the undulation you show is why sea level experts like Nils Axel Moerner say one needs 60-70 year long now VLM corrected tide gauge records to estimate sea level rise. Globally, there are about 65 such. Moerner says they show 2.2mm/year rise, and no acceleration. 2.2 is very interesting because it closes exactly with best estimates of thermosteric rise plus Greenland/Antarctic ice sheet loss.
The NASA satalt chart has three big problems in addition to what you highlight:
Rud ==> I am a Nils-Axel Mörner fan and have been for over a decade — a true pragmatic.
I am happy with anything for Global SLR between 0 and 2.5 mm/yr — which is trivial.
Fascinating! By eyeball, it looks that there is a consistent sinusoidal frequency in the range of 1 cycle per 50–60 years present in most of the tide gage rate-of-rise histories. I am not aware of previous identification of such a frequency in geological or climate or astronomical observations. Also, I admit that it isn’t yet possible to say such frequency is scientifically meaningful since the data doesn’t even span two complete inferred cycles.
However, it invites the question: what the heck might be going on?
Seems to be too long for the frequency range of the PDO (25-45 year period), and too short for the frequency range of the AMO (65-85 year period).
The frequency is right in the range of the pentadecadal oscillation (ref: https://www.soest.hawaii.edu/PubServices/1998pdfs/Minobe.pdf ), but why that should show up when neither the PDO or AMO frequencies appear in the rate-of-rise data from the tide gages is a mystery.
Other possible causes:
— A very long period seismic “breathing mode” affecting Earth’s radius (and thus effective ocean tides), possibly related to an oscillation in geothermal heat release?
— A very long period oscillation in total percentage of cloud of Earth, with the resulting variation in solar ocean heating causing oscillations in the ocean’s thermal expansion?
ToldYa ==> The existence of a 1 cycle per 50–60 years feature in sea level had been suggested by many including Nils-Axel Mörner. Looks good so far.
Good ideas and good questions!
There is obviously a god of the sea; so many cultures have said so over the millennia.
Gods depend upon belief, worship, and sacrifice. Such is in short supply in modern times.
What you see in the graphs is the god’s slow rate of breathing as it deeply sleeps, waiting for revival.
Got a better idea?
Andy ==> Our guesses for the causes of SLR aren’t bad –basic physics — warming seas — not like the alarmists do it, but coming up out of the last Ice age and even the Little Ice Age, melting of land ice countered by dam retention of water, diversion of river flows to irrigation, other anthropogenic-use of fresh water , etc.
We are just hypothesizing here….the physical whole-Earth water cycle, which includes water in and out of the seas, is just too big, and our study to new, for any conclusions to be drawn.
Clouds have been decreasing for awhile since high-sulfur fuels have been phasing out letting more sunlight in and warming the Earth.
Joachim Dengler in this podcast reveals that because the German Meteorological Agency reports on average sunshine as well as temperature you can see that all of the measured warming in Germany is accounted for by increases in sunshine, i.e. there is no CO2 signature, and he speculates that this is due to particulate scrubbing.
Very nice.
Bob ==> Thanks….(are you a relative? 😉
Can someone explain what sea level rise is? I know it is net of wave action but is the “billboard measurement” simply water level at high tide or a time weighted mean of water level over a 24 hour period? I think the time weighted method would be the most meaningful and least influenced by barometric influence and water stacking from runoff or storms.
elmerulmer ==> I have written a series that will answer all these questions:
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 — there are more parts,usually linked at the bottom of the essays. start with those.
ER, not KH but been at this a long time.
Like everything else in ‘climate science’, it is a non-numeric therefore non-scientific conceptualization. In the case of SLRA, first advocated by Hanson in 1988 in his July Congressional hearing.
The scientific specifics of SLR. It is well established that at the peak of the last glaciation, so much water was contained in land mass glaciers that sea level was about 140 meters lower than now—happened over many millennia. Wiki has the classic chart composite from many different locations. It is also well established that during the immediate past interglacial peak (Eemian) sea level was about 6.5 meters above present. Happened over several millennia, so at a SLR about equivalent to the present late interglacial rise.
Sea level rise on centennial scales can be measured with a certain amount of imprecision via VLM corrected tide gauges. Of course varies with lunar nodal cycle and the longer undulation KH illustrates.
That the past 50 years alone can be measured is pure ‘climate science’ hubris.
I daresay that prior to 50 years ago scientists did NOT have a good way to apply accurate VLM (vertical land movement) corrections to tide gauges . . . now done today by direct GPS measurements or, more precisely, by differential-GPS measurements.
Marine fossils are found at altitudes over 6000m.
Fossilised remains of land plants (coal etc) are found 1500 m below sea level, oil even deeper.
So, at least 7500 m variations in surface levels over the eons. Maybe no need to panic just yet.
Michael. It’s pretty certain that marine fossils at very high elevations are the result of the land being pushed up rather than high sea levels. If you look into the geology of a given mountain, it becomes pretty clear how the fossils (if any) got there. You won’t find marine fossils on the top of volcanos like Vesuvius, Ranier or Moana Loa which grew from lava pushed up from below then flowing outwards.
Don,
Exactly. Sea level is relative to the land. If the land not covered by ocean rises (as Kip mentions), then sea level falls. The crust is in constant motion – both vertically and laterally.
On the other hand, if the crustal basin containing an ocean rises, then sea levels rise! Given that 70% or so of the Earth is covered by ocean, and nobody has the faintest idea of vertical displacement of the crust beneath the oceans, then all the sea level obsession is pretty pointless. In some places, sea levels rise and fall 10 m or so, in a 24 hour period, due to tidal movements.
On the other hand, amphidromic points (nice word, that) have little to no tidal variation.
Why waste a good worry about sea level variations?
TILT!
Michael ==> Not sure if that is serious, but it is true-ish. The sea fossils at altitude are often the result of tectonic movement of land masses — land being pushed upward.
Kip,
And presumably, fossil fuels at great depths are caused by land subsiding. If there is a relatively fixed mass of surface water, it will flow to the lowest points under the influence of gravity. The Earth shrinks as it cools (cooler rock being more dense than the redhot kind) – will this result in sea levels rising or falling?
I’ll leave panicking to others.
There’s your problem . . . the amount of surface water on Earth is not fixed, but instead varies with the amount of ice and snow that is present on land in both the northern and southern hemispheres.
That amount of surface ice/snow varies greatly between glacial and interglacial climate cycles, and will (and does) cause changes in sea-level even if there is no vertical land motion.
Add the Metonic Cycle to the mix. American Council on Surveying and Mapping ACSM BULLETIN December 2008 covers the ~19-year lunar-solar cycle and how the averaging is done over previous tidal epoch(s).
https://www.tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/…/Understanding_Sea_Level_Change.pdf
Note that sea level has a periodic component from the Metonic Cycle.
It is interesting that the early workers in predicting tides were familiar with the ~19-year lunar cycle, but didn’t find a 50-year cycle.
Your link seems to be broken. I get a ‘404’ clicking on it.
me too….
Here is a link to the pdf:
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/publications/Understanding_Sea_Level_Change.pdf
ACSM deals with boundary location and the legal (constitutional) requirement to establish the various coastal tidal datums to avoid a “taking” issue.
National Tidal Datum Epoch (NTDE) The specific 19-year period adopted by the Ocean Service (NOS) as the official time segment over which tide observations are taken and reduced to obtain mean values for tidal datums.
A boundary reference: Evidence and Procedures for Boundary Location By Walter George Robillard, Dr Donald A Wilson, Curtis Maitland Brown
Neil ==> The whole 19-year cycle is believed to be dependent on the Moon — and its orbit. To determine Tidal Datums, they must take this into account — the 4 inch change in average depth might be important for shipping.
Tidal Datums are lines drawn to allow them to say “higher than THIS” or “lower than THIS” — the datums are the THISs.
I thought the Last IPCC report dealt with this in the long list of supposed outcomes of warming that it dismissed. Again, the only mention of threatening events emanated from media reports, the IPCC noted.
Meanwhile the British DRAX biomass driven power station is producing four times the equivalent emissions of a coal fueled plant. (It is also to be noted that Coral is having a bumper crop along most of the expanse of the Great Barrier Reef (that one that the periodical ‘Nature’ had claimed was doomed.)
Someone in the broader PR department must be losing their grip. Either those financing weather contrariness are losing interest in the topic (Bill Gates has Melinda on his mind), grants for proving the unprovable are diminishing, or a bunch of academics have started to play catch-up. In Britain the Met Office gives great prominence to thunder storm warnings and promotes their association with flooding. An exciting natural phenomenon, which man through the ages has learned to respect, (perhaps Lee Trevino, not enough), suddenly promoted to doom monger? The danger could not be anything to do with the lack of civil engineering projects?
London instituted a barrier on the Thames River to protect the capital from tide surges but coping with rain and its outcome, in the usual places, rings no bells? The mighty works undertaken by Dutch engineers in the Eastern English fens, brought hundreds of thousands of acres into food production and provided safeguards against weather events. The Dutch engineer Cornelius Vermuyden’s, motto: “Niet Zonder Arbyt” (“Nothing Without Work”) built a drainage system in the seventeenth century, work which was not sustained as a network for future necessity.
Now we have mass immigration where governments unload problems happily onto private water companies, in constant demands to accommodate a burgeoning population and not providing the space for the sewage systems to have massive upgrades (amidst the discharge of untreated effluent into waterways) systems that had been under financed when in state hands prior to privatisation.. What a wonderful way in which to blacken the name of private enterprise, to have a government, that favours state control, to assert blame as a result of their own incontinence, the state’s inability to control migration.
Onion ==> Lots of problems with water — our societies have rather short memories and often lack stick-to-itiveness.
In the US, the same northern
MaineVermont towns have flooded three times in the last five years. They cry and cry. But they (the governments) do nothing to mitigate or adapt.If you live by the sea, by far the biggest influence on sea levels are weather patterns such as winds.
If you race yachts across oceans and have to sail “up hill” for hundreds of miles because of prevailing winds that have raised sea levels to the point where they are constantly flowing back “down hill”, you need to become very aware of these ever-changing levels which are often quite inconsistent in their habits.
Drongo ==> It is true we sailors speak of “sailing uphill” — meaning generally into the wind as opposed to cross-wind or downwind.
In my experience, it is not because the “raised sea levels to the point where they are constantly flowing back “down hill””.
Certainly currents exist at sea but they are often independent of, and not primarily caused by, the surface winds.
The best marine charts show prevailing currents and indicate areas where currents are changeable (such as inlets and channels.) The best of modern digital navigation instruments update these in real time.
Sailing with — in the same direction — a strong current can cause a total loss of steerage way — this has happened to us in our 40 foot catamaran, only resolved but firing up the diesels and pushing water across the rudders. The boat ends up sitting in the “same” volume of water — not flow past the rudders — no steering.
Yes Kip, you’re right but, eg, on the east coast of Aus, sailing “downhill” – with the trade winds – is sailing “uphill” into a 4 knot southerly set that is coming from raised sea levels caused by these S E trades.
These trades, blowing consistently against continental shore lines, raise sea levels in many places.
Drongo ==> The EAC flows both ways, depending on the season. But, yes, I certainly agree that sailing into a strong current (as we do heading south in the Gulf Stream off Florida’s east coast) is “uphill sailing”.
Frederikse, et al. 2020 identify the main contributions to sea level rise over the 20th century:
What appears to be an oscillation seems to simply reflect the variability in the main drivers of sea level change.
AlanJ ==> Those are just “guesses” — hypotheses — added to a graph. Nothing wrong with suggesting causes, but that is not the same.
I do think that “Satellite Data” is the CAUSE of the last 20 years of this apples-and-oranges style graph that attaches satellite record to the tide gauge record.
They are not guesses or hypotheses, they are the conclusions of meticulous research:
I recommend you read the paper in question:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2591-3
See also Kjeldsen et al. 2015, Khatiwala et al. 2019, Parkes & Marzeion 2018, and Humphrey & Gudmundsson 2019 as they are the basis for the estimates of the driving contributors to SLR used by Frederikse.
AlanJ ==> I have read Frederikse et al. [2020] many times and used it in my very many Sea Level Rise essays here and elsewhere.
It isn’t that they haven’t done a lot of work and tried to add the guesses up — but in the end, they are just the usual sort of guesses we see in all studies of these types of very complex and complicated problems.
We know what the various contributing factors are. Not even Frederikse claims these are real numbers, real measurements, they are “estimates” derived from hypotheses.
Do you think that Frederikse et al. actually had/have any scientifically reliable data of Terrestrial Water Storage in 1900? Do you have any idea what the TWS hypotheses includes? Such a term is simply UNKNOWABLE back 120 years. Probably unknowable in the present — ask yourself: How would we discover, with any scientifically sound approach, how much water, say in billions of cubic meters, is currently stored in all the soils the the world? in all the lakes? in all the reservoirs? in all the rivers before they reach the seas?
NASA can’t even agree on how much Antarctic Ice is melting (or not) — two wildly different results from the same data from two different NASA Ice Mass groups while Antarctic ice melt is considered a major contributor to SLR.
That’s why I call them guesses. Guesses is what we do in science — we make guesses them try to shoot them down with more and better data and novel ideas of ways to measure the thing we are curious about.
Guesses are good but they are not facts — not conclusions — they are hypotheses.
Their “guesses” explain observations within the bounds of uncertainty, so to refute these estimates, it is necessary not only to provide a valid counter-theory, but to show that the estimates themselves are wrong. Simply noting that they are estimates instead of exact values is not a compelling rebuttal.
You’ll need to refer back to the literature I cited above, and demonstrate why their estimates are incorrect. An argument from incredulity is a form of logical fallacy.
Alan J ==> You read the paper — you’ll see my point –the authors did.
The point is not that “they are wrong” — only that they are guesses — vague estimates — not based on physical data but only based on their hypotheses. This is what you will find if you read their paper and the papers they reference.
Kip. Well done article. By all means do one for the Gulf Coast as well. I’m not so sure about the Pacific Coast, It’s pretty active tectonically. May be awfully noisy. I’ll skip the details, but at the very least I’d consider plotting the tide stations South of Cape Mendocino separately from those North of there as there might be considerable difference in their behavior.
I’m not sure it’s a good idea to infer cyclic behavior from a portion of one possible cycle. It’s awfully easy to see patterns where none actually exist. Likely a lot longer time span is needed and I can’t think where the data would come from. Maybe something in geologist’s isotope data or diatom fossils or something like that. But I can’t think where to look to find the data.
I’d note that most sea level folks think that thermal expansion of the oceans is a major component of SLR and that even the crummy temperature data that’s available shows a (inexplicable?) pause/slight decline in atmospheric temperature in the 1960s/1970s. I suppose it’s possible there was also a shift in regional wind patterns that could affect tide gauges.
don k ==> Of course, this essay is just based on a novel look at the NEUS Tide Gauge records as far back as NOAA provided the comparable data. I certainly
would[this should have been “wouldn’t”] suggest drawing any definite conclusions from it. It falls int the category of “curious and interesting”…kind of “Hmm…look at that.”The purpose of stacking the 50-year rolling bins data was to see if all the stations showed a similar pattern, which they did.
We know there are cycles in the tides but in this essay, we are dealing with “Rate of Relative SLR” which is related but more than slightly different.
I will look at some other areas of the U.S. coast — over the next month or so.
I’m California born and raised, so am familiar with the rising and falling land mass out there.
I’ll look and see what else that “Variation of 50-Year Relative Sea Level Trends” data view shows us.
You make good points.
I skipped through NASA’s “Americas [sic] Sinking East Coast” and noted that NASA referred to our current era as having emerged from an “ice age.” What the NASA writers appear not to know is that the term “ice age” relates to periods where the earth has had essentially permanent ice at its poles. Our current ice age began roughly 35 million years ago when the forested areas of the upper Arctic and the Antarctic continent at the south pole became ice covered, killing the forests of course. The term “glacial age” refers to periods when the polar ice advanced and covered seemingly all of Canada and the northern half of the US and corresponding areas in Europe and Asia and then retreated. Over the past million years, such cycles occurred every 100,000 years and for a million or two years prior to that, the cycles were about 40,000 years long. We are currently enjoying the most recent period of glacial retreat and call it The Holocene. NASA’s reference to the most recent period of glacial advance an “ice age” is simply incorrect. We are in an ice age and have been for roughly 30 million years. Prior to that there was little or no ice at the earth’s poles for vast time periods.
This may appear as a minor issue, a simple lack of attention to detail. But as we know, the devil is in the detail. Consider the two astronauts currently stuck on the space station as a consequence of NASA’s lack of attention to detail. Leaks in certain helium gas circuits in their return vehicle, leaks that were known to exist before they were ever launched, but launched nonetheless, have made their safe return questionable and the consequences very expensive. Let us hope that the ultimate consequences do not involve loss of life. One of NASA’s prime contractors, Boeing who built the troubled spacecraft in question, is a sterling example of the consequences of ignoring details in many of their military and civilian programs in recent decades as we know. Is NASA declining the same way?
Denis ==> Language is tricky — I know I write different words when speaking to different audiences.
I’m afraid the “man-in-the-street” doesn’t know we are still in an ice age….
Yes, and IMHO has been since about the beginning of the Space Shuttle program, when they mostly abandoned their exceptionally skill set as scientists, systems engineers, and top-level program managers and transitioned to becoming field operational engineers (STS and ISS deployments) and DEI specialists and politicians.
Just look at the NASA’s identified human goals for the Artemis 3 mission, the embarrassing-to-date Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, and NASA’s plans to deorbit (destroy) the International Space Station* sometime around 2030, only six years from now.
*The ISS is the most expensive single object ever built (https://www.pbs.org/spacestation/station/issfactsheet.htm ) with a total cost estimate of $150 billion USD as of 2010 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station_programme ) and an estimated maintenance, resupply and improvement cost of $3–4 billion USD per year since then. Adjusting for inflation, today ISS represents a total sunk cost of about $270 billion USD.
I read the reference that upcountrywater provided to an NPR article on sea level rise and the dangers to Lahaina, Hawaii. Good old NPR. Always a reliable source of misinformation on climate issues.
Kip,
Slightly off-topic this because it refers to the Mediterranean but I recently had cause to look at sea levels in the Ionian Sea (Greek island coastlines). It came about because a hopelessly green neighbour of mine claimed that locals were noticing a decreasing coastal sea level over some years (undefined). Now, of course the usual mantra is that sea levels are rising so how could this come about? “The sea is evaporating due to the extreme heatwaves hitting the Med” came the hopeful gist of the reply. Well, I knew that Mediterranean temperatures are not actually trending hotter (it always was bloody hot in the Mediterranean summer!) and it seemed a daft idea anyway. So, what was the answer? Well, in very brief and basic summary, it turns out that the Mediterranean oceanography is complex due to the near closing off of Atlantic currents at the Straights of Gibraltar combined with odd geography. Essentially, a series of sub-basins is created, with systems such as the North Ionian Gyre. Further, the oceanic circulation within this gyre has periodically reversed – anti- to clockwise and back again (reason not fully understood). Every time this happens, a sea level rise or fall ensues in the Ionian Sea. And, yes, the sea level in the relevant areas has been falling (slightly but I digress) for the last few years.
My point is that, as ever, these are complex areas of science and we have a lot more to understand – and that’s even without bringing tectonics into the equations.
Hope you found this interesting. Google North Ionian Gyre sea level or similar and you’ll find a number of relevant papers.
Sorry, Strait of Gibraltar. Doh!
magesox ==> I do find it interesting — never sailed the Med though was a mariner in and around Iberia/Western North Africa/Eastern Tropical Atlantic.
May give the topic a look….
It’s so-called Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, which should better be called global (multidecadal) temperature oscillation or just global temperature. It oscillates at all timescales.
this ridiculous article aboutclimate change causig sea level rise;
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd1x52n43dwo
except this is the coast in 2013 and then the coast in 2023 (dates may be a bit out).
Ive never seen such a typical exmaple of coastal erosion. you can even see the waves reflecting / refracting into the new bay.
sorry, first photo went missing. 2013