Note to Australian Broadcasting Corporation News, Pacific Island Sea Level Projections Are Wrong

A September 26^th article on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) website, titled “Sea level rise inevitable for Pacific Islands despite future greenhouse gas emissions reduction, NASA finds,” suggests that small island nations are doomed to disappear beneath the waves regardless of any actions to prevent climate change. The claim is both erroneous and irrelevant. Erroneous because actual data show sea level rise (SLR) on Kiribati and other island nations to be far lower than the projections from NASA. Irrelevant because it has been documented that many Pacific Islands have actually been growing in size and adding land mass over time.

“Pacific Island nations such as Tuvalu, Kiribati, and Fiji will experience at least 20 centimeters of sea level rise in the next 30 years regardless of whether greenhouse gas emissions change in the short term, according to new research from NASA,” says ABC.

A quick inspection of Kiribati’s tide gauge data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows this to be false.

Simple math shows what the value will be in 30 years: 2.34mm/year X 30 years = 70.2mm or 7.02 centimeters, about a third of the NASA projection of 20 centimeters in 30 years. Based on tide gauge data for Tuvalu and for Fiji, estimated SLR for 30 years is also far lower than what NASA predicts, a prediction uncritically parroted by ABC.

The reason for the disparity is that the scientific tool NASA used to make its projection is the Pacific Flood Analysis Tool, using model projections instead of actual data. The website says this:

The latest generation of global climate models are used to account for the global-mean thermosteric and ocean dynamic regional sea level rise and similar methods are used for assessing vertical land motion contributions as in past reports. The IPCC AR6 incorporates multiple methods of projecting future ice-sheet changes, which are the major sources of future sea level rise and pose the biggest source of uncertainty in projecting the timing and magnitude of future possible rise amounts. (emphasis mine)

Clearly, NASA used the climate models from the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6). However, it is telling that when you first visit the Pacific Flood Analysis Tool website, there’s a pop-up message with this disclaimer:

Disclaimer: The NASA Pacific Flooding Analysis Tool provides a scientific assessment of potential flooding frequency and extent due to sea-level rise based on peer-reviewed techniques. The results are provided without warranty of any kind.

Of course, the fact that NASA must put such a broad caveat of “no warranty” on the highly uncertain SLR projections was lost on ABC, who wrote about it as if it were fact.

Climate Realism has written multiple times about the fact that the sixth generation of climate models (CMIP6) used in AR6 are erroneous because they run too hot, creating future projections that have no reasonable basis when compared to actual data.

These climate models produce “implausibly hot forecasts of future warming,” resulting in SLR projections that are wildly erroneous.

But all of that is irrelevant, because Climate Realism has regularly exposed false claims about Pacific islands sinking due to SLR. As far back as October 2020, articles such as New Climate Summary: Islands Not Losing Land or People to Sea Level Rise clearly show such claims to be wrong.

For example, climate activists often claim the island nation of Tuvalu is shrinking due to rising seas. However, a recent peer-reviewed study found eight out of Tuvalu’s nine coral atolls have grown in size during recent decades, and 3/4ths of Tuvalu’s 101 reef islands have similarly grown in size.

Additional peer-reviewed studies (see here, here, and here) confirm the same processes are allowing – and will continue to allow – other Pacific islands to keep up with rising seas. A full summary of this island growth in the face of rising seas is posted at climateataglance.com in: Islands and Sea Level Rise.

ABC failed miserably when it comes to doing basic journalistic research for this story. The fact that no fact check was even attempted is so egregious, one must wonder if it is purposeful, rather than just an indication of incompetence. A paragraph at the very bottom their story suggests it may be purposeful.

“While scientists say rising sea levels will bring significant impacts to Pacific Island nations, some research has shown hundreds of islands in the Pacific are growing in land size due to sediment, corals and other debris being washed ashore,” ABC grudgingly acknowledges.

There it is. ABC evidently trusts computer model outputs over real world data. It seems that ABC, just like many other media outlets, downplays any good news about climate and focuses almost exclusively on the bad news to further the climate crisis narrative.

Anthony Watts

Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business both in front of, and behind the camera as an on-air television meteorologist since 1978, and currently does daily radio forecasts. He has created weather graphics presentation systems for television, specialized weather instrumentation, as well as co-authored peer-reviewed papers on climate issues. He operates the most viewed website in the world on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.

This post originally appeared at ClimateREALISM