A recent New York Post (NYP) article, “Scary Map Reveals Major Coastal Cities Rapidly Sinking into Sea”, reports that a study from NASA claims that several major coastal cities are sinking at alarming rates due to a combination of land subsidence and rising sea levels. The NYP specifically mentions sea level problems in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other cities, suggesting that their problems are due to a combination of subsidence and rising seas, the latter exacerbated by climate change. The latter point is misleading. Land subsidence is a well-documented problem in some cities, largely driven by local human activities such as groundwater extraction, poor urban planning, and natural geological processes. Subsidence is not due to climate change. However, despite NASA’s claim, long-term sea-level rise trend data does not support claims that seas are rising at historically unusual rates. In fact, seas have been rising at a modest and steady rate for over a century, with no significant acceleration linked to human-caused emissions.
“In many parts of the world, like the reclaimed ground beneath San Francisco, the land is moving down faster than the sea itself is going up,” writes Marin Govorcin, the lead author of the NASA study. who specializes in remote sensing at NASA’s Propulsion Laboratory.”
Commenting on the study, Alexander Handwerger, another researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said, “The speed is more than enough to put human life and infrastructure at risk.”
“Accounting for this descent, sea levels — which are on the rise due to climate change — could creep up more than twice as much as previously forecast in Los Angeles and San Francisco in 25 years,” the NYP commented, but the key to the statement and the study itself is land subsidence, not rising seas.
Land subsidence is a localized issue caused primarily by excessive groundwater extraction, infrastructure issues, sediment compaction, and tectonic shifts. Climate change is not a factor in subsidence.
The study, published in Science Advances, cites short term data from satellites to imply that global sea-level rise is accelerating, an implication the NYP fails to question. However, real-world tide gauge data does not support this claim.
Long-term records from tide gauges—considered the gold standard for measuring local sea-level changes—show no evidence of unusual acceleration.
For example, NOAA’s tide gauge data from New York City’s Battery Park station, which has recorded sea levels since 1856, shows a steady rise of about 2.85 millimeters per year—a rate that has remained consistent for more than a century. This aligns closely with global tide gauge records, which show that average sea levels have been rising at a rate of 1-3 millimeters per year since the 1800s. Importantly, this gradual rise is not accelerating, despite increasing CO₂ emissions over the past several decades. See Figure 1 below:
Similarly, tide gauges in San Francisco show a steady sea level rise trend that is even lower than that found in New York City. (See Figure 2, below)
Los Angeles’s rate of sea level rise, shown in Figure 3 below, is lower and slower still.
These three tide gauges from cities mentioned in the NYP article show no short- or long-term acceleration in sea level rise. Globally, in fact, there is little if any acceleration of sea level rise as data presented in Climate at a Glance: Sea Level Rise, demonstrates. Even if recent increases in the rate of rise recorded by some satellites are fully attributable to man-made climate change, it adds only 0.3 inch per decade more to the preexisting historic trend, and is still lower than the rate of rise that has occurred across many periods since the Earth entered its most recent interglacial 18,000 to 12,000 years before present.
Recent modest sea level trends contradict claims that climate change is making sea levels rise at “scary” and accelerated rates. In fact, multiple studies have shown that sea-level rise has remained relatively constant since the end of the Little Ice Age in the 19th century, here, here, here, and here, for example. If greenhouse gas emissions were truly driving an acceleration, we would expect to see a sharp upward trend in tide gauge records over the past 50 years—but we don’t.
A 2022 study highlighted in Climate Realism found that media claims of accelerating sea-level rise are often based on cherry-picked satellite data that fails to align with ground-based tide gauge measurements.
By conflating land subsidence with sea-level rise, all too often media outlets like the NYP mislead the public into believing that climate change is primarily or even solely responsible for coastal flooding threats. This is scientifically inaccurate and distracts from the real issues with subsidence that cities face. By focusing their efforts on the causes of land subsidence, such as ground water extraction issues, and compaction of unstable soil and fill used to add land to city oceanfront, rather than being distracted by the minimal or non-existent role greenhouse gas emissions are having in on sea level rise, policy makers could have far more direct and substantial impact on preventing flooding and losses.
The New York Post got the story half right. Its reporting would have been better had it eschewed any mention of climate change as a factor in the problems facing certain coastal cities.
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.
Originally posted at ClimateREALISM.
Obviously, groundwater management has much more to do with relative sea level rise than greenhouse gasses.
The desire to “do something” usually involves pure virtue signaling.
Ground water? Sometimes perhaps (like Norfolk, VA) but not for The Battery at the tip of Manhattan. The tide gauge there shows a steady rise of about 3 mm/year in relative sea level and a colocated GPS elevation gauge shows a sinking of about half that. The tide gauge is mounted on bedrock to avoid a groundwater/soil-compaction problem but is sinking nonetheless. This is a geological phenomena. The bedrock is sinking. Since the tide gauge shows a steady rise since before Abe Lincoln was president, the GPS gauge, operating only since about 2010 showing steady sinking, the data suggests that the tip of Manhattan has been sinking at least since about 1850.
For a real eye opener look at Manila, The Philippines, relative tide gauge. It shows a very steady sea level up to the early 1960s then a sudden knee at about 1962 leading to a continuing very rapid rise. That cannot be groundwater. The change is so sudden and so large that must be geologic activity. The moral: Do not buy a house on Manila’s waterfront. Also check the tide gauge and GPS gauges for Santa Barbara, California. The GPS gauge shows rapid translational movement of the land on the order of nearly 1 meter in 25 years. Geology has a lot to say about relative sea level.
Go to PSMSL.org to see tide gauge and GPS data, where it is available, at each of thousands of coastal sites. Observe elevation changes as well as horizontal translations shown by clicking the buttons on the bottom of the charts. In their sea level info charts, NOAA shows just the relative tide gauge data but not the GPS elevation data, perhaps so as to limit knowledge of the powerful geologic phenomena affecting sea levels relative to the elevation of the Earth’s surface, up and down, while preserving the Democratically correct perspective that it really CO2 that’s doing it all.
In that part of the country (northeast US) located near and just south of the southern limit of the ice sheet at the peak of the most recent glaciation, there remains an ongoing rebound effect in the Earth’s crust due to the retreat of the ice sheet. Under the ice sheet the crust was depressed, but just outside the sheet boundary the crust rose, similar to sitting or lying on a water bed causes the area beyond your body to rise. The retreat of the glacier caused the crust underneath to rebound upward, while the adjacent crust to the south rebounds downward. It’s very well documented.
Obviously they never ever make the “mistake” to attribute sinking sea levels in Finland and Sweden to climate change/global cooling.
Then they get it ALWAYS right that geological factors are the reason.
I wonder why mistakes and coincidences always happen in favor of the great narrative.
Subsidence of coastal cities, most often due to removal of water from underlying aquifers, was a topic in my first year engineering geology course at UBC in 1966. Now it is some kind of a new discovery. What happened in between?
The sea level rise ‘flooding’ MSM periodically screams about in Miami Beach is just two things:
Withdrawal of water in the Biscayne aquifer is not causing any significant reduction in water table levels and therefore can have no effect on ground subsidence. The water table in Miami-Dade and Broward Co remains constant and within a few feet of the land surface as it is naturally replenished by annual rainfall of 62 inches in and around the area results in groundwater naturally flowing towards the Atlantic, subject to seasonal variations.
Whatever subsidence that occurs in that area is due either to crustal movement (relatively minor in that area) or due to long term consolidation of fill (due to surface loading from development). Much of the area immediately bordering Biscayne Bay was built on dredged sediments from the bay in the first half of the 20th century. High quality dredge materials consisting mostly of sand and silt will not consolidate much. But wherever dredge material had a high fraction of organic material the organics will biodegrade and oxidize causing significant consolidation. As a result observed subsidence in Miami is highly localized, depending on the quality of fill material used in developing the property.
From the above; article:
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There’s this below, a very tight distribution showing that acceleration of sea level rise is a very small 0.01 mm/year² of sea level rise. IF that were to continue, in 100 years the rate of sea level rise MIGHT ” increase by 1 mm/year.
Is it even possible to measure 0.01 mm increase of sea level rise?
Especially from satellites 20000 miles away?
Even high precision tools have a higher tolerance than that.
Colorado University’s Sea Level Research Group C-SLRG
says acceleration of sea level rise is 0.083 mm/yr² which is
pretty much a crock.
I’ve never understood this–can one find a university farther from an ocean in the US to study sea level rise than one in Colorado?
It would help if they organised faculty excursions to the seaside to observe first hand the seaside level ‘rise. As much as the modern day meteorologists should look out of the window now and again.
Like economists, who need to be a long ways away from being unable to afford a loaf of bread to understand the economy….sea level science needs to be studied from the high mountains of Colorado.
There are two types of precision or error in any data consisting of instrument measurements: instrument error or precision, and statistical error or precision. The latter can be reduced by collecting many measurements of the same population, thus reducing the standard deviation as used in other statistical calculations.Satellites can collect millions of measurements of the same sea surface elevation and produce an extremely precise estimate of the measurement value (such as the aforementioned plus or minus 0.01 mm), but that does nothing to affect instrument error precision.
In addition to instrument and statistical error and precision, the actual variance of the subject population also obscures any real world understanding of the underlying performance of that population. Anybody who does not account for the known vertical displacement of seawater on a continuous basis due to locally random conditions is bullshitting us.
Satellite elevation measurements of sea level simply cannot be precise on the order of only 0.01 mm, even if the ocean surface elevation is static, which of course it is not. The best precision of GPS-based elevation measurements of fixed land or structure surfaces (unlike sea surfaces that constantly change by constantly variable amounts due to wave action, tides, and currents, and winds) can be as little as 0.1ft (roughly 30 mm) … but such is only achievable using ground based radio error correction, on local (not remote) measurement instruments of the satellite data, which is not available to sat-based sea level measurements.
So all claims of anything remotely close to 0.01 mm, or even 1 meter precision, for continuous sea level measurements across all oceans is simply engineering bullshit. In the same way that a supposed “world average air temperature” can be measured, or has any meaning.
I used to be involved in performance testing of distillation, refrigeration, and heat exchange systems. The goal was to prove the equipment performed so that sometimes millions of dollars of “holdback” could be released to the contractor. I used to be in awe of how our very accurate test gear could be affected by other phenomena that hadn’t been considered…wind, barometric pressure, eddies in fluid flow, sun shining on insulation….temperature equipment was especially prone to being “accurate” within a couple of degrees, though the sensors themselves were supposed to be accurate to a few thousandths of a degree.
Clearly sea level is falling.
Beautiful example of simple glacial isostatic rebound.
Along the US east coast, everything north of the Battery is significantly rebounding (Boston, MA), and everything south is slumping in response (Norfolk VA) as the continental crust levels out. Why the Battery is such a useful tide gauge despite no dGPS correction. Doesn’t have a lot of vertical land motion needing adjustment
Does not the GPS elevation gauge colocated with The Battery relative tide gauge suggest that about half of the observed relative rise is due to sinking? Seems so to me. That such a correction has not been applied is a different issue.
Two separate strongly supporting factoids.
The BBC has run climate refugee stories for just about every sinking/eroding delta in the world;Ganges, Mekong, Mississippi etc.
Just lately the climate propagandists have been producing a series of articles deliberately muddying the distinction between rapidly sinking land and tiny sea level rises to spin a climate scare story.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14463477/Alexandria-sinking-rising-sea-levels-climate-change.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14486497/scientists-chilling-warning-hawaii-sinking-faster-expected.html
It is what they do. Fun geological factoid. Hawaii is subsiding on its coasts only because its active volcanos are growing weight in the interior. The older the island in the chain (no more active volcanoes), the slower the subsidence to near zero.
Good report and data, both in report and comments. However, there is another important aspect of East Coast subsidence. It was reported in the old Journal of Irreproducible Results (founded in Israel in 1950’s) that the tendency of personas on the East Coast of the US to subscribed to and collect all issues of the National Geographic (remember Aghan Girl and Koko Gets a Kitten?). The accumulation was of such extent that the accumulated weight produced subsidence, and this was proven by complex (and a little mysterious) long strings of differential equations. Isn’t science wonderful?
Ten points, Ron.
The rising sea level scare is driven by the usual suspects, i.e. climate models. The tidal gauges also serve to rebut the models’ exaggerations. For example, the Battery station at NYC shows this:
Other projected rises at SF and elsewhere are similarly out of bounds.
Full report:
https://rclutz.com/2024/02/01/observed-vs-imagined-sea-levels-2023-update/
Very nice Anthony, good information.
A Geology Prof at Univ. Prince Edward Island, Canada published in the 1950’s about coastal region Post Glacial rebound in an arc from P.E.I. south to just past New York. The massive weight of glaciers just to the interior caused crustal subsidence, and the coastal regions to rise. To illustrate, take an empty paint can and put a rubber sheet just bigger than he diameter of the can over the top. Press down slightly in the middle of the sheet. and the edges just outside the can top will rise. The reverse happens very slowly when the Glacial mass melts.
The satellite data is even worse then you indicated.
The altimeters have gotten better but Topex/Poseidon/Jason’s 1, 2 and 3 at best have a margin of error of 1.3 inches (3 CM)
How do they claim a 3 MM rise in sea level with an device that is only accurate to 30 MM
Los Angeles 34ºN, Sydney 34ºS, but on opposites sides of the massive Pacific Ocean..
… have almost exactly the same small rate of sea level rise.
The old ‘water seeks its own level’ bathtub principle—Pacific being a really big bathtub.
.
I even wrote a brief footnote critique in ebook Blowing Smoke of a peer reviewed journal article claiming the northern hemisphere SLR was twice the southern. Peer reviewers did not even understand bathtubs in their zealotry to report climate disasters.
That would be quite a seiche which I’ve seen in estuaries and may also happen seasonally in the Gulf of Mexico. Dictionary says they “occur in landlocked waters.” I get the impression that this is still relevant. “It seems to me to be evident that the position of a shoreline at any time and place is determined by an exceedingly complicated equation….” Shaler, N. S. 1895. Evidences as to change of sealevel. Bulletin of the Geological Society of America. 6:141-166. I find that old works work better but that may be bias.
Montgomery, R. B. 1938. Fluctuations in monthly sea level on eastern U. S. coast as related to dynamics of western North Atlantic Ocean. Journal of Marine Research. 1(2):165-185.
Clearly, the solution is to pump water from the ocean, remove the salt, and transport to an interior basin and inject it into a deep void. Sea level will go down and the coastal areas are saved from catastrophic demise. “Peak Salt” will be avoided. 😉🤣
Marine fossils are found at altitudes in excess of 6000 m. The land rose.
Land based fossil remains are found over 6000 m below sea level. The land fell.
How much rise and fall are people concerned about now? Do they imagine that sea basins don’t change their shape? Sea floors go up and down, too.
If your city sinks, you’ll have to move, just like the inhabitants of other sunken cities did.
Or build a new one, like the Venetians. Make sure to include drain holes to let the sea water out after big tides. Problem solved!
Unfortunately, the Venetians opened up more channels in the coastal barrier and dredged the existing channels, to allow larger container ships access to the nearby harbour. End result is that Venice now floods more readily, with higher flood levels.
Been there, done that.
The Dutch offered to build a 500 -1000 year dike, but the Italians like the tourist attraction to be flooded.
Richard Gere moved to Portugal to get away from seawater rise due to MAGA
I have a sinking feeling!
I’ve read many articles which claim that global sea levels were about 120-130 metres lower than today, during the time of the last glacial maximum about 20,000 years ago.
If one divides the lower estimate of 120,000 mm (120 metres) by 20,000, one gets an average seal-level rise of 6mm per year during the past 20,000 years, which is at least double the current rate of sea-level rise.
Of course, there will have been periods during those past 20,000 years when sea-level rise was much less than 6mm per year, and other periods when SLR was much greater than 6mm per year.
This puts into historical perspective the claimed SLR of 2-3mm per year during the past century, which shouldn’t be at all worrying.
There is a very famous SLR proxy chart from many locations available via Wikipedia (I know). Shows zero SLR up to about 18tya, then up to 30mm/yr until about 10tya, then very slow since.
The maximum rate of SLR during the Eemian (and happened twice) was about 3mm/year. Plus there is at least one provable academic misconduct paper showing a ‘sudden rise above this level then. Problem is, it confounds an earthquake on Quobba Ridge proven in figures one with the sudden SLR tipping point rise ‘proof’ in figure 2—except figure 2, per the SI, is only Quobba Ridge.
This one?
Yes, that one with attributions added.
Does anybody ever directly respond accordingly to the relevant media by way of an opinion piece or ‘Letter to the Editor’ ?
Yes, most don’t get published, but if they are, they’ll be ‘moderated’, any references are removed & often there’s an editor’s note to say that the data provided can’t be verified.!!!
To cherry pick in the extreme, Fig. 1 seems to show a recent sea level drop to levels not seen since the 1940’s….But practically this just shows the numbers generated by our measurement gear just don’t show much compared to actual waves and tides….
Lying Leftist liars just got to lie. DOGE needs to get rid of the ideological activists embedded in the Deep State agencies.
The diagram showing subsidence at “6 – 100 mm/yr” is particularly scary and misleading, particularly the “100 mm/yr”. What part of any city is subsiding at 100 mm/yr, or about 4 inches per year? Such a huge subsidence rate would likely cause foundations of buildings to crack, similar to the subsidence which caused the Tower of Pisa to lean.
This should not be a problem in New York City, which has been heavily urbanized with tall buildings for over a century, largely built on bedrock, and the only buildings to have collapsed were due to collision with airplanes (9/11/2001).
San Francisco is so hilly that a relative sea level rise would only affect a very small land area. Subsidence could occur due to a nearby earthquake along the San Andreas fault, but that has nothing to do with “climate change”.
Miami, on the other hand, is rather flat, and is vulnerable to flooding due to short-term storm surge from hurricanes, but not so much from long-term sea level rise. After the recent collapse of a condominium tower in calm weather, the State of Florida has required structural inspections of the foundations of all condominium towers along the coast.