“The quadratic extrapolation used in the 2018 Nerem et al. paper is considered scientifically acceptable as a descriptive diagnostic to detect current acceleration, but it is not intended to be a definitive physical projection of future sea levels.

While fitting a curve to 25 years and extending it for 80 is often criticized in statistics, the authors used it primarily as a ““thought experiment”” to demonstrate that observed satellite data is already tracking with high-end climate models.”