Satellite and gauge data have different trends.
Dip into the posts here to understand more of the questions, challenges and controversies.
Sea level Rise Review. Rate Of Rise Depends On Who You Ask. Most Say: “No Alarm”
In the latest video, German climate science site Die kalte Sonne here presents a review of sea level rise.
No one disagrees that sea level is rising. But there’s plenty of disagreement on how fast it’s really rising. Tide gauges According to the direct tide gauge measurements, sea level rise has been modest and the rate of rise has changed very little over the past decades. Since 1990, the rate of rise as measured by tide gauges has increased modestly, but overall the rate of rise as been steady at a rather tame 2.09 mm/year.
Satellite measurement According satellite altimetry, whose sensor measurements have to be computed, the mean sea level (MSL) rise has been rising faster, at about 3.3 mm/yr and accelerating somewhat: Because satellites don’t measure directly and use a complex computation to reach a result, the figure is fraught with uncertainty, says Die kalte Sonne. Rahmstorf In December 2020, Potsdam Climate Institute climate alarmist Prof. Only 1.5 mm/year. “Acceleration” in Sea-Level Rise Found to Be False – An artifact of Switching Satellites. By Paul Homewood From Climate Realism: One of the most common arguments climate alarmists make is that rate of sea-level rise is “accelerating” or rising faster every year.
Sea-level data reported from satellites indicate seas are rising approximately of 3.3 mm/year (See Figure 1). By contrast, tidal stations have recorded a rise of approximately 1 to 2 mm annually, a rate which is little changed over the century or so for which we have adequate records. Indeed, as reported in Climate at a Glance: Sea Level Rise, the oldest tide gauge in the USA, in New York City, shows no acceleration at all going back to 1850. Why the large difference? The answer it turns out is simple. Figure 1. Citizen scientist Willis Eschenbach obtained NOAA’s Excel spreadsheet showing the full dataset for each of the four satellites.
Figure 2. Full post here. Like this: Like Loading... We’re Not Gonna Drown! Analyses Show COASTAL SEA LEVEL RISE Is Only 1.69 mm Per Year! UPDATE: Sea level rise near the coasts where people actually live is found to be 1.69 mm/yr.
But when crunching the data for the entire ocean, as Willis Eschenbach has shown, a figure of just 1.52 mm/year is computed. Hot shot data analyst Zoe Phin at her site examines sea level rise. There she notes, “Climate alarmists are worried that the sea level is rising too fast and flooding is coming soon. You can find many data images like this on the net:” New Study: Sea Level Rise Rates The Same Since 1958 As They Were For All Of 1900-2018 – Watts Up With That?
From Pierre L.
Gosselin’s NoTricksZone By Kenneth Richard on 11. January 2021. Sea Level Rise Is Accelerating (If You Ignore Pre 1970 Data!) By Paul Homewood This has to go down as one of the most fraudulent climate studies yet!
Want to know how sea level in your area is changing due to global warming and other factors? Our ‘report cards’ can help. Updated by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science each year as annual tide-gauge data become available, they display recent sea-level trends and project sea-level height to the year 2050 for 32 localities along the U.S. East, Gulf, West, and Alaskan coasts. Accelerating The Acceleration. Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach I see that the merchants of hype are at it again.
The scary headline says “Report: Sea-level rise ‘accelerating’ along U.S. coasts, including in the Bay Area“. And in the text, it says “The Bay Area was home to two of those stations: one in Alameda and one in San Francisco, which both recorded a year-over-year rise.” Of course, they blamed the usual suspect, global warming. SEA LEVEL: Rise and Fall – Part 5: Bending the Trend. Guest Essay by Kip Hansen — 9 February 2020 USA Today shouts: “Rise in sea levels is accelerating along U.S. coasts, report warns”.
Many other media outlets have repeated the story: The Guardian, The Hill, and U.S. News and World Report. A Geological Perspective on Sea Level Rise Acceleration. Guest geological perspective by David Middleton There have been at least three recent peer-reviewed papers asserting an anthropogenic acceleration in the rate of sea level rise (SLR): Church & White, 2006 (CW06), Church & White, 2011 (CW11) and Nerem et al., 2018 (N18).
N18 only covers the satellite era (since 1993) and might actually be correct, albeit irrelevant. The primary culprits in the SLR acceleration scam are CW06 and CW11. Two other recent peer-reviewed papers clearly shoot down the notion of a recent anthropogenic acceleration: Jevrejeva et al., 2008 (J08) and Jevrejeva et al., 2014 (J14). This post will focus on CW11 (updated through 2013) and J14. J08 and J14 indicate that the acceleration, to the extent there is one, started 150-200 years ago, consistent with the end of neoglaciation and that a quasi-periodic fluctuation (~60-yr cycle) is present. Sea Level Rise ‘Alarmist Agitprop’ Guest post by Rud Istvan Fabius Maximus alerted Charles the Moderator to a new alarming ‘agitprop’ paper in Nature Communications (here) concerning global warming induced sea level rise (SLR).
Since I previously contributed to WUWT on SLR and its lack of acceleration, CtM asked if I would provide a guest post reviewing this new SLR paper. I read it and explain below why you don’t have to. The post title is h/t to Fabius Maximus’ alerting email to CtM. Sum-Of-Contributor Evidence Shows Global Sea Levels Have Recently Been Rising. In recent decades, the Earth’s seas have been rising at a rate of under 0.8 mm/year (8 cm per century) according to estimations of the sum of contributions to sea level rise.
In contrast, sea levels rose at rates of more than 40 mm/year ~10,000 years ago. Relative sea level rise can be calculated using observations from the sum of contributing sources: 1) terrestrial water storage, 2) thermal expansion (warming), and 3) glacier and ice sheet melt. As the above image illustrates, the peer-reviewed scientific literature suggests the total contribution to sea level rise for recent decades can be calculated as about 0.8 mm/yr, or 8 cm (~3 inches) per century. Terrestrial water storage: -0.55 to -0.71 mm/yr (Chao et al., 2008, Reager et al., 2016)Thermal expansion: 0.64 mm/yr (Llovel et al., 2014)Glacier and ice sheet melt: 0.76 mm/yr (Frederikse et al., 2018) Image Source: Nirgi et al., 2019 Image Source: Donoghue, 2011 Image Source: Zecchin et al., 2015 Image Source: Ivanovic et al., 2017.
New Policy Brief Shows No Evidence of Accelerated Sea-Level Rise. Via press release: A new Policy Brieffrom The Heartland Institute shows there is no evidence of acceleration in the rise of global sea levels since the 1920s and concludes the U.N. World’s 76 Best Tide Gauges (100+ Years Of Data) Show A Mean 0.34 mm/yr Rise, ‘Negligible’ Acceleration. By Kenneth Richard on 20. June 2019 A new scientific paper affirms “all the long-term-trend (LTT) tide gauges of the world consistently show a negligible acceleration since the time they started recording in the late 1800s/early 1900s” and there is “no sign of climate models predicted sharply warming and accelerating sea level rise.” Image Source: Boretti, 2019 An accurate determination of sea level rise acceleration trends requires at least 100 years of data due to the natural (60- to 80-year) oscillations that could bias the results depending on the start and end dates.
There are 88 world tide gauges with a record length of at least 100 years in the psmsl.org data base. The average rate of rise for these 76 global-scale tide gauges is just 0.337 millimeters per year (mm/yr), and the acceleration is a “negligible” 0.007 mm/yr². CA sea level rise alarmist study ignores 30 years of NOAA data with no coastal sea level rise acceleration. False sea level alarm. Global warming’s asserted impact on the oceans – and especially sea level rise – took center stage in last week’s House climate hearings.
Democrats repeatedly hammered the message that global warming is causing sea level rise to accelerate, with catastrophic results this century if we don’t act immediately to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The hearings called to mind a sea level rise paper climate scientist Judith Curry published in November 2018. The paper shows there has been no acceleration in sea level rise in recent decades, eviscerating the claims of alarmists. Among Curry’s key findings: Sea Level and Effective N. Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach Over in the Tweeterverse, I said I wasn’t a denier, and I challenged folks to point out what they think I deny. Brandon R. Gates took up the challenge by claiming that I denied that sea level rise is accelerating.
I replied: Brandon, IF such acceleration exists it is meaninglessly tiny. Accelerating Sea Level Fraud In Climate Science. Climate scientists say sea level rise rates have increased from 1.4 mm/year to more than 3 mm/year, and that it is the fastest rate in 2,800 years. Seas are now rising faster than they have in 2,800 years, scientists say – The Washington Post This is in direct contradiction to the 1990 IPCC report, which said there was no convincing evidence of an acceleration of sea level rise during the 20th century. 1990 IPCC Report So how did this magical doubling of sea level rise rates occur?
Prior to 1993, tide gauges were exclusively used to measure sea level. The Most Important Sea Level Graph. Latest excuse: 'Pinatubo eruption masked sea level acceleration in satellite record' Inside The Acceleration Factory. Changes in the Rate of Sea Level Rise. Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach There’s been some discussion of the rate of sea level rise lately, so I thought I’d take a look at some underlying data. I started with a 2016 paper by the modern master of failed serial doomcasting, James Hansen.
It has the frightening title of “Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations that 2°C global warming could be dangerous” … yikes! Antarctica And Greenland Melt Accelerating, Study Claims. By P Gosselin on 9. The fantasy of accelerating sea level rise just got hosed. We’ve been told over an over again that global warming would melt the icecaps, and melt Greenland, and that would result in catastrophic sea level rise flooding cities. We’ve also been told that “sea level rise is “accelerating” but in an investigation done here on WUWT by Willis Eschenbach, Putting the Brakes on Acceleration, he noted in 2011 that there seems to be no evidence of it at all, and notes that sea level was rising faster in the first half of the record.
Figure 1. Is The Rate Of Sea Level Rise Accelerating? By Paul Homewood. Claim: Global Sea Level Rise is Accelerating. There’s been a lot of buzz about this new paper from Nerem et al (see link in references below) where they claim to find global sea level rise acceleration over the past 25 years. I provide this article from NASA Earth Observatory for context for some posts that are coming later. Adjustments to data figure greatly into these new claims. more on that later. For now, have a look at this image below. Notice anything peculiar? Acquired 1992 – 2014 download large image (17 MB, PNG, 5911×2956) Latest Data Show NO SEA LEVEL RISE ACCELERATION Since 1993. World Leading Ocean Expert Calls Sea Level Rise Claims By Climate Scientists “Anti-Scientific Nonsense” Renowned Sea Level Expert: “NO TRACES OF A PRESENT RISE IN SEA LEVEL; On The Contrary: Full Stability”
German Review: Sea Level Rise Way Below Projections – No Hard Basis For Claims Of Accelerating Rise. Latest Data Show NO SEA LEVEL RISE ACCELERATION Since 1993…Coasts: Less Than 2 Millimeters Rise Annually! Reality vs. Theory: Scientists Affirm ‘Recent Lack Of Any Detectable Acceleration’ In Sea Level Rise. Pacific Ocean Tide Gauges Of 100+ Years: ‘Both The Relative Rate Of Rise And Acceleration Are Negative’ Sea Level and Effective N. Vital Signs.