NASA Scientists Paint Stark Picture of Accelerating Sea Level Rise

A NASA panel yesterday announced widely reported finding that global sea levels have risen about three inches since 1992, and that these levels are expected to keep rising as much as several more feet over the next century -- on the upper end of model-based predictions that have been made so far. From the Sydney Morning Herald piece linked above: NASA says Greenland has lost an average of 303 gigatons [of ice] yearly for the past decade. Since it takes 360 gigatons to raise sea level by a millimetre, that would suggest Greenland has done this about eight times over just in the last 10 years or so. "People need to be prepared for sea level rise," said Joshua Willis, an oceanographer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge. "It's not going to stop."

Comments

Re:3mm is the key

[Camel Pilot]

http://www.skepticalscience.co...

Scroll down to figure 3... "Global mean sea level from 1870 to 2006 with one standard deviation error"

What is the first thing that you notice about the character of this plot? Is is linear? Does your statement make sense from what you know of trends and basic algerbra?

measured data [Re:Oversimplification]

[Geoffrey.landis]

Scientists dumb down data so science magazines can understand. Mainstream media further simplifies for the general population to understand. Even the summary states that this guestimation is based on a different guestimation of how many gigatons of ice have melted. If 360 gigatons of ice on land melt, it is estimated that it will raise the sea level by 1 mm. However, if the ice is already in the sea, it won't raise the sea level. The dumbed down story doesn't say how much of the missing ice was already in the ocean vs on the land, so we can't use numbers to say that sea level has risen 8mm over that decade.

The 303 gigaton number was for Greenland ice. Greenland ice is on land.

Since we are talking about NASA, why don't they measure the actual sea level instead of playing this numbers game?

They do. Read the linked articles. These are satellite measurements of sea level.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/n...
http://www.nasa.gov/risingseas...

Re:It's not happening

[Anonymous Coward]

La la la let's pretend that the sea level's rising is some kind of modern phenomena and has not been increasing steadily for thousands of years.

Re:3mm is the key

[Sique]

And now we compare that with the tax breaks, subsidaries and profits for the oil and coal industry between 1989 and 2009. And suddenly we are talking about pocket change. They get $2.4 billion per year in tax breaks only, while the whole money spent on climate research (which includes weather forecasts, which people like to forget) is just $1.6 billion per year. And this does not include the $6.5 billion in subsidies per year for oil and gas. And the $14 billion per year subsidies for Nonconventional fuels (e.h. oil from shale, from tar sands, coal seams and coal based synthetic fuels). And the tax break of about $1 billion per year by declaring Coal Royalty Payments as Capital Gains.

So where are the government founded profits, in launching satellites and building expensive computers for weather forecasts and climate modelling at $1.6 billion per year and which aren't profitable to sell, or in mining coal and oil and gas for $25 billion in subsidies, and which you can then sell for a profit on the market?

So whoever brings up the financial gain argument against the climate scientists, has to honestly conclude that the financial interest on the anti-climate-scientist-stance is much more plausible. If you want to follow the money, the big stinking trace goes to oil and gas, and not to climate research and renewables.

Re:"...need to be prepared..."

[dywolf]

Bingo. Mod up.

the problem with sea level rise that deniers miss (willfully ignore) isn't the (roughly) steady state level of the water (a threat, but a much more long term threat for all but the low lying island peoples).

The much more immediate short term problem is surge, both normal and storm. Particularly storm.
Some places have more surge than others and will experience rising sea levels more quickly.

But everyplace is susceptible to storm surge, and rising seas make storm surge many many times more damaging and dangerous.

Already we've seen this with both Katrina and Sandy in our own country. It's been estimated that Sandy caused nearly 40% more damage that it would have without sea level rise being a factor, contributing to a much larger storm surge. Think about it: you have a massive storm front, hundreds of miles across. Just adding an inch of height to the volume of surge equates to many millions of gallons of extra volume, not to mention extra momentum, able to penetrate far futher inland. And we've seen the seas rise nearly 8 inches in the past 120 years or so. Storm surge risk evaluations, done every ten years, have been increasing. As well as the number of events and severity, and the actual damage caused.

These images describe quite well, what we are already seeing happen:
http://climatecommission.angry...
http://ian.umces.edu/imagelibr...
http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/de...