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NASA Scientists Suggest We've Been Underestimating Sea Level Rise (vice.com)
Our current estimate about the global sea level is "way off" according to a new study. The study published in Geophysical Research Letters this month suggests that our historial sea level records have been off by an underestimation of five to 28 percent. From a report on Motherboard: Global sea level, the paper concluded, rose no less than 5.5 inches over the last century, and likely saw an increase of 6.7 inches. The reason for this discrepancy was uncovered by earth scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. By comparing newer climate models with older sea level measurements, the team discovered that readings from coastal tide gauges may not have been as indicative as we thought. These gauges, located at more than a dozen sites across the Northern Hemisphere, have been a primary data source for estimating sea level changes during the last several decades. "It's not that there's something wrong with the instruments or the data, but for a variety of reasons, sea level does not change at the same pace everywhere at the same time," said Philip Thompson, the study's lead author and associate director of the University of Hawa'i Sea Level Center, in a statement. "As it turns out, our best historical sea level records tend to be located where past sea level rise was most likely less than the true global average."
Trust our data models.
I buy that. Sure.
*BLUB*
NASA is once again figuring out how to doctor data to make you panic. NOAA has other thoughts.
What a shame that NASA, an organization once devoted to science, has fallen so far to become essentially the national enquirer of climate. sea level rise is the new Bat Boy...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You evil denialist filth! Off to the gas chambers! The models are always right! The science is settled dammit!
Oh wait, you mean we are saying that we were "wrong" in a direction that happens to be politically convenient for the people running the show and requesting taxpayer money?
In that case, the science isn't settled you denialist scum!
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
That;s not true....THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE!!!
Search your feelings, you know them to be true!
NOOOOOO!!!
And also...as a child...I built C3P0!
NNNNOOOOOOO!!!
...was not disappointed.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Planting sea level monitors on the southern US coast is probably not useful, since the tectonic plate there is sinking. NASA should plant some measuring devices on the Southern Cape coast of Africa. There, I counted 14 ancient beaches on a mountain side and there are probably more, further away that I could not see or were too eroded to distinguish from a distance - easily a kilometer of sea level 'subsiding'.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
and it's very likely the civilization, ocean traders, and ports just so happened to be important enough that that's where the few sea gauges that exist were put precisely there. saves money. allows for flood warnings for millions. why dump an expensive gauge where nobody is and nobody will be?
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
It's worse than we thought!!!!!!! Please approve a $5 billion increase in our budget.
The headline is quite misleading. What the story actually says is that the previous estimate was 1.6 cm per decade, and the new number is 1.7 cm per decade--with an error range that it might be as low as 1.4.
Really this isn't "We've been wrong!"-- it's more "we have a slightly better estimate now."
The abstract of the article is here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Slashdot, we get that the Church of Climate Change vs. The Heretics drama is good for engagement and pageviews and whatever, but aren't you afraid you might be milking it a bit too hard? Once or twice a month, maybe you put some popcorn on the popper, trot out one of these "Sky is Falling! Repent Sinners!" articles, and watch the post count roll up, sure, but it seems like it's every week now... you're starting to wade into self-parody, and I know that can't be helpful...
While the oceans are warming and the ice around the world is melting, I just worry that the weight of the water will cause more of it to be pushed down into the soil/sand/bedrock. That is why you aren't seeing more of a rise.
I also think that humans could pump out a lot of water around the world, along with slowing down the rivers emptying into the oceans to offset this. Rain fall might also increase, and that would trap more water in the ground around the world.
But if beaches start going away, the reduction in girls in bikinis might cause some middle age men to start to care.
Really is that your answer to their publication? Have you looked at their contribution and tried to understand it? No. First, NOAA hat not other thoughts. They have measurements from around the globe. Depending on the point of data collection they look at the data from the past (this is the time period which had already happened), e.g., 1915 to 2011 (for Cuxhaven 2 which has an 1.76 mm/y rise). The article claims that rises could be off in some areas by 28% and are 5.5 inches in the last century which are 139.7 mm in 100 years or 1.397 mm per year. And their upper claim 6.7 inches which is 1.708 mm per year.
NASA is once again figuring out how to doctor data to make you panic.
A university study has analyzed data to result in a very minor change (about a 6% correction) in average rate of sea level rise and the media has figured out how to make you panic. By the way, if you look at the "funded by" part of the abstract, the study was funded by NOAA.
NOAA has other thoughts.
Nice link, but I'm not sure why you say that this is "other thoughts"-- that's a link to the raw data. The University of Manoa/Old Dominion University/Caltech study takes these readings as input data to calculate the average.
What a shame that NASA, an organization once devoted to science, has fallen so far to become essentially the national enquirer of climate. sea level rise is the new Bat Boy...
What a shame that even very minor reanalysis papers get politicized. This wasn't even primarily a NASA study: the first author is funded by the University of Hawaii Sea Level Center, which is a NOAA program.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
"As it turns out, our best historical sea level records tend to be located where past sea level rise was most likely less than the true global average."
It's most likely that tide gauges were placed at locations where the economic impact of tides (on shipping, etc.) were most significant. So, even if the bias in sea level measurements is real, factoring in this impact cancels out the higher levels. In other words, who cares? If the sea level in the middle of the ocean is rising more than near the coast, most of us live near the coast.
Have gnu, will travel.
The error range is not a factor of 1.4, it is no lower than 1.4 cm/decade.
Specifically, the text in the AGU release was: "As a result, the authors place a lower bound on 20th century sea level rise of about 1.4 millimeters per year during the 20th century, and the most likely "true" global rate was closer to 1.7 millimeters per year.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The tip of the iceberg.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Wow, these fuckers really know how to rig the game, don't they. Comparing models to actual reality, deciding reality is wrong? How the fuck did this organisation put a fucking man on the moon?
This is shocking.
We want to panic. The data isn't bad enough, it must be worse! So they hypothesize - with no proof whatsoever - that sea level is rising faster wherever there are no tide gauges.
There is plenty of evidence that this is nonsense. For example, looking at current sea level trends, we do not see a faster rise in the southern hemisphere, even though this is what they say should be happening.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
You get funding to investigate a certain part of reality. For example, to understand and model sea level development. After X years you provide a final report (and a lot of publications in between now and now-X). Then you try to get the next grant, which will be most likely in a similar area. It does not mapper if the sea level rises or not. It for the research it is sufficient that there is something called sea level. In case your models are good, they get adopted by the state or state based organizations which monitor sea level development. As a scientist you move on to understand the next piece of the puzzle.
For example, we have understood the carbon cycle in land-based plants, air and the sea at large. However, we have only limited understanding what the increase of CO2 in the oceans cause. How do they affect algae production? At which concentration does plankton reduce its O2 production? How far is the CO2 concentration propagated downwards in the water column? What does this mean in context of fish population, food security etc? Therefore, when we find out that a certain topic is well understood there is enough left to be researched next. And research funding is usually not based on the need for knowledge, but how much money a state wants to spend on research in general.
I have no idea how much of this is serious, or how much is flat-affect parody.
If the "I also think that humans could pump out a lot of water around the world" part is serious, 1.7 mm/year corresponds to (360 million square kilometers * 1.7E-3m * 0.001 km/m=) 360 cubic kilometers per year.
I'm not sure we're likely to pump 360 cubic kilometers per year out of the oceans. Where are you going to put it?
The more goods you order from shitty 3rd world countries that pollute the world, the more super ships are kerplunked into the drink to ship it. No need to consume less, just think about the source for once.
These gauges, located at more than a dozen sites across the Northern Hemisphere
That doesn't sound right, surely they can use the data from more stations than that? Canada has 125+ years worth of tide and water level data from thousands of stations, maybe NASA should talk to them? It's free to download per water level station, or you can submit a request for the full dataset. (Disclosure: I worked for a time with the team that processes incoming marine data and digitizes historical log books.)
A recursive sig
Can impart wisdom and truth
Call proc signature()
It's a 6% correction/adjustment.
That's negligible. They've made their estimates more accurate but the big picture hasn't changed at all, no matter which side you choose to stand on.
It's normal for sea levels to rise and fall. It's silly/naive to think sea levels would remain constant over several decades.
By JPL leftists
If the sea level in the middle of the ocean is rising more than near the coast, most of us live near the coast.
Conversely, if the sea level in the middle of the ocean is rising less than near the coast, then most of us live away from the coast.
Deniers and skeptics are different people.
You can tell a denier from a skeptic from the fact that a skeptic would be equally critical of both sides of a question. Deniers, on the other hand, already have the opinion that they are advocating: they are saying the science is wrong regardless of the facts; in fact, they aren't even interested in the facts.
Deniers aren't skeptics-- they are, in fact, the exact opposite of skeptics. They are completely credulous: they repeat any argument saying that the science is wrong, no matter how silly, with no trace of skepticism or analysis.
In a real sense, deniers are the enemies of skeptics, since by continuously attacking the science regardless of whether the attacks have even a trace of merit, they end up discrediting any analysis that might have actual merit by burying it under garbage.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Yes, the sea levels rise and yes, we'll all drown, but rest assured, nothing you do now will change that. We're fucked. So kick back, relax and enjoy, fill up that SUV a last time and drive into the sunset of humanity.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This year we went on holiday to the same beach we went to two years ago. Looking at the old photos, it used to come up to my kid's waist. Now it's barely up to his knees.
So if anything, sea levels are falling.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"These gauges, located at more than a dozen sites across the Northern Hemisphere"
Are you freaking kidding me?
A dozen data points?
This B.S. should make real scientists, viz. physicists, gag.
It's simple, more ships carrying chinese crap displacing water.
And besides that they're pummeling the ocean with carbon pollution, one boat spews more than a country worth of cars for a year!
Wow, that's some major BS there. While is it widely known that CO2 levels were higher in the Jurassic era an average temperature swing of 3 degrees C would put a whole lot of land under water today.
Well, the location where my home is located was underwater during most of the Jurassic.
What he seems to be saying here is that climate models are accurate-- there was more CO2 in the atmosphere during the Jurassic, and as expected from the greenhouse effect, it was about 3 degrees C warmer.
True, the world would adapt. Eventually. The world adapted to mass extinctions, too (including the one that kicked off the Jurassic, the Triassic–Jurassic extinction event
Unfortunately, the church of "The Science is Settled" has excommunicated the heretics, so no "more science" is possible. Without tenure, I sure as hell can't publish anything that doesn't match the dogma, nor would I ever be employable if I were to attempt to.
I continue to see articles explaining why for various plausible sounding reasons we need to adjust our raw data to show more climate change than the raw data contains. Can anyone point out any significant examples where the raw data was adjusted to show less climate change? The statistician in me is curious...
Without a doubt, we'll still be debugging our 20th century climate models when the clock strikes 2200.
Sometime in the 23rd century, there will be a Holospace Science-Officer conference (conducted through a Holoreality subspace linkup) to thrash out a few lingering points of disagreement—adjust six inches here, six inches there and we're all good.
Does anyone else see a problem with this sample size?
Nuke the moon. No more moon, no more tide and the water level goes down.
No, no, no. What happens is that the effect is exaggerated in the harbors because of all the water displaced by an elevated concentration of ships. The more ships, the higher the surrounding water level appears to be. Out at sea, they ships are so spread out that the effect is barely noticeable.
That is why they put the tide-gauges there, because they know they can get a false-high reading and blow it out of proportion, to support their cause, like they always do. That's how these liberal scientist-types try to pull the wool over your eyes and sucker you into thinking AGW is real.
They think we're stupid.
Trump 2016.
3 points:
1. You know my family lives on an very small island, which is only about 1 foot above sea level.
The dock has been there for generations, no houses are getting washed to sea. There is no difference.
2. Recently a lot of these news reports have used "erosion" as pointing to sea level, which is not the same.
3. A lot of other islands that say they need help, used to have banking businesses that are now closed due to corruption (Tuvalu), need another source of money. So they want money to "save" the island, but technically there is no change in water level other then erosion.
4. MM and Inch are very different.
I think they mean 5.5 mm NOT 5.5 inch
So, I compare a theoretical model, that I have created, against historical data, and decide that what everyone else has been using as evidence was wrong.
Enough said.
So, I compare a theoretical model, that I have created, against historical data, and decide that what everyone else has been using as evidence was wrong.
Enough said.
No. You took a data set that consisted of spotty records at irregularly spaced points, and asked the question "how do I derive the average sea level rise from irregularly spaced data points?" You answered this question by saying "we will fit the theoretical model to the data points, and derive the best fit."
This is what scientists do: fit theory to data. Really. This is how science works.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
If we need less water in the ocean, that means we need more water on land. So why don't we move it there?
We have many deserts. Sahara, Gobi, Southwest US, etc.
We pipe oil all over the world, why not water. The Great Salt Lake in Utah (I am from Utah) is extremely low and depleted. Why not pipe salt water to it. It might not seem to make a dent at first, because filling the Great Salt Lake wouldn't change the Ocean levels. But remember, the Great Salt Lake only losses water to evaporation that fills the Rocky Mountains with snow. The glacier/snow packs in the Rocky Mountains are depleting, too, partially because of lack of precipitation, which is partially because of a decreasing Great Salt Lake. So the more water in the Great Salt Lake, the greater the snow packs. Over the next 20 years, the difference would be noticeable.
Now, why can't we make more Great Salt Lakes. Why not put an Ocean in Death Valley. Death Valley is 200+ feet below see level, just build a pipe. Now you can pipe from Death Valley to the Great Salt Lake as it is closer than the Ocean. Now their is more rainfall in the entire southwest.
Now do the same in the Sahara desert. Add an ocean lake on the west side of the Sahara. How much more rain will that provide to the Sahara? Instead of a desert that soaks up heat and does't contribute to our atmosphere, we would have more rainfall and more plants, which would lead to more transfer of green house gasses to oxygen. We could make the Sahara inhabital, even farmable.
Next the Gobi.
Obviously I am talking about major world projects that are expensive and could take twenty years to implement. But so, what? Should we not start just because it will take a long time?
By investing in beach front property in Arizona, but choosing the wrong method of deployment.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
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BT
If it may have been as much as 6.7 inches/century, that's over 60 inches per millennium. Nearly as much as I am tall! More than the height of an average American woman!
I'm heading for high ground now, before it's too late.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
We have good measurements from Venice Italy. Use them to tell how it's gone up or down. They have definitive measurements over the past 1000 years.
Not hard people.
Hint - it's what they said it was in the past. Not the new revisionist say now. Harder to change historical records, like NASA has done with their measurements. So called "adjustments" that happen to put this year in record hot months every month. Just wait a few days, I'm sure a /. article will be saying once again - October was a record hot month. Surprised they haven't already announced November 2016.