25 Years of Satellite Data Shows Global Warming Is Accelerating Sea Level Rise (usnews.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Associated Press: Melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are speeding up the already fast pace of sea level rise, new satellite research shows. At the current rate, the world's oceans on average will be at least 2 feet (61 centimeters) higher by the end of the century compared to today, according to researchers who published in Monday's Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences. Sea level rise is caused by warming of the ocean and melting from glaciers and ice sheets. The research, based on 25 years of satellite data, shows that pace has quickened, mainly from the melting of massive ice sheets. It confirms scientists' computer simulations and is in line with predictions from the United Nations, which releases regular climate change reports. Of the 3 inches (7.5 centimeters) of sea level rise in the past quarter century, about 55 percent is from warmer water expanding, and the rest is from melting ice. But the process is accelerating, and more than three-quarters of that acceleration since 1993 is due to melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, the study shows.

Comments

Meh.

[msauve]

I don't (can't afford to) live that close to an ocean, you insensitive clod.

(But I'm thinking that an investment in property on Lake Superior or Hudson Bay may pay off as the next French Riviera. Kashechewan=Monaco?)

yes, but few care

[WindBourne]

Seriously. The only way to stop the CO2 is to have ALL NATIONS STOP ADDING COAL and back off rather quickly. This is ESP TRUE for China. Yet, there will be many here (including a chinese troll that follows me) that will actually DEFEND China's adding 750+ GW of new coal plants over the next 11 years. And that is just CHINA. That does not include the large number of extra coal going in, nor does it include the massive number of ICE vehicles being sold.
If ppl want to stop this, then ALL NATIONS MUST STOP. Not just 1 or 2.

Re:yes, but few care

[Hal_Porter]

Getting a net CO2 cut would basically require that China stop industrialising. If the Chinese government tried that, they'd be overthrown in a bloody revolution

https://photos.mongabay.com/09...

tl;dr - global CO2 emissions will continue to rise until China has a way to generate energy which is cheaper than coal and doesn't emit CO2.

Until then it doesn't matter what the US, UK and EU do. All of those having falling CO2 emissions, but there's no way they can fall fast enough to compensate for the enormous CO2 increases from China.

Re:yes, but few care

[WindBourne]

No longer adding NEW COAL plants will not lead to any issues. In fact, it would likely increase the lifespan of more citizens.
As to cutting coal, far better to simply replace those with AE and Nukes.
And I fully agree with your last bit there.
Right now, the ENTIRE WEST puts out less CO2 than what China is adding JUST IN COAL PLANTS over the next 10 years.

Re:yes, but few care

[dj245]

If ppl want to stop this, then ALL NATIONS MUST STOP. Not just 1 or 2.

And that will never happen. I see a lot of talk about China in this thread but Russia is the #2 emitter of pollution. The US is reducing emissions, both per-capita and overall. Russia's emissions per GDP are increasing (albeit not as rapidly as China). Here's a nice graph of emissions per capita for the top 3. The difference is that China is seeing a lot of negative effects related to pollution, and politicians are under pressure to fix the problem or risk destabilizing the country. China has incentives to act.

Russia, on the other hand, doesn't have many developed low-lying coastal areas. Weather patterns are becoming more habitable, arable land is increasing, icecaps limiting shipping are melting, more natural resources (fishing, oilfields, etc) are becoming accessible, etc. Climate change may cost Russia's economic competitors in both money and political stability. A decent chunk of the Russian economy is based on oil and natural gas exports. Many other countries have some of these incentives, but Russia is the big winner of climate change, and they have every incentive not to take action. I would not be at all surprised if Russia was actively promoting anti-climate change ideology. They have a strong motive, means, and opportunity.

Disclaimer- I am an engineer in the North American fossil fuel industry

Re:Sure, however...

[Waffle Iron]

Okay, but will this rise affect me in my lifetime, or can I safely ignore it and pass this problem off to the next generation like I plan on doing with the national debt?

The key difference between the two is that the national debt is little more than a pattern of bits on some spinning disks (as the GOP seems to have suddenly realized), whereas the rising sea levels are a serious physical threat (which they have unfortunately not yet realized).

Re: Yawn, This again

[ClickOnThis]

Okay, but will this rise affect me in my lifetime, or can I safely ignore it and pass this problem off to the next generation like I plan on doing with the national debt?

Because people generally like living above water. Because there are existing places that will become untenable to maintain and/or unsafe with higher water levels and fixing that doesn't seem like a lot of fun.

There are are a whole lot more 'becauses' to add.

Because arable regions may shift faster than the plants can evolve to grow in them.

Because mass migration will cause significant upheaval and displacement of human society.

...and so on... and finally:

Because when the human race is confronted with a lack of something, it goes to war over it.

Not quite accurate

[Okian Warrior]

Donald Trump claims global warming is a myth... and yet he's building sea walls for his golf resort in Ireland to protect it against the sea level rising!

He doesn't say it's a myth, he says it's a hoax.

He agrees that the climate is changing, but believes that it's not due to man-made changes in the environment.

Re:Not quite accurate

[Luckyo]

To deny that there are clear cut benefits to global warning is asinine. My country for example is looking at massively increased agricultural production and reduced costs associated with extreme cold winters.

Negatives? Weather patterns become more extreme, so more repairs to infrastructure will be needed. Former is huge for nation's GDP. Latter is tiny in comparison. Add to that the fact that like most nations that sat under the ice during ice age, our land is rising out of the sea faster than sea is rising, there are clear benefits even on local level.

And then there's the whole "new paths for maritime travel" aspect which is bound to increase efficiency by a significant margin.

That's why catastrophism folks like you espouse is just as dangerous as "global warning isn't happening" BS. Both are equally wrong, and both turn people from the sane actions that we actually need to take to make our transition to existing in a slowly but surely warming climate and all changes that brings with it.

Instead we get "we should do nothing" and "we should do everything" idiocy on each side. When sanity is off the table at the start, and all you have is crazy partisans on each side debunking each other's idiocy, no actual discussion on what should be done can take place.

Re:Science snowflakes

[PopeRatzo]

Naah, naah, they just figured it out "now" with TWENTY FIVE years of data.

You're right. WHY ARE THEY HIDING THE SATELLITE DATA FROM 100 YEARS AGO? HUH?

Checkmate, libs.

Re: Sure, however...

[Waffle Iron]

Then you're an idiot. I'm not talking about individuals. This is government debt, and the government itself defines the meaning of those bits arbitrarily.

All across the political spectrum, the American people seem to be convinced that they are entitled to more government services than they are willing to explicitly pay for. If the current "pyramid scheme" strategy ever stops working, there are plenty of other avenues the government can use to simply redefine or restrict what that debt value means.

Meanwhile, the actual physical sea level just keeps rising. Ironically, if the worst case scenarios do pan out, the government would probably take on scores of trillions of dollars in additional debt in futile attempts at keeping our coastal cities habitable.

Re:Sick of the alarmism

[nadaou]

And NYC's elevation is 10m. So it will take 5000 years or so for it to be inundated.

Yeah, no. For one thing the outcrop of Manhattan Schist in the middle of Central Park is not "NYC", and for another a large part of lower Manhattan*, western Brooklyn, and northern Queens was underwater during Hurricane Sandy which had a surge of about 13 feet (4m). Due to rebound of the continental plate since the last glaciation the city is already sinking at a rate of about 1 foot per century, and most of the gravity driven sewers were built more than 100 or 200 years ago when sea level was lower. Most of the subway entrances are staircases down from street level.

NYC has some serious problems. Maybe not as bad as Miami, but there's more infrastructure to deal with.

Stop spreading lies.

* just maybe the financial district has some huge impact on the national GDP, even if it is shut down for one day?

Assumptions?

[bradley13]

I just read the abstract. As I understand it, they have 25 data years of very noisy data. Based on this data, they have deduced a quadratic equation (think: upward-curving parabola). They then state: "simple extrapolation of the quadratic implies global mean sea level could rise 65 ± 12 cm by 2100".

Of course, extrapolation of a quadratic leads to massive increases in the Y-value. Any kid doing 9th grade geometry learns that. The question is: Why should we believe that this quadratic equation - derived from so few data points - is accurate, and wil continue unabated into the future?

While the OP is wrong

[aepervius]

There is a gran of truth in what he says. The grain of truth is that shifting climate will make arable terrain less arable, and will open to potential moderate climate terrain which was not arable or is poor. So shifting climate may actually reduce globally the amount of field which are good for agriculture. Nothing to do with evolution.... Just with simply top earth quality for what we currently grow. As for your kip about a repeat of 2017: actually 2017 and the last 3 or 4 decade are decades where there was the LEAST amount of war, compared to last centuries... As for population upheaval , the same can be said qualitatively. 2017 forced mirgation is nothing to compare if whole frigging region decide to go north or south because their agriculture is in the shitter , in say 75 or 100 years.

Re: Yawn, This again

[quantaman]

Because arable regions may shift faster than the plants can evolve to grow in them.

Right ... that's why there aren't any European plants growing in the Americas. Because we can't just go ahead and plant them; no, they have to evolve first.

Just because some plants do well in a non-native habitat it doesn't not follow that most plants (particularly crops) can effectively adapt to a very different climate, or equivalent farmland can be found in another region.

Because mass migration will cause significant upheaval and displacement of human society. ...and so on... and finally:

Because when the human race is confronted with a lack of something, it goes to war over it.

So ... basically a repeat of 2017?

Quelle horreur.

Americans experienced a mild increase in Muslim migration and a drug epidemic and elected a demagogue Trump, one of the major riots leading up to the French Revolution was caused by a flour shortage, German's experienced massive reparations after WWI and elected Hitler, Russians got hammered in WWI and had the October Revolution, etc, etc.

In fact, high food prices were one of the causes of the Arab Spring, and the Arab Spring combined with the Iraq War caused the migrant crisis in Europe which is another factor that elected Trump and scared Britain out of the EU. And the Arab Spring looks a lot like the mass migrations you'll see when Climate Change starts to kick in (and the equivalent South American migration into the US).

It's not a complex formula. When populations are stressed they lash out, they either riot and or elect leaders who raise a ruckus on their behalf. And climate change causes a lot of stress.

Re: Sure, however...

[prefec2]

Economic rules are not the same as physical laws. Physical laws exist regardless you believe in them. Economic rules are human rules. They can be changed. For example you can lower taxes for the rich or deprive people of healthcare. You can even make up rules to limit the ability what you can dobwithnyour money. And even money itself is just a number or a piece if paper. Its value is based in an agreement. Look I have billions of Reichsmark in my attic. Unfortunately, you cannot buy anything with it. You can also see the artificially of value of currency in context of bitcoin.

Sea level rise is small compared to biological ...

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The annual deep frost would kill so much of the weeds and the bugs. As the climate changes, the USDA agricultural zones are changing. What used to be 3 is now 4 etc. Weeds that were killed every winter and start from the scratch, survive the winter, start early and spread fast. They even get two or three more generations per season.

The bugs too, are surviving winter. The most ardent climate change denying, conspiracy theory believing, Iowa farmer sees the forsythia blooming in February, tulips emerging in March, crocus in December... Some fields naturalized by daffodils and tulips are going the other way. The bulbs rotting away instead of emerging. These bulbs need six weeks of continuous freezing for them to "sense" the coming and going of winter. Without the frost, they dont emerge and they rot in spring rains.

One of the most productive agricultural belt is protected by annual frost. It has no natural defense against many of the deleterious organisms. All it takes is one fungus, one virus, one weed to afflict the Idaho potato crop or the corn or wheat... By the time we identify and mitigate the threat we would have lost two or even three years of loss of agricultural productivity. Affluent USA will suck the products from rest of the world, prices will shoot up beyond belief. Poor countries with unstable regimes will see societal collapse, mass migrations and refugees...

These consequences are far more dire, far more urgent than sea level rise. Sea level rise is important it will lead to very serious climate changes. But that is very indirect and direct cause - effect relations difficult to deduce, difficult to prove, difficult to explain to public.

Re:25 Years

[Geoffrey.landis]

25 years of data? Why not 26 years of data?

Because the earliest data set came from the TOPEX/Poseidon satellite altimetry mission, which launched in 1992, and the paper was received for review in 2017. 2017-1996 = 25 years.

  Paper under discussion: http://www.pnas.org/content/ea...

The scientists were unable to use satellite data taken before the satellite launched because that data does not exist.

Re:Known since at least 2006

[Geoffrey.landis]

Citation. This isn't a new finding, it confirms previous work.

It is new in that this article shows the satellite altimetry, while the article you cite, showing similar trends, combines tide-gauge and satellite data to get a much longer data set. Basically, that article is using satellite data to calibrate tide-gauges, and then using that calibration to measure historical sea level rise.

Good article, though.

Let me know when other "religions" start basing their ideology (or their critiques) on multiple peer-reviewed studies instead of faith.

Yes, exactly: it is useful when different work by different groups shows the same result. This is reproducability, which is important in science.

Satellite measurements [Re:Oh good]

[Geoffrey.landis]

And there's no way those same currents could have affected the previous measurements we used to declare sea level was rising. I mean, there's no way they could have been eroding for some period and we thought it was the sea level rising. Climate only works one way!

That's why satellite altimetry measurements-- what the article being discussed here is about-- are important. You can measure the entire globe, not just the places that have tide gauges, and you can separate out the local effects from the sea level rise.

Analyze all of the data

[Geoffrey.landis]

No. It shows a more rapid rise in the last couple of decades, but it does not show an acceleration overall. If you can cherry-pick a 20-25 year period, so can I.

Just for reference, the 25 years of data was not cherry picked. The article being discussed analyzed satellite altimetry data, and the first of the satellite altimetry missions being discussed was TOPEX/Poseidon, which started giving data 25 years ago. 25 years is all the data that exists.

When they analyze all the data that exists, that's the opposite of cherry picking.