Saturday
Jan262013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill It's all in the adjustments (redux)
Jan 26, 2013 Climate: WG2 From time to time we have observed at BH that tweaks and corrections and errors in climatological time series always seem to lead to the conclusion "it's worse than we thought". Who can forget the great Bob Watson's remarks to this end in the aftermath of glaciergate?
Anthony Watts reports on the latest in this long line of upwardly mobile adjustments:
...the rate of sea level rise has been bumped up 0.43 mm/yr in the last few years. This sort of thing has been going on more or less regularly and it seems to go only one way.
Yup.
Reader Comments (57)
More dog-whistle insinuations? This plausible deniability you are attempting to leave for yourself fools no-one.
I guess that means Tom couldn't manage a substantive comment regarding sea-level adjustments.
You cannot be serious.
@ Tom
More dog-whistle insinuations? This plausible deniability you are attempting to leave for yourself fools no-one.
His Grace is not trying to fool anyone. If Anthony Watts, who he quotes, is wrong in asserting that the adjustments to sea level measurements are usually upwards that is a factual statement that could be easily disproved if it is wrong. You implied that it is wrong. If you think it is wrong why not try and find proof that it is wrong?
What a run of the dice! Crapping out now, though.
=========
I confess to being a little confused as to what a "dog-whistle insinuation" is. It's not an expression I've come across before.
Perhaps you'd care to explain, Tom. I'm always keen to broaden my education!
Is there anywhere in the world which can show actual, meaningful sea level rise which is not attributable to the land sinking? I know of none in Scotland, which may be due to isostatic rebound. In fact in various Clyde Coast towns you can see evidence that the older buildings facing the seafront have slots in the entranceways for flood boards which are long disused, newer buildings don't have them. This would suggest to me that high tides and / or storm surge was a bigger problem in the past than it is now, quite the opposite of the alarmist mantra.
I am happy to explain the dog-whistle concept Mike as if you didn't already know. It used to be called something like "coded language." To tell you the truth I think "Tom" is breaking some new ground here because usually there is a racial connotation to the use of the term. For instance if one were to say that the President of the United States plays a lot of golf, that is a racist dog-whistle: there is only one famous golfer, Tiger Woods, who famously cheated on his wife therefore if you mention the words Obama and golf in the same context you are announcing via dog-whistle that you buy into the racist stereotype that all black guys are sexually promiscuous.
I think "Tom" may be dog-whistling by his use of the term dog-whistle that any mention of "adjustments" by a "denier" is racist. Happy to help.
dog-whistle, gish-gallop: As soon as you've classified your opponent's argument (or psychoanalysed it), you don't have to deal with it.
I referred to interview with Morner in 2007 entitled "Claim That Sea Level Is
Rising Is a Total Fraud", which can be found here
http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/NilsAxelMornerinterview.pdf
Specifically Dr Morner stated that "Now, back to satellite altimetry, which shows the water, not
just the coasts, but in the whole of the ocean. And you measure
it by satellite. From 1992 to 2002, [the graph of the sea level]
was a straight line, variability along a straight line, but absolutely
no trend whatsoever. We could see those spikes: a very rapid
rise, but then in half a year, they fall back again. But absolutely
no trend, and to have a sea-level rise, you need a trend.
Then, in 2003, the same data set, which in their [IPCC’s]
publications, in their website, was a straight line—suddenly it
changed, and showed a very strong line of uplift, 2.3 mm per
year, the same as from the tide gauge. And that didn’t look so
nice. It looked as though they had recorded something; but
they hadn’t recorded anything. It was the original one which
they had suddenly twisted up, because they entered a “correction
factor,” which they took from the tide gauge. So it was
not a measured thing, but a figure introduced from outside. I
accused them of this at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow—
I said you have introduced factors from outside; it’s not
a measurement. It looks like it is measured from the satellite,
but you don’t say what really happened. And they answered,
that we had to do it, because otherwise we would not have gotten
any trend!" We have adjustments to some surface temperature records as well and they seem to depress pre 1960 temperatures so that claims can be made about new records.
Tom's all at sea.
Thank you for that explanation, Bernal.
I had not heard the expression before and I fear I am no wiser now. I have always thought that US presidents play a lot of golf as (apparently according to the stereotype) do most US businessmen.
I was not aware of any connection between golf-playing and promiscuity and nor was I aware of any racist connotation either.
What an awfully sheltered life I must have led.
I think I'll go along with shub's point - once you've classified (I would have said 'pigeon-holed') your opponent's argument you have absolved yourself of the need to address it and Tom can now crawl back into his comfort blanket and stick his thumb in his mouth, or wherever.
Thank you all for the dog-whistling explanations.
Am I to understand that Pres. Obama takes a dog with him on the golf course to retrieve any lost balls? Or were there some subtleties I missed from this side of the pond?
And - in my very limited experience of wrestling with difficult problems - a good long walk in quiet surroundings helps to clear the head and gain perspective. Sitting in the office surrounded by hurly burly is not the optimum way to do long-term strategic stuff. So it seems that Mr. Obama is taking the right approach to decision making.
I may not agree with the results, but I can't fault his method.
O/T: wonderful sweary hit-piece on the Irish Windfarm scheme over at the Counting Cats Blog
Ends with an awesome summary
Parental advisory and sorry for being O/T
Excuse me. Did any resorts, hotels, or other beachfront property in Tuvalu actually sink lately-- and I missed it?
I mean, I've been hearing that rising sea would sink the low-lying Pacific nations like Kiribati, etc, for a couple of decades now. If they are THAT low lying and that shallowly sloped I'd think an inch or so of rise would translate into yards and acres of reduced beach. Has anybody actually visited the place lately to see?
By the way, I'd rather be a dog than a gull.
Woof, woof! Seriously, though, the post-normal definition of adjustment in indistinguishable for the classical definition of scientific malpractice. Peter Gleick should be able to clarify the matter to the satisfaction of all those thus implicated.
I mean, I've been hearing that rising sea would sink the low-lying Pacific nations like Kiribati, etc, for a couple of decades now. If they are THAT low lying and that shallowly sloped I'd think an inch or so of rise would translate into yards and acres of reduced beach. Has anybody actually visited the place lately to see?
Actually, some of them are THAT low lying. The Maldives in particular (although it is not Pacific).
NZ and Australia have done some measurements in the area. There is no measureable sea level increase, except in areas where development is causing land subsidence.
http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=1
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/tuvalu/7799503/Pacific-islands-growing-not-shrinking-due-to-climate-change.html
I'm going to go where most people in NZ won't go, but the real issue is that the Pacific Islands are hot-beds of clientism and scrounging. Culturally, they don't have any issue with asking for money from people with more. This is on a personal level, but also societal. So the leaders feel absolutely no shame in making stuff up in order to try and sponge off NZ and Australia. Sea level rise is perfect – the truth being no obstacle.
It seems to be extraordinarily difficult to measure global mean sea level change to the sub-mm accuracy required. Many tidal stations have inherent problems of slow isostatic or tectonic crustal uplift or subsidence. In stations not founded on basement rock, but on coastal sites overlying significant sedimentary basins, work in Holland has demonstrated that sedimentary rocks are still slowly compacting and subsiding millions of years after deposition due to load compaction.
The GPS tie in to datum MSL tidal stations also seems to be a difficult technical solution in itself. Perhaps one of the most reliable tide guages in the world is at Newlyn in Cornwall, the standard datum for all UK surveys. The ultimate datum is a mark on a bolt on this station, observed ever since 1915. The observations result in the following, which is probably the most trustworthy value we have from anywhere
'Woodworth et al (1999) computed trends in MSL for a selection of UK tide gauges, with more than 15 complete years of MSL and TGBM information in the PSMSL data set. Based on 80 complete years of data over the period from 1916-96, a rise in MSL of 1.69 ± 0.12 mm per year was computed for Newlyn. This is consistent with the rise in global sea level of 10 to 20 cm over the past century (IPCC, 1995), which may indicate that there has been no significant uplift or subsidence at the tide gauge.'
But yet, even before we consider satellite accuracy, there are still uncertainties with the data from the GPS records from an antenna mounted directly above the tidal guage, as recounted in the last part of this:
http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/cgps_tg/casestudy/case1_files/index.html
No land movement at Newlyn? I thought it was well established that the UK is pivoting about an east - west axis, the north is rising and the south sinking due to the absence of ice on the northern part.
NW
You may be right!
Note the caveats 'which MAY indicate that there has been no SIGNIFICANT uplift or subsidence at the tide gauge'
Its all 'A Suitable Case for 'Treatment'.
Pharos,
Reading that again, I had missed the significance of "10 - 20 cm over the past century". Only a difference of 100 mm! (What is a scientific body doing working in cm anyway?)
Not that anyone should be panicing if the sea level did rise by 200 mm in a century anyway. It's not even noticeable and completely swamped by waves, atmospheric pressure variations, wind effects etc etc. In the unlikely event of there being sea defences which can't cope with an extra 200 mm, I think it just might be possible to raise them by rather more than that with no great difficulty.
As a prediction it bears no resemblance to the catastrophic scenarios and photoshops of cities flooded to a depth of several floors beloved of the alarmists.
NW
It must be hard work. Much massaging in the marsh.
This just in - the rising sea level is worse than we thought and Britain is going to be submerged by some time next week or so. Just keep checking back in with the UN for regular updates on how bad it really is.
Zed if your such an expert on Climate Analysis Prediction
Give tell us all an exact figure on how much coastal area in square kilometers in the UK will be lost to rising sea levels in the next 10 years 27 January 2023.Put your money where your mouth is.Because we all say none.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
This a useful source of sea level data, with links to other graphs and discussion of the adjustments for seasonal, ENSO and geological changes.
Best not get excited about year on year variations. Watch for changes in the long-term trend.It shows a long term rise of ~3.2mm/year.
Just for fun, it also shows the drop in sea level trumpeted on so many sceptic websites during 2009 and 2010 as evidence that global warming had stopped. It also shows the rapid change since the end of 2010, an increase of 13mm in two years!
This should clear up any misunderstandings about the term dog whistle. From the urban dictionary:
dog whistle
Dog whistle is a type of strategy of communication that sends a message that the general population will take a certain meaning from, but a certain group that is "in the know" will take away the secret, intended message. Often involves code words.
Republicans say they want to make civil rights for gays a state issue, which is really just a dog whistle strategy for saying that they will refuse to grant equal rights on a federal level.
dog whistle comment
A surreptitious inclusion of code words or phrases that will be heard by some of those listening, while not disturbing the other listeners, who may not appreciate the hidden message(s).
President George W. Bush is constantly littering his speeches with dog whistle comments meant for the religious right, so that he can tell them what they wants to hear, while not offending those who aren't evangelical or born again. (paraphrase of text by Ian Welsh, on his Agonist blog)
Of course, the real irony is that people who make comments about other comments being dog whistles can clearly hear the whistle. If you can hear the whistle, you must be a dog.
@Entropic Man
No need for proxies to see whether global warming has stopped, just look at the data.
Zed ... you're high priests blame over population for the woes of this world; that is a dog whistle for you and your mates to immediately embark to Dover hop over the famous cliffs, lemming-like. Be a good boy.girl/whatever and shoo-shoo along there pronto.
Fat fingers and auto correction conspiracy "you're" should be "your" but you get the drift.
Stop feeding the trolls!
Goddammit.
The Maldives made it through the last glacial melt without been inundated.
Current sea level rise, if any, is trivial by comparison.
It is because the Maldives are CORAL islands.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/not-so-much-trouble-in-paradise-are-coral-islands-really-doomed-a-707884-2.html
"No need for proxies to see whether global warming has stopped, just look at the data.
Jan 27, 2013 at 2:37 AM | SayNoToFearmongers"
I am looking at the data. If global warming has stopped, why are we still seeing sea level rise?
As you say, lets look at some data. Show me numbers to demonstrate that some other mechanism can account for the ongoing 3.2mm/year sea level rise.
EM inverts the burden of proof again.
As you say, lets look at some data. Show me numbers to demonstrate that some other mechanism can account for the ongoing 3.2mm/year sea level rise.
Jan 27, 2013 at 2:36 PM | Unregistered Commenter Entropic Man
Entropic you and Zed once again if your correct then please tell us exactly how many square kilometers of UK coast line has been lost to a rising sea level for the last ten years and the predicted level for the next ten
Because we all say none.
Jamspid.
The National Trust did a risk assessment of their likely coastal land loss to sea level rise over th next century.
http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/servlet/file/store5/item349171/version2/UK%20shifting%20shorest.pdf
They expect to lose 4040 hectares. They own about 10% of the coastline, mostly cliffs. This would give a minimum of 40400 hectares, 404 square kilometres per century for the whole UK coatline.
Since the National Trust own a much smaller proportion of the low lying economically productive beachfronts, seaside towns, ports and agricultural land, the overall loss would be expected to be much larger.
At a conservative estimate call it a tenfold difference. That's 4000 sq. km per century, 400 sq.km per decade at current and projected rates of sea level rise.
Followed your link, it's about erosion. Which is not exactly sea level rise, and predates the CO2-based warming timescale. You can't really put a current rate into per century terms.
That document is dated for 2006 .Wheres the one for 2013 or 2012
Coastal erosion has nothing to do with sea level rise. At 200mm per century (worst case) it can't have!
The parts of the UK coast which are subject to erosion have always been eroding, to attribute it to sea level rise is disingenuous.
Some of the area loss is in fact due to deliberate destruction of "hard" sea defenses for "green" reasons. I think some of those may belong to the National Trust.
EM inverts the burden of proof again.
Jan 27, 2013 at 3:24 PM | rhoda
I'm not really interested in where the burden of proof should be. I want to know what's going on out there.
I've encountered many sceptics on sites like these who insist that the burden of proof is on the climate scientists,. We show them temperature records, sea level records, satellite energy flow records, solar cycle records, ice thickness and extent records. We link observations to physical equations describing the behaviour of the atmosphere, ice and oceans, absorbtion and emission spectra for greenhouse gases under laboratory and atmospheric conditions, etc. We even include statistics showing how much condfidence we have in the data, and where we are still uncertain.
What we get back is vaguely expressed doubts.
I'm trained in science, including the difficult bit where you give up your most dearly held hypotheses because they do not match reality. But if you want me to do so, you must provide solid evidence that your interpretation of the observations is correct, while mine is not.
If you want to dislodge anthropogenic climate change as the climate scientists' paradigm you need falsify it by demonstrating that you can explain the rises in land and sea temperature, sea level etc. quantitatively and using valid physics without the need to include changes in CO2 concentration and the consequences thereof.
Lets see some positive contribution to the debate in the form of properly researched alternative hypotheses.
jamspid, NW
"Coastal erosion has nothing to do with sea level rise. At 200mm per century (worst case) it can't have!
The parts of the UK coast which are subject to erosion have always been eroding, to attribute it to sea level rise is disingenuous.
Some of the area loss is in fact due to deliberate destruction of "hard" sea defenses for "green" reasons. I think some of those may belong to the National Trust."
Evidence. please, not just argument by assertion.
If you are correct, you should be able to produce records showing that the rate of coastal erosion and inundation have remained unchanged in recent decades.
You should also be able to show a clear correalation between the amount of recent inundation and the removal of sea defences.
EM. all I have to do to not believe the story is not believe it. I do not have to show some alternative explanation, especially for things which I regard as normal variation. That's because I think nothing much is going on. I can't be expected to prove nothing much, can I? Your side is making the assertions. They may indeed be correct, but to argue that I have to think of an alternative explanation is Argumentum ad ignorantiam. We can't think what it is so it must be CO2, we can't find the missing heat so we'll take this very small amount of data to say it fell down a hole in the sea, while still claiming it is causing storms and record temps and what-all. That sort of thing. It is fruitless to carry on, there is no meat in the discussion (on either side). Weak assertions, lack of conclusive data.
Rhoda Klapp
"Followed your link, it's about erosion. Which is not exactly sea level rise, and predates the CO2-based warming timescale. You can't really put a current rate into per century terms."
The risk assessment split the problem into coastal erosion and flooding. The estimated that 608 linear km of their coastline holdings were vulnerable to increased coastal erosion (removal of existing shoreline material such as retreat of cliff faces). The also estimated that 4040 hectares of low lying landcould be lost to flooding, as existing areas above the high tide mark were inundated.
Once again, there's that negative attitude. You should not approach such questions with an "It cant be done." attitude. As I did, you should make the best use you can of the information available, and include clear indication of the uncertainties.
Try not to be trollish. You simply cannot extend any trend you lke into a century figure just because you want to.
To make jamspid's point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Managed_retreat
If they are managing it, the trend is meaningless,
Rhoda Klapp
That's the idea, counter evidence with evidence. You've demonstrated that at least 24km^2 of the land lost to inundation since 1991 was due to managed retreat, rather than natural inundation.
I do notice that in some of the cases, the choice was between a sea wall or an extended salt marsh; the threat was unavoidable.
Regarding "belief", you are free to believe as you wish, though you need more than belief alone if you wish to convince others. The real problem comes when there is a mismatch between belief and reality.
To take an example from Northern Ireland. A few years ago the strongly religious Minister for Health refused to fund measures to contain an MRSA outbreak because he did not believe that Menthicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus could exist, its evolution being impossible under his theology.
Let us hope that your belief in a stable climate is correct, and I am wrong.
Entropic challenge you again please provide the correct assessment for loss of coastline in the United Kingdom from 26 January 2012 to 26 January 2023 due to man made Climate Change from what ever source.
( Not first thing that came up on Google that you cut and paste that is 7 years old and is actually from an organization that it only knows about talking about Erosion throws in the usual Buzz Words Climate Change just to appear topical )
Entropic scientific experiment you should try tonight .Before you go to bed. Flick the Main switch on your Electricity fuse box.When you wake up tomorrow see how much damp has got in.
See how good you are at the playing Fuel Poverty instead of Armchair Scientist.
.
Or you could use common sense coupled with a knowledge of the sea and shorelines, and realise that a variation of 200 mm simply does not make any significant difference.
If you are correct, you should be able to produce records showing that the rate of coastal erosion and inundation has significantly increased in recent decades, and that this is due to sea level change rather than other factors. As with all CAGW scenarios, it can't be proved definitively either way because any putative effect is so small relative to the background noise that it is impossible to isolate without the use of arcane and debateable methods and statistics. There is also the problem in this context as with the temperature records, that historical records simply don't exist in sufficient quantity , scope and accuracy to make realistic comparisons.
"The real problem comes when there is a mismatch between belief and reality."
You believe that there is a serious risk to coastal areas from 200 mm of sea level rise. I have been all over the UK coast in recent years, and the reality is that there isn't.
As for the rest of the world, there have been a handful of disaster scenarios promoted by the usual suspects with an agenda, all have been shown to be false.
John Silver - I agree.
"They own about 10% of the coastline, mostly cliffs." It's gonna take some sea level rise to get up those.
http://cserge.ac.uk/sites/default/files/ecm_2004_01.pdf
The 4040 hectares they quote is labelled 'at risk of flooding', not permanent loss.
National Trust has unfortunately, as they say in the US, 'Drunk the Kool-Aid' re climate alarmism, so I would take their estimate with a pinch of salt. Far better to compare what happened in the last century. Which isnt a great deal, but certainly some sizeable cliff falls and a few toppled buildings.
Entropic Man,
I'm not sure what you think you're dealing with here when you write of a disparity between belief and reality when your belief system clearly impacts on your objectivity.
Are you seriously telling me that the only explanation for a change in global sea levels of about the height of the capital letter beginning this sentence is anthropogenic carbon dioxide?
Can you grasp the practicalities of measuring such a minuscule variation on a global scale where daily variations are several thousand times greater than this amount and where we don't even have a fixed datum to measure from, since the earth's crust is plastic and subject to isostatic bounce and a variety of other effects, some documented, others less so. I'd challenge you to be able to measure a 10m length of rope to ± 3mm, never mind global sea level.
Can you explain why global temperatures have been static for a decade and a half despite around a third of all anthropogenic carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere in this time? By global temperatures I include sea surface temperatures. It's not warming, even if your belief system drives you to tell us that it is.
EM I suggest you read Karl Popper- Falsification of Science.
Basically if your "theory" has an explanation for everything i.e.
It is hotter/colder/wetter/drier/windier/calmer then it is not "scientific, rather
a kind of quasi-religion.