Bishop Hill Sea level rise boosted by PDO
Sep 13, 2013 Climate: WG2 Via Judith Curry we learn that a new paper has been published that suggests that a large chunk of sea level rise may be down to the influence of the PDO.
Understanding and explaining the trend in GMSL has important implications for future projections of sea level rise. While measurements from satellite altimetry have provided accurate estimates of GMSL, the modern altimetry record has only now reached twenty years in length, making it difficult to assess the contribution of decadal to multi-decadal climate signals to the global trend. Here, we use a sea level reconstruction to study the twenty-year trends in sea level since 1950. In particular, we show that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) contributes significantly to the twenty-year trends in GMSL. We estimate the PDO contribution to the GMSL trend over the past twenty years to be approximately 0.49 ± 0.25 mm/year, and find that removing the PDO contribution reduces the acceleration in GMSL estimated over the past sixty years.
Reader Comments (28)
Whoops!
2013 has to go down as the start of The Great Unravelling.
Paul Nurse says that in order to overturn a theory there needs to be an alternative theory.
Not when the accepted theory has been constructed by a bunch of muppets.
OT: Did anyone else notice Judith Curry making Richard Betts look a bit silly on twitter recently? Conversation went like this:
Richard, it's relevant because it shows that you were simply wrong.
And while I am at it; what acceleration?
http://climate4you.com/images/UnivColorado%20MeanSeaLevelSince1992%20With1yrRunningAverage.gif
Paul Nurse says that in order to overturn a theory there needs to be an alternative theory.
Not when the accepted theory has been constructed by a bunch of muppets.
Sep 13, 2013 at 2:55 PM ssat
Or even if it has been constructed by people who actually know what they are up to. It simply has to be shown to be wrong - for example by real-world observation.
_______________________________________________________________
The idea that the Pacific oscillation can result in sea-level rise seems plausible to me. Even a little bit of even-order nonlinearity in a system [terms in ( . )^2, ( . )^4,...] can result in cyclic variations of a quantity producing a response containing a zero frequency term - rectification in eletrical terminology.
ssat, the acceleration is obvious, assuming you only look between the start of 2011 and the end of 2012. Any fool can see it!
0.49mm/yr... hmmm. That's just over 2" per century in old money. Wildly unexiting in any language.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/o/3/SIO2013_June_final.pdf
Nice find steveta!
This shows again (if it needed to be shown) the utter futility of GCM methodology - a "fools gold", falsified again and again by nature, that even alchemists would shun.
As I have said before, the idea of measuring changes in sea levels in millimetres is ridiculous; even measuring it in inches would be suspect. However, all that is required for things to be considered “scientific” and “accurate” is to measure it in metrics, and to a silly number of decimal places. (For example, the lat. & long. of the stranded ice sailors a while back – to less than 5mm! Absurd.)
steveta (2:57 PM) -
I'm not sure why the UKMO should be proud that their Arctic Sept. sea ice extent estimate was above last year's. Their estimate was 3.4 +/- 1.5 million km^2, with a range of about 1.5 - 6 million km^2. I could predict London's high temperature for tomorrow as 15 +/- 10 deg C -- correct but not useful at all. Should I be proud of my forecasting ability if it turns out to be 6? "Well I did say it would be cooler than the day before."
I also notice that the points representing forecasts on the graph on that page, do not agree at all with the table above.
Year.....Prediction.... Graph.....Actual
2010.....5.5........(omitted).....4.9
2011.....4.0+/-1.2......3.6......4.6
2012.....4.4+/-0.9......3.6......3.6
2013.....3.4+/-1.5......3.4.......we'll know soon, but well above 3.4
Plus the claim that over 1996-2009 "our forecast September Arctic ice extents have a correlation with the observed ice extents of 0.63." -- those are all *hindcasts*! I wonder if Dr Betts agrees that this is overselling.
[Apologies for following O/T.]
I don't understand why anyone is even still looking at this when the science is settled?
Antonym required for catastrophic.
Harmless just doesn't do it for me!
"Antonym required for catastrophic. Harmless just doesn't do it for me!"
Catastrophic = GCM methodology.
We are all paying a terrible price for it.
Pesadia,
I would suggest *benign*. You know; more plant growth, warmer habitable higher latitudes etc.
Pesadia
Benign??
Antonyms for catastrophic (from Thesaurus.com)
advantageous
blessed
fortunate
happy
So "HAGW" from now on, if you're happy with that.
@Martin A: there is an alternative theory.
CO2 is the working fluid in the heat engine that regulates atmospheric temperature, a PID process.
By definition, CO2 climate sensitivity is from the IR impedance to Space from clouds, <0.1 K.
Takes an engineer to work it out.
AlecM
PID - Proportional, Integral, Derivative - It comes back from the mists of time...
Writing it up now. A bit of a breakthrough recently which cuts out the Climate Alchemy cr*p.
Steva
I quite like advantageous, it has a positive ring about it and incorporates your other suggestions.
Advantagious Global Warming. AGW....oops that looks familiar.
"CO2 is the working fluid in the heat engine that regulates atmospheric temperature"
I would disagree - I think that H2O is the working fluid that regulates average planetary surface temperature (minimises entropy rise), with CO2 being an insignificant player.....
However, GCMs are bollocks (I think we can all agree on that).
@Roger Longstaff: incorrect.
Water is important but it is primarily used via biofeedback to raise the ghe from ~2 K at the last glacial maximum to the present ~11 K. This gives substantial entropy decrease in the atmosphere whilst minimising radiation entropy production rate to Space. This irreversible thermodynamics was completely ignored by the Climate Alchemists probably because they don't understand it. Brookhaven is studying it but they have made a key mistake which comes from physicists making those irritating simplifications that leads them into blind alleys, like Sagan hence Climate Alchemy!
[The 33K is based on a fundamental 'mistake' in 1981_Hansen_etal.pdf]
Thanks Alec,
I think we agree about the nonsense of GCMs and the 33K physics. I also agree about minimum entropy production at TOA. But after that you lose me.....
Why not start a discussion thread on this? I will happily join in, and I am sure that others would too. (I am also sure that we will annoy others if this continues here!).
If you want to be informed about Ocean cycles then Bob Tisdale is your man. He has a new book out but his youtube introduction says it all. "Climate Models Fail" .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxFStRC913I
As usual the troll doesn't read the full post.
Further down was written:
Using the IPCC’s numbers, the acceleration of sea-level rise that is being attributed to AGW is 3.2-1.7 = 1.5 mm/yr, with an inferred range for the amplification of 0.9 to 2.1 mm/yr.
The significance of the Hamblingdon et al. paper is that the attribution of 0.49 mm/yr to the PDO accounts for about 25-50% of the sea level rise amplification.
Fasullo comments on the 2011 drop of 7 mm, which is not included in the period considered by th AR5. Regarding sea level subsequent to 2011, Fasullo is quoted in EENews: In the last two years, he added, researchers have noticed a sharper-than-normal increase in sea-level rise, from the 3 mm yearly to 10 mm. “It’s never gone up that quickly in our observed record,” he said.
So the 0.49mm/yr is about a third of the change. However it may be significantly different to this because they are over different time periods. The apples and oranges thing.
And some of the comments in JCs post add a lot more detail.
Rog/AlecM
Yes please, I would welcome being able to read a thread that seeks to establish the sceptical position on GHG theory and how it differs from the alarmist version.
Personally, I don't buy the positive feedback attributed to water vapour and believe it could be negative for a number of reasons. The CO2 contribution appears to be relatively straightforward and accepted but I would like confirmation (or otherwise) about this.
Schrodinger's Cat,
I have posted a comment on the "Can Trenberth do sums?" discussion thread, as this already contains a rebuttal of the 33K nonsense, and added the comments by Alec M and myself of the influence of CO2. Anybody who is interested can continue the discussion there.
ssat said:
Paul Nurse says that in order to overturn a theory there needs to be an alternative theory.
Did he really say that? If so, he is a Nobel Prizewinner who has forgotten the scientific method. If the predictions of a theory differ significantly from the facts that shows that a new theory is needed. Admittedly it might be OK to continue to use the old theory in certain circumstances if its limitations are understood. Ptolemy's theory of planetary motions lasted for centuries because its predictions were reasonably accurate, at least over short periods such as years or decades, and were within the limits of experimental error up until centuries later when more accurate instruments were designed.
Does the theory of man-made climate change have any of the virtues that enabled the Ptolemaic theory to survive for so long?