August Seas Warmest in at Least 120 Years

Morner states in the abstract of the paper you reference:

"Novel prospects for the Maldives do not include a condemnation to future flooding. The people of the Maldives have, in the
past, survived a higher sea level of about 50–60 cm. The present trend lack signs of a sea level rise. On the contrary, there is
firm morphological evidence of a significant sea level fall in the last 30 years. This sea level fall is likely to be the effect of
increased evaporation and an intensification of the NE-monsoon over the central Indian Ocean."

Although your link did not work, apparently Church / White did reach differing conclusions, to which Mormer responded:

The paper by Church et al. represent desk-work at the computers. Tide gauges have to be treated with care. There are pitfalls both with respect to stability (compaction, etc) and cyclic patterns (disqualifying regressionline approaches).Our Mildives story is based on multiple criteria: off-shore, on-shore, lagoonal, back-shore, swamp environment...


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Of the Church study, Hurricane expert Dr. Vincent Gray also noted:

They claimed an upward trend but this was done by the dishonest use of a linear regression which made use of the temporary depression on all the records caused by the 1988 hurricane. If you look at the actual records in their report (attached) and ignore this temporary event you will find that there was no change for the last sixteen years.


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And geologist Don Easterbrook states:

The Geology speaks for itself!...

Figure 1 shows a post-1970 wave-cut notch eroded into the pre-1970 shore platform....
If the island has been submerging since 1970, as contended by Church,, White, and Hunter, the present high tide line should be above the 1970 shoreline, not below it!

Any regional analysis of average sea level changes cannot trump the geologic evidence at the two sites shown...


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Regardless, I will agree that tsunamis are a risk for low lying islands, as we have unfortunately just seen with American Somoa. However, I have not seen any evidence that such tsunamis are the result of "global warming", though I'm sure someone will try to make the claim.

 

my Maldives comment happened the day after i saw the Maldives President (king?) on TV at a Climate Change Summit pleading for action to save his country. i have no other factual data other than a blurb on a commercial TV station driven by mostly unseen financial forces with hidden agendas.

 

Fair enough Dave. Truth be known, we do not know the agenda of the president of Maldives (perhaps financial gain / "reparations" from wealthy nations or perhaps genuine concern).

 

The picture of the tree above struck me as a little curious. The author of whichever publication this is seems to want us to believe that the ocean level dropped in 50 years based upon what appears to be a receding ocean line. We are led to surmise 50 years of time passing by noticing all the new buildings in the background of the right picture that aren't there in the left picture (or are they ships stranded in the lower waters?)

However, looking more closely at the tree, one wonders what kind of tree grows so little in 50 years? IT hardly looks like a decade has passed in the change of stature of the tree, much less five decades.

But looking even more closely at the tree itself, it appears that the photographer of the tree either flipped one of the images or is standing on one side of the tree in one picture and standing on the other side of the tree in the other picture. There are two particular branches of the tree that stand out and define the tree... the one that 'reaches' outside of the tree like a hand reaching to the sky; on the left picture it reaches to the left, on the right picture it reaches to the right.... and the second branch, the thicker peripheral branch off the trunk with many vertical shoots on it; on the left picture it is coming off the right side and on the right picture it is coming off the left side.

One other thing bothers me about the tree picture that may not be so visible in the link above, but is a little more visible in the original link itself here. Although the picture is very grainy, if you zoom in on it, there seems to be a horizontal line across the picture, as though someone photoshopped it. Notice how the trunk doesn't line up on the lower half vs. the upper half, and notice also the slight coloration change of the sand right at the line.

This is actually a lot more evident in the original picture in this interview with Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner.
http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/NilsAxelMornerinterview.pdf


In this picture, the horizontal line and the mismatch of the trunk lining up is very clear.

I guess the same accusation you paint of the climate change yay-sayers can be made of the climate change nay-sayers, re: manufacturing data... not that I'm saying this is manufactured. Just saying... it could be.

 

I fail to see how a single tree in a single location proves or disproves whether or not the ocean has risen or fallen.

Measuring ocean rise/fall is notoriously difficult to do. And a single photo from multiple time periods shows nothing. Only that the tree has managed to remain standing.

 

Hi Tim, Church and White link I gave related to global ocmpilations of sea level data. You could start at the root

Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory

and navigate from there. I actually did not know that Church etc. had published a response to Mörner. The Woodworth and Woodworth were especially critical of Mörner's proposed mechanism. Because in fact, Mörner needs some explanation why the maldive sea level is going down while the other measurements in that ocean basin are not.

 

omg, all this discussion on those pics?? means nothing... actually much LESS than ZERO.

i have better evidence... here is a pic of Capital Lake in downtown Olympia taken this past summer... now this REALLY shows how much the ocean levels have receded (it is connected to Puget Sound).

BUT... then again, it could be just the lowest tide we have had in 20 years and not have anything at all to do with current water levels...

 

OMG, the sea is falling!

 

Back on topic: Schuckman 2009 reports that the ocean has been warming steadily for the past 5 years as expected:

How we know global warming is happening, Part 2

 

I think you are misinterpreting the 2 color photos. I don't believe either one was labeled 1950 and they both appear to be more modern to me (if either had been from the 1950s it likely would have been black and white). The point - perhaps poorly communicated - was that this tree, shown in 2 photos, was around in 1950 and had the ocean risen significantly since then, the water line would be up to the tree today since the slope of the surrounding ground is quite low.

I also don't think we can know why the photo you found is "split". In my view, the photo taken as it is, it confers no advantage to an argument that the ocean is either rising or falling because of or in spite of the split. I can't imagine what "advantage" you think Morner would gain in his arguments by "surreptitiously" splitting the photo.

However, I will agree the significance of the photos is not as clear as it could be, without further information.

 

Sorry, I would not give Proudman, part of an environmental advocacy organization, the same weight as the University of Colorado.

 

As you wish. The U Colo graph you post indicates +44 mm between 1993 and 2007 using TOPEX and Jason. Church and White report +55 mm for that period using TOPEX, Jason and tide gauges. I do think you may underestimate Proudman/PSMSL/GLOSS and FAGS (yes that's their acronym in this regard however. They provide a permanent and consistent archive for global tide gauge data. I am not aware of any other organization doing so. NGDC/NOAA have US and Pacific rim stations only.

Against better judgement I veer this reasonable discussion back towards silly. The Maldives President and cabinet are going to hold a meeting underwater:

Cabinet in drowning Maldives to meet underwater - CNN.com

They have been practising SCUBA on weekends. Sorry, I can't help being amused by such things.

 

From your link:

" Over the last 5 years, the oceans have been absorbing heat at a rate of 0.77 ± 0.11 Wm−2"


Now this is interesting, because here is what NODC data shows:




Besides the lack of an upward trend over the past 6 years, there is a clear drop in ocean heat content over the past year that puts OHC back to pre-2003 levels.

 

It's disingenuous to imply that one year of reduced ocean heat content uptake indicates that the globe is not warming. Just have a look at all the spikes and valleys in the chart and it's easy to see that one-3 year spikes and valleys of .1 GJ/MA2 is typical and expected.

It's the long term trends that you should be focusing on.

Aside from that - it's expected that different data sources will vary since there are advantages and drawbacks to every data collection method - what's important is that the general trend that they indicate are similar.

 

If anyone would like a pdf of this new paper:

Murphy, D. M., S. Solomon, R. W. Portmann, K. H. Rosenlof, P. M. Forster, and T. Wong (2009), An observationally based energy balance for the Earth since 1950, ​

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[FONT=AdvTTf90d833a.I][FONT=AdvTTf90d833a.I]J. Geophys. Res.[/FONT][/FONT], [FONT=AdvTTf90d833a.I][FONT=AdvTTf90d833a.I]114[/FONT][/FONT], D17107, doi:10.1029/2009JD012105.​

PM me your email please. I find it to be a reasonable assessment of where we are now. Not the easiest read ever though

 

{Besides the lack of an upward trend over the past 6 years, there is a clear drop in ocean heat content over the past year that puts OHC back to pre-2003 levels.}

So, when will we get back to 2000 levels? then 1990 levels?

 

Hi Tim the NODC website links us to Levitus et al. 2009 - free for all to download (which is often not the case). Here is an image of their figure 1:

This does not show the last-point drop, so where is that data from please?

Shelly, the ups and downs in ocean heat content appear to be related to ENSO (El Nino) in the Pacific ocean. I don't know of a mechanism that could cause an even larger drop (in the top 700 meters under discussion here). Are you thinking that one may exist?

 

Try here: ftp://ftp.nodc.noaa.gov/pub/data.nodc/woa/DATA_ANALYSIS/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/DATA/heat_3month/

 

Uh, it is disingenuous to suggest, as per the title of this thread, that a one month "record" in sea surface temps is somehow meaningful in judging the impact of CO2 on climate. That is my point.

Ocean heat content is a much better climate metric and IT, in contradiction to "global warming" predictions, appears to have plateaued in recent years, as Roger Pielke Sr. of the University of Colorado has noted in his comments on the subject (in bold, below):

"Sea Level Budget over 2003–2008: A Reevaluation from GRACE Space Gravimetry, Satellite Altimetry and Argo by Cazenave et al. 2008 This paper includes the text
“From the results presented in this study, we see that confronting independent estimates of ocean and land contributions to sea level with altimetry results leads to a rather coherent picture for recent years variations. This can be summarized as follows: since 2003, sea level has continued to rise but with a rate (of 2.5 +/-0.4 mm/yr) somewhat reduced compared to the 1993-2003 decade (3.1+/-0.4 mm/yr). “
“The steric sea level estimated from the difference between altimetric (total) sea level and ocean mass displays increase over 2003-2006 and decrease since 2006. On average over the 5 year period (2003-2008), the steric contribution has been small (on the order of 0.3+/-0.15 mm/yr), confirming recent Argo results (this study and Willis et al., 2008).â€

This paper supports both conclusions in my recent weblogs (see and see) that the sea level rise has flattened and that the upper ocean heat content changes have been essentially flat since 2004."

 

Maybe soon, if the current trends hold, since the current dip is approaching 1990 levels. But then again, maybe in 5 years, maybe in 10 years, maybe never.