"Hotspot of accelerated sea-level rise on the Atlantic coast of North America" - final reality check

Last year I shredded the Sallenger et al. paper "Hotspot of accelerated sea-level rise on the Atlantic coast of North America" here. Now, with updated CGPS data from SONEL, I can finally place the headstone on its grave. South of Boston, the coast is subsiding, and subsiding at a generally increasing rate all the way south to Florida. Sandy Hook, a rather inconsequential spot, which all boat traffic in and out of New York harbour pass with barely a glance, had the honour of being one of the few sites along the NW coast with published GPS data. I say had, because SONEL has carried out a massive update of sites worldwide, adding fairly up-to-date data to many. Sandy Hook now has a downloadable record from 1995 to 2013. The record shows that the downward rate has been increasing from less than 2 mm/year in the late 1990s to over 3 mm/year in the three years 2011-2013. I've used the entire record for station SHK5, 2007-2013, which plots at -2.57 mm/year. The SONEL analysis shows -2.65 mm/year, but I've taken account of a few short-term gaps in the data; I assume they didn't. Here's the SONEL plot:

And mine:

Sandy Hook 1993-2015 (Sea-level satellite era):

The relative rate (relative to the tide-gauge/land) is 5.36 mm/year. Absolute rate (relative to the Earth/Geoid) is 2.79 mm/year. The subsidence rate is almost half the relative rate.

The SONEL plot for New York Battery Park, where both tide-gauge and GPS pillar are located:

The rate during the late 1990s was around -1 mm/year. My analysis:

The chart for New York (Battery Park) 1993-2015:

Relative rate is 3.92 mm/year; absolute rate, allowing for subsidence of 1.93 mm/year is 1.99. The "Hotspot" isn't one of sea-level rise, but one of subsidence. Sallenger et al. were also being somewhat disingenuous when they claimed that the rates of subsidence along the coast "were almost constant", and therefore didn't affect their complex analysis or results. They weren't constant when the paper was written, and the rates are generally increasing over the last 20 years; some very little, some like New York and Sandy Hook, significantly increasing. The "Hotspot" was an artefact of questionable and almost impenetrable analysis, ignoring the inconvenient past, and coastal subsidence.

Note also the obvious cycles which appeared in the record after 1970 - large and small alternating. Sallenger et al. used PSMSL annual average data, and so they wouldn't have been obvious. Take some data and torture it using complex and (to me, impenetrable) statistical techniques I imagine most sea-level experts and authors couldn't fathom, and get the answer you want. What I do know is that those techniques aren't suited to relatively small datasets, which is what you have if you use annual average data. Also PSMSL omit years from annual data, even if just one month is missing. The annual data Sallenger et al. used had quite a few years missing, shrinking their database even further.

Something else Sallenger et al. failed to mention is that a comparable rate of rise occurred before the mid-1950s. Somehow their "long-term" analysis wasn't quite that long:

Trend, in mm/year for 30-year sliding window, end year on x-axis.

The red circle marks 2009, the end year for the "Hot-spot" analysis. It's easy to see the rate of increase was much higher prior to 1953. If the whole record shows an inconvenient truth, just analyse part of it.

Nils-Axel Mörner and his Cuxhaven Curve

In a previous post, I closely examined Nils-Axel Mörner's claims about sea-level in the North Sea, highlighting his "curve" which was based on a flawed "modelling" of the record for Cuxhaven on the North Sea coast of Germany,  I posed a question about satellite altimetry; "Does anyone really think that altimetry maps would be produced that could be easily refuted by data from a few tide gauges?". I now pose another; why would anyone produce a curve purported to represent North Sea sea-level changes over more than a century and a half, when reference to tide gauge records, even that for the single station used would prove it to be totally incorrect over its latter half? A certain Stockholm professor (retired) would. A certain Stockholm professor (retired) has.  Here's his curve again:

The Cuxhaven Curve, with a guest appearance by Amsterdam (d. 1930, R.I.P.)

It doesn't show "eustatic sea level". The term "eustatic" refers to a global change in ocean volume. The North Sea is not global, and Cuxhaven, used to produce the curve, ain't the North Sea. The abstract of his 1973 paper Eustatic changes during the last 300 years, which immediately contradicted the title (my bold), states

Tide gauges in rising and subsiding areas show a major change in the shore-level displacement at about A.D. 1840, caused by the onset of a rapid eustatic rise. Comparisons between information from Amsterdam, Stockholm and Warnemünde provide material for the reconstruction of the eustatic changes during the last 290 years. Relative uplift data from the Swedish west coast, corrected according to the eustatic curve established here, give the same location of the isostatic zero isobase as does the geological material for the last 7,000 years. The eustatic changes closely follow climatic changes. A rapid eustatic rise started about 1840, slowed down about 1930 and ended about 1950. Knowing the eustatic factor, the isostatic (or tectonic) factor is calculated for different areas of importance in the discussion of Holocene eustatic sea-level changes.

It's impossible to determine eustatic changes from a few tide-gauges and over a relatively small region. There's no way to separate the eustatic component from the local true sea-level change. Just to establish that local or regional rate, data from a number of gauges is needed and over the entire area of study. A couple in the Baltic and one truncated series on the North sea coast just ain't gonna cut it, but the "world's leading sea-level expert" has convinced himself he can.

 Warnemünde? It's in the southern Baltic on the German north coast. How does its record bear out the statement " A rapid eustatic rise started about 1840, slowed down about 1930 and ended about 1950"?

Warnemünde 2, GER 1855-2011                                                            Data Source: PSMSL

There's a little downward dip from 1930 to 1942 then it's "onward and upward", business as usual, and no sign of "ended about 1950". If Mörner had stuck to his previous theme of "No alarming sea-level rise", which I agree with, I'd have simply ignored his flawed methodology, blatant cherry-picking, gross over-simplification and misrepresentation. I'd have ignored him altogether. He'd have been singing the right song, and despite singing the wrong notes in the wrong order, and some very dubious words, it still would have been the right song. However I can't stand aside and ignore what is clearly a fabrication.

What about Stockholm, which I'm sure has a famous university, which must have produced many notable alumni? The situation there isn't clear cut at first.

Stockholm, SWE 1889-2011                                                                   Data source: PSMSL

Stockholm, and the gauge site along with it of course, is uplifting (post-glacial rebound) at almost 5 mm/year. However, GPS stations abound in Europe, and Scandinavia particularly. That for Stockholm shows 4.9 mm/year uplift (see chart below), and it's an easy matter to adjust the record upward by that amount.

Fig. 3 Interpolated surface of crustal uplift rates (in mm/y) according to BIFROST permanent GPS network data (Lidberg et al. 2007). From Postglacial rebound and relative sea level changes in the Baltic Sea since the Litorina transgression, Rosentau et al., BALTICA Volume 25 Number 2 December 2012 : 113–120

Stockholm has the "4.9" figure against it, second purple circle along the transect line from A at the bottom left (click to enlarge, as with all images which show that message on mouseover). Here's the annual average plot.

Stockholm, SWE 1889-2011, adjusted up by 4.9 mm/year                  Data source: PSMSL

This doesn't follow the Mörner model either. There's a big dip 1926-1948, then a slow decline (almost horizontal) to 1978, then an irregular upward trend to 2011. I could show the record prior to 1889, from the older gauges, but it's irrelevant here.

Gauges? There have been several; the first was a simple scale cut in the seaward wall of the Sluice, the sea-lock between the Baltic and lake Mälaren, marked in feet and inches (pre-metric, and Swedish feet). this was superseded by several wooden posts also marked in feet and inches, which had to occasionally be moved, vertically or laterally with construction work in progress, and replaced as they rotted. This shifting about created a veritable jigsaw puzzle for future researchers, who had to spot discontinuities in the records and consult ancient documents in order to create an (almost) continuous record up to the installation of a mareograph (float-gauge with pen recorder, similar to a barograph in operation) in 1889 at yet another site. That site is where the current (modern) gauge is located. (ref, The Changing Level of the Baltic Sea during 300 Years: A Clue to Understanding the Earth, Martin Ekman, 2009)

Mörner has said in several articles

Tide gauges were installed at harbor constructions to measure changes in tidal level and long-term sea-level changes. The Amsterdam tide gauge is the oldest, installed in 1682; the Stockholm tide gauge is the second-oldest, installed in 1724/1774; and the Liverpool tide gauge is the third-oldest, installed in 1768. Most tide gauges are installed on unstable harbor constructions or landing piers. Therefore, records from tide gauges are bound to exaggerate sea-level rise.

None of those statements is strictly true. In the 17th/18th centuries, no-one was worried about sea-level rise, indeed it was generally falling. Falling sea-level is a headache for port operators as it means expensive dredging may be necessary. Saying any tide-gauge is "the oldest" is rather like saying "my broom is 100 years old", when it's had 12 heads and 6 handles. The first Amsterdam tide gauge was the oldest; a simple wooden scale (in feet and inches, but Dutch feet!) it was superseded by several more as the Dutch built and improved canals and locks in and around Amsterdam and its port. I've outlined the history of the Stockholm gauges above. The Liverpool tide gauge was installed in 1991, preceded by a number of different types, and in different locations, the first being a wooden scale graduated in Imperial feet and inches. As Michael Caine would say "Not many people know that".

Most tide gauges were and still are are being installed on piers and jetties - it's where they're needed most, and they have to be installed over reasonably deep water where the lowest tide won't uncover the gauge. Anyone who thinks that these constructions are inherently unstable ought to consider that they were built to facilitate trade. No-one builds an expensive pier or jetty if poor construction would mean a costly interruption of that trade caused by equally costly extensive repairs or rebuilding. Records from tide-gauges are not "bound to exaggerate sea-level rise"; many do, but we've seen one example from Stockholm (do I know of someone who lives there?), and there are many more in the Baltic, Norway, northern UK, Canada, Alaska, China, Russia, and the Southern Ocean that show just the opposite, due to post-glacial rebound, and many more because of tectonic movement.

Mörner has to discredit satellite altimetry (despite having used it in several papers - will he withdraw them?), tide-gauges (but uses records without comment when it suits him), other scientists and their papers, and accepted and proven principles of steric (thermal, temperature-related) ocean expansion, because all of these refute his claims. Hence his silly stunt with Willy Soon, who should know better, claiming that horse-jumping, and the attendant crowds, had disturbed the Atlantic City pier and therefore the gauge installed there. Even if they were right, horse-jumping never caught on anywhere else in the world, and a 1904 storm that destroyed the seaward third of the massive "Steel Pier" left the gauge installation half-way along intact and virtually undisturbed. A claimed disturbance to one gauge out of almost 2,000 worldwide doth not an hypothesis prove, but one publicity-seeking stunt can reveal a lot about those who try it on.

That Washington Post piece was titled "SOON AND MORNER: Sea-level rise data based on shoddy science" and ends "Not surprisingly, objective sea level research should be based on observational facts in nature itself and not on computer models". Mörner considers other scientists who analyse sea-level data to be "modelling on the computers". I've shown he should have done a bit more of what he misleadingly calls "modelling" and "shoddy science" himself. By not doing so, he's making a fool of himself, and producing what is really "shoddy science"; not science at all in fact. Any scientist, and I count myself an amateur scientist as much as a blogger, should test their own hypothesis to destruction; look for evidence to disprove it as much, if not more, than evidence to support it. The "null hypothesis" should be a starting point. Mörner didn't look beyond a few gauges, and he didn't even look beyond 2000, calling that "current". He has an axe to grind, and the faithful should realise that he'll play any card, and from more than one deck, to grind it. He has shown no objectivity whatsoever - in anyone that's bad, in a scientist it's the road to advocacy and not the path of science.

I've had a NW Europe reference page in preparation for a while, and I'll get my act together and post it soon. It'll have rather more than a few charts for all countries bordering the Nort Sea and English channel, and several for the Baltic too.

Disconnects in Logic (5) - Correlation & Causation

Steve Rissing writes in the Columbus Dispatch (my comments in italics)

Any one still doubt climate change?

Are we there yet?

If we haven’t entered a period of human-caused climate change yet, what will it take for us to agree that we have? Maybe events such as the following:

• Almost 1,500 U.S. high-temperature records fell in one week.

So? Did citizens complain and stay indoors to avoid the deadly heat?

• Health-care specialists warn that Chagas’ disease, spread among humans by blood-sucking insects in tropical regions, might spread as temperatures rise in the United States.

Might.

• Biologists identify mechanisms by which earlier snow melts decrease populations of a rare Rocky Mountain butterfly.

Clearly devastating for mankind. Did biologists actually identify "earlier snow melts"?

• Agricultural specialists attribute global changes in crop maturation, for example early ripening of grapes, to increased global temperatures.

Good-oh, we get the vintage earlier, and growers can take an early holiday.

• NASA releases maps showing a reduction in snow cover for North America in 2012 compared with 2011.

So North America has been seeing increases in snow cover until 2012?

• Studies suggest that the houses where 4 million Americans live on the coasts confront increased risk of storm-surge flooding by midcentury because of warming oceans.

Suggest. Not predict, project, but suggest. Is a suggested "increased risk by midcentury" proof of anything whatsoever?

• News reports say the iconic cherry trees in Washington, D.C., were in full bloom a week before the month-long National Cherry Blossom Festival started. All of these things occurred over just two days this month. No one seriously doubts that carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere are rising. Over the past 30 years, they have increased by 15 percent - a rate that continues to grow with no sign of stopping. No one seriously doubts that the increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a result of burning fossil fuels and cutting and burning forests. And no one seriously doubts that global mean temperatures are rising. In the past 30 years, the global mean temperature has increased by about a half a degree Celsius. 

You're absolutely right - still waiting for your conclusion. No one would organise a Cherry Blossom Festival to start on a day when there was no blossom in sight, so the "week before" cannot be unprecedented, or likely even a full "week before". Cherry trees lead naturally to cherry-picking, like picking one warm winter as "proof".

This is the usual stuff we see touted as "evidence" - a mixture of cherry-picked "proof" and irrelevancies, and the implication that all such things are "bad". Is "earlier crop maturation" bad? Is one instance of early blooming (by a week!) of cherry-trees in Washington "bad", or proof or indication of anything? Now we come to the central argument:

Almost all scientists and related professionals who collect and analyze data about climate change or its effect on biological systems agree that the increased carbon dioxide levels cause much of the climate change and warming. The remaining climate skeptics tend to be policymakers who would rather not make policy.

No evidence as to who "almost all" are, and if "increased carbon dioxide levels" caused "much of the climate change and warming" what caused the remainder. Is "much"  the same as "most", or is it "some"? What business have "related professionals" got pronouncing on science and causation?

So how do the hold-out skeptics propose to test their hypothesis that no link exists between carbon-dioxide increases and climate-change effects? Good science demands explanations and hypotheses that can be tested.

It's not an hypothesis, it's a fact-based objection to an hypothesis that CO2 alone will cause catastrophic warming and climate change. It's your hypothesis, not ours.

An explanation that can’t be tested isn’t an explanation — it’s a dream, a belief, a political position. It might make for good campaign rhetoric, but it makes for poor public planning.

You said it brother, not me "An explanation that can’t be tested isn’t an explanation - it's a dream, a belief, a political position." Catastrophic global warming and climate change can't be tested, can't be falsified, and is therefore not an hypothesis at all, but "a dream, a belief, a political position". Great guys these catastrophists, they do all the work for you, and the best part is they don't know when they've done it.

Peter Gleick Fools Himself

Peter Gleick, currently posited to be the author of the "fake" Heartland Institute briefing document, has an article on Forbes -"Global Warming Has Stopped"? How to Fool People Using "Cherry-Picked" Climate Data. He attacks one claim in particular, that “The last decade's 'rate of warming' is flat.” by showing this chart

Source: Forbes

He says

What about the last decade, as claimed above? The linear trend (the blue line) over the past decade is relatively flat, but in fact it still exhibited a warming trend, despite the temporary cooling forces that are masking the overall warming. As the British Met Office noted this week, in a reply to a misleading claim that the warming had stopped: “what is absolutely clear is that we have continued to see a trend of warming, with the decade of 2000-2009 being clearly the warmest in the instrumental record going back to 1850.”

The blue line is "relatively flat", but "still exhibited a warming trend" he insists. That line looks pretty flat to me, but then I'm an evil denier with a Mark One eyeball and an aversion to incontrovertible facts, though with a picture editor in my arsenal of analytical tools. The interval (0.05°C) represented by the vertical ticks on the temperature axis is 18 pixels; the increase in height of the blue trend line is 1 pixel, therefore that line represents an increase of 1/18 * 0.05°C over 10 years, or a staggering 0.27°C in - wait for it - I love this - 1,000 years. Is this statistically significant? I hear you ask. It's a "warming trend" allright, just don't rush out and buy an air conditioner or move poleward just yet.

"Mark One Eyeball" - an Effective Weapon Against AGW

About a year ago, I read with some amusement, a blog posting by someone who accused sceptics (of AGW) of "cherry picking" temperature data to prove their claims that climate warming had stopped in the current century. "They are looking at the wrong data" he opined "look at this". "This" was a temperature chart showing global temperature from 1900 to 2010. "It's the long-term trend that's important" he continued. I'll use his tip if my bank account goes into the red in the future. When I get the letter from the bank, I can tell them "You're cherry-picking data - It's the long-term trend that's important".

So what's the "Mark One Eyeball" I refer to in the title?

This term is actual British military slang for eyes or eye sight, derived from British Royal Navy nomenclature for distinguishing sequential variations of a piece of equipment (i.e., "Mark 13 Depth Charge"). Since the human eye has not changed, it is called the Mark I Eyeball. The term is typically used when someone relies too much on their equipment: "Use your Mark One Eyeball!". It is used likewise in the United States military and other predominantly English-speaking countries. 

The point I'm making is that the "Mark One Eyeball" used with our "Mark One Brains" (no better versions available currently) is a valuable tool for spotting trends in graphical data, and to a lesser extent in tabular data. The eye/brain combination seeks to identify shapes and lines in collections of dots, blobs or points on a graph. The MOE is also good at spotting conflicting scientific or statistical claims, sometimes made by the same person. In December 2009 Dr. Vicky Pope, who is head of the climate predictions programme at the Hadley Centre of the UK Met Office, was (apparently) quoted in a BBC report "figures indicate that the years since 2000 - the "noughties" - were on average about 0.18C (0.32F) warmer than years in the 1990s; and that since the 1970s, each decade has seen an increase of about the same scale". MOE was telling anyone who cared to look at ANY temperature dataset that this couldn't possibly be true. This is the Hadley Centre's own data for 1991-2009: