Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach [see Update at the end]

I thought I might write about how I research a subject. Over at Dr. Judith’s excellent website, she periodically puts out a list of interesting papers that she has come across. This time it was “Week In Review: Water Edition”. She gave a link to an article from a Tampa Bay news station headlined Study: Sea level rise may severely impact Tampa by 2040.

Why did I pick this article? To me it’s obviously bogus. Sea level is rising around the world at something like 8-12 inches (200 – 300 mm) per century. It’s only twenty-four years until 2040, call it a quarter century. So by then Tampa will likely see on the order of 2 – 3 inches of sea level rise. That will not have a “severe impact” anywhere. So I went off to read the article.

Reading the article, I said “Well, there’s yer problem”, viz:

The study was based on sea level rise predictions from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the findings of the Tampa Bay Climate Science Advisory Board. The advisory board concluded that the region could experience sea level rise between a half-foot to 2.5 feet of sea level rise by 2050.

Two and a half feet of sea level rise over the next thirty-four years, a third of a century?? That doesn’t pass the laugh test. Consider that to do that we’d have to AVERAGE a sea level rise of seven and a half feet per century. So I set off to unearth the “findings of the Tampa Bay Climate Science Advisory Board”.

From there the trail got murkier. But after several false starts, I came across a Tampa Bay City Council Agenda that referred in passing to the report by the Advisory Board. With that I was able to track it down. It is called “Recommended Projection of Sea Level Rise in the Tampa Bay Region“.

The report starts out reasonably, showing the longest local historical sea level record, from the adjacent city of St. Petersburg.

Regarding this chart they say:

Data measured at the St. Petersburg tide station shows that water levels in Tampa Bay have increased approximately 6.6 inches or approximately 1 inch/decade (see Figure 2).

That’s all quite reasonable, and at ten inches (250 mm) per century the rise is right in the general world range I gave above. So I continue reading and find this:

The final parameter, projections of how much sea level will change globally over the next 100 years, is derived from experts engaged in climate science.

Uh-oh, sez I. We are now in the hands of “experts engaged in climate science”, so hide the good silver and watch your wallets … I continue reading …

The 2012 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Technical Report, Global Sea Level Rise Scenarios for the United States National Climate Assessment, was produced as a coordinated, interagency effort to identify nationally agreed upon estimates for global SLR. The report synthesized the scientific literature on global SLR, included input from national experts in climate science, physical coastal processes and coastal management, and produced a set of four plausible SLR scenarios that can easily be adjusted for regional conditions throughout the United States.

Plausible? Er … um … I continue reading …

Future SLR estimates can be calculated for the Tampa Bay region, integrating data from the local St. Petersburg tide gauge, using a flexible, well-supported tool developed by the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). The tool takes the three parameters discussed above (datum, rate of change, projection) and produces the plots or tables that describe how sea level will change in the future, such as those included as Figure 3 and Table 1.

Here is their Figure 3, in all its glory:

Now, this is good, because it starts in 1992. This means we are already almost a quarter century into this graph, so we can see how well the various projections are doing in 2016. Now, the “NOAA Low” estimate (bottom line, dotted blue) is simply an extension of the historical rate.

To look at the others, I took their Table 1 showing their projections, hand-typed it into Excel (because it’s a graphic and not text and numbers, bad scientists, no cookies), and used the Excel Solver tool to determine the equations of those lines. This lets me calculate the annual sea level rise for each of the four scenarios. Remember, the lowest one called “NOAA Low” is the observed rate extended out to 2100. In the figure below we can see the observed rate of sea level rise (2.6 mm/year) compared to the three NOAA projections for the year 2016.

How are they doing? Let’s start from the “NOAA High” projection. NOAA was definitely high for this one. It’s more than four times the current rate. I’d throw that model in the trash. After a quarter century it’s rising at more than four times the observed rate. Sorry, not valid.

Same thing for the “NOAA Int High”. After a quarter century that sucker is almost three times actual observations. Into the trash with that one as well.

Finally, the NOAA Int Low … well, it is about fifty percent higher than observed. I suppose that is in a feasible range … or so it would seem until we look at where the rates of sea level rise are projected to be by the year 2100.

The fastest sea level rise in the paleo record is from about 16000 to 8000 years before present, at the end of the last ice age glacial period. The rapid rise was from the melting of the ice that was a mile thick where Chicago sits today. As that incredible mass of ice in the temperate zones melted, sea level rose about 110 metres. That is a sustained rate of rise of about 14 mm/year. That rate has not been seen for the last 8000 years, and for a good reason—there is no mile of ice over Chicago to melt. Despite that, NOAA predicts that we may well see twice that rate of rise by the end of the century?? Like I said … that doesn’t pass the laugh test. Even their lowest estimate (NOAA Int Low) is more than half the historical record post-glacial rate … not believable.

Finally, look at the St. Petersburg sea level dataset, or any Florida sea level dataset. None of them show any significant acceleration, despite covering the period of recent warming. Warming but no acceleration of sea level rise … oops.

These alarmist claims of accelerating sea level rise have been being made since about 1988, when Jim Hansen conned the US Senate into buying into his hysteria. Despite the claims, there is no sign of said acceleration in the Florida sea level data.

Now, could it happen? Could sea level rise start to accelerate?

Sure, it’s possible … but until you see it, it is just a James Hansen fantasy.

These NOAA claims of wildly accelerating rates of sea level rise are not science in any form. They are government sponsored hysteria, and whoever did this at NOAA should resign.

Unfortunately, the costs of this rampant alarmism will be huge, as coastal communities will struggle to comply with a meaninglessly exaggerated risk.

The only good news is that sea level pays no attention to what NOAA and the rest of the activist-ridden government and non-government organizations say … and sooner or later, this will become too evident for even the most ardent climate activist to ignore.

My best wishes to everyone,

w.

PS—If you are commenting please QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS YOU ARE REFERRING TO, so that everyone can understand your subject.

UPDATE: As usual, commenters provide pure gold.

Larry Hamlin January 15, 2017 at 11:18 am says:

The Tampa Bay study is question relies upon a “tool” developed by the USACE as noted in the quote in the subject article provided below. “Future SLR estimates can be calculated for the Tampa Bay region, integrating data from the local St. Petersburg tide gauge, using a flexible, well-supported tool developed by the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). The tool takes the three parameters discussed above (datum, rate of change, projection) and produces the plots or tables that describe how sea level will change in the future, such as those included as Figure 3 and Table 1.” The USACE model methodology can be found at: http://www.corpsclimate.us/ccaceslcurves.cfm. This USACE tool is in fact a semi-emprical methodology model of the type whose significant shortcomings was addressed in the UN IPCC AR5 report which specifically noted: “Many semi-empirical model projections of global mean sea level rise are higher than process-based model projections (up to about twice as large), but there is no consensus in the scientific community about their reliability and there is thus low confidence in their projections. {13.5}” “Despite the successful calibration and evaluation of semi-empirical models against the observed 20th century sea level record, there is no consensus in the scientific community about their reliability, and consequently low confidence in projections based on them. {13.5.2, 13.5.3, Figure 13.12}” “Because of the limited or medium evidence supporting SEMs, and the low agreement about their reliability, we have low confidence in their projections.” (Section 13.5.3) Thus the Tampa Bay study addressed in this post relies upon highly speculative methodology which was specifically cautioned against in the UN IPCC AR5 report as providing results which the IPCC have “low confidence in their projections.”

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