by Judith Curry
Here are a few things that caught my eye this past week:
Sea Level
Several things of interest re sea level. John Droz at WUWT has a very interesting post entitled “The battle over sea level in JCR.”
A few months ago a widely-publicized article by Houston and Dean was published in the Journal of Coastal Research (and on your site), noting that although sea-level is rising; the tide gauge data does not show any increased rate of rise (acceleration) for the 20th and early 21st centuries.
In the most recent volume of the Journal of Coastal Research, there is a point/counterpoint on this study. It was started by an attack on this paper by Rahmstorf & Vermeer and followed by a response to this by Houston & Dean (below).
In the Australian, there is an interview with Phil Watson on his new paper:
ONE of Australia’s foremost experts on the relationship between climate change and sea levels has written a peer-reviewed paper concluding that rises in sea levels are “decelerating”.
The analysis, by NSW principal coastal specialist Phil Watson, calls into question one of the key criteria for large-scale inundation around the Australian coast by 2100 — the assumption of an accelerating rise in sea levels because of climate change.
Based on century-long tide gauge records at Fremantle, Western Australia (from 1897 to present), Auckland Harbour in New Zealand (1903 to present), Fort Denison in Sydney Harbour (1914 to present) and Pilot Station at Newcastle (1925 to present), the analysis finds there was a “consistent trend of weak deceleration” from 1940 to 2000.
Tamino posts on Watson’s paper, with some interesting analysis of the tide guage data.
Jim Hansen has a new paper entitled “Paleoclimate implications for human made climate change.” From the abstract:
We suggest that ice sheet mass loss, if warming continues unabated, will be characterized better by a doubling time for mass loss rate than by a linear trend. Satellite gravity data, though too brief to be conclusive, are consistent with a doubling time of 10 years or less, implying the possibility of multi-meter sea level rise this century.
Its not the coal, its volcanoes(?)
A new study by Vernier et al. is in press at GRL, entitled “Major influence of tropical volcanic eruptions on the stratospheric aerosol layer during the last decade.” From the abstract:
Recently, the trend, based on ground-based lidar measurements, has been tentatively attributed to an increase of SO2 entering the stratosphere associated with coal burning in Southeast Asia. However, we demonstrate with these satellite measurements that the observed trend is mainly driven by a series of moderate but increasingly intense volcanic eruptions primarily at tropical latitudes. These events injected sulfur directly to altitudes between 18 and 20 km. The resulting aerosol particles are slowly lofted into the middle stratosphere by the Brewer-Dobson circulation and are eventually transported to higher latitudes.
Well, this is a more convincing explanation then the Chinese coal burning.
Science Communication vs Soulcraft
Dan Kahan has another very interesting essay posted here (his previous essay was discussed here). His essay starts with this: