Seas rise even more significantly than previously thought

MoonHowler


Washingtonpost.com

 

A group of scientists says it has now reconstructed the history of the planet’s sea levels arcing back over some 3,000 years — leading it to conclude that the rate of increase experienced in the 20th century was “extremely likely” to have been faster than during nearly the entire period.

“We can say with 95 percent probability that the 20th-century rise was faster than any of the previous 27 centuries,” said Bob Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers University who led the research with nine colleagues from several U.S. and global universities. Kopp said it’s not that seas rose faster before that – they probably didn’t – but merely that the ability to say as much with the same level of confidence declines.

The study was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Seas rose about 14 centimeters (5.5 inches) from 1900 to 2000, the new study suggests, for a rate of 1.4 millimeters per year. The current rate, according to NASA, is 3.4 millimeters per year, suggesting that sea level rise is still accelerating.

Unsurprisingly, the study blames the anomalous 20th-century rise on global warming — and not just that. It also calculates that, had humans not been warming the planet, there’s very little chance that seas would have risen so much during the century, finding that instead of a 14 centimeter rise, we would have seen somewhere between a 3 centimeter fall and a 7 centimeter rise.

The new work is particularly significant because, in effect, the sea level analysis produces a so-called “hockey stick” graph — showing a long and relatively flat sea level “handle” for thousands of years, followed by a “blade” that turns sharply upwards in very recent times.

The discovery of such patterns itself has a long history, going back to a 1998 study by climate researcher Michael Mann of Penn State University and two colleagues — who found a “hockey stick” graph for the planet’s temperature, rather than for its sea level. Since then the “hockey stick,” in its various incarnations, has come in for voluminous criticism from skeptics and doubters of human-caused climate change — even as multiple scientists have continued to affirm the conclusion that the last 100 years or so are way out of whack with what the planet has seen in the past thousand or more.

It seems that more and more studies have surfaced to specifically reinforce the idea that climate change does exist and that this change is a result of man’s behavior.

How many deniers will drop back as more evidence becomes available?

4 Thoughts to “Seas rise even more significantly than previously thought”

  1. Ray Beverage
    February 23, 2016 at 9:33 pm

    You don’t have to look far in Virginia for proof…just look south to Norfolk. Sentara Norfolk General is getting ready to do an expansion, and included in that is setting their emergency generators on higher platforms, and several services on the first floor moving up. This article about the expansion mentions specifically the rising waters…

    http://pilotonline.com/news/local/health/sentara-announces-million-expansion-of-norfolk-general-hospital/article_b22a349b-932e-50c0-a270-4fe28f42ec93.html

  2. Steve Thomas
    February 24, 2016 at 1:24 pm

    1.4 milimeters? Head for the high ground!

  3. Jackson Bills
    February 24, 2016 at 3:04 pm

    ah yes… the old “hockey stick” graph. Wasn’t that made popular by Al Gore’s debunked documentary? It showed that by the year 2012 summer time temps would be reaching 200 degrees or something and we would never see snow again.

  4. Cargosquid
    February 26, 2016 at 2:18 am

    @Ray Beverage
    Norfolk is sinking.
    The sea isn’t rising.

    A meteorite caused the Bay. The crater is right at the mouth. All of that area is settling.

    The average rate of sea level rise for the last few thousand years has been about 3 mm per year. It hasn’t changed.

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