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.
Mr Watson’s findings, published in the Journal of Coastal Research this year and now attracting broader attention, supports a similar analysis of long-term tide gauges in the US earlier this year. Both raise questions about the CSIRO’s sea-level predictions.
Climate change researcher Howard Brady, at Macquarie University, said yesterday the recent research meant sea levels rises accepted by the CSIRO were “already dead in the water as having no sound basis in probability”.
“In all cases, it is clear that sea-level rise, although occurring, has been decelerating for at least the last half of the 20th century, and so the present trend would only produce sea level rise of around 15cm for the 21st century.”
Dr Brady said the divergence between the sea-level trends from models and sea-level trends from the tide gauge records was now so great “it is clear there is a serious problem with the models”.
h/t to Marc Morano
No, clearly the observations are incorrect.
Some people have been trying to tell them that since the 90s!
We should be hearing from Germany about why the models are the only correct way to check sea levels and of course they did not apply GIA to their data. We all know that depth affects height. 😉
Phil is right. The fear mongers are trying to hide this decline. University of Colorado, in the USA, that keeps a record on satellite data, has been manipulating the data to hide this deceleration. It had done it earlier this year, and has done it again this week! Please check it out at http://ecotretas.blogspot.com/2011/07/more-hiding-decline.html
Ecotretas
Interesting. I’m sure they will have to UPdate their figures after this.