Chris Christie adviser Ken Miller wrote this E-mail (red italics) to Denis Ables who shared it with Marc Morano and myself. My comments are interspersed
Denis
I am not sure to what you are referring. The current estimate for global sea level rise is 3.1 mm/yr from three different groups, but see the NCAR group here http://sealevel.colorado.edu/The Legos (Laboratoire d’Etudes en Géophysique et Océanographie Spatiale) group reported slightly lower rates 2.5 mm.yr up to 2007 (Cazenave et al., 2008), but not < 1 mm/yr!!!
The newest sea level measuring satellite, Europe’s Envisat satellite shows less than 1mm/year, with sea level currently the lowest in their eight year record.
http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/
Jason 2 also shows less than 2 mm/year
http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/
The average of all currently active NOAA global tide gauges is less than half a millimeter per year.
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/MSL_global_trendtable.html
https://spreadsheets.google.com/
Look at the local recordsAtlantic City, current 5 mm/yr; 1mm/yr is local subsidence, 1 mm/yr is regional subsidence
I have no idea where he got the 5mm/year number. PSMSL shows sea level rising at 1.5 mm/year in Atlantic City over the last 15 years. The long term rise is less than 4 mm/year.
http://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/stations/180.php
Lewes, DE and Battery are 4 mm/yr, 1 mm/yr is regional subsidence
by the end of the century it would be 45 cm rise at Atlantic City and 40 cm at other Jersey locations; this is only slightly greater than 20th century which saw 40 and 30 cmm rises, respectively
PSMSL shows about 1/3 of the number Ken Miller is claiming for the current rise rate. But in the original article, he was actually claiming almost 100cm. He was off by an order of magnitude.
But sea is accelerating.
No it isn’t. All of the satellites show a decline in rise rates over the last five years.
Recent estimates from satellite data show a trend of -36 Gt/yr2 ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica, or about 0.1 mm/yr acceleration. This means by 2050, temperature expansion alone yields 9 cm, mountain glaciers yield 8 cm, and Greenland and Antarctica yield 15 cm, for a total of 32 cm (~1 foot) according to Rignot et al
By 2100, Greenland and Antarctica yield >0.5 m, plus the 20-60 cm computed for mountain glaciers and thermal expansion.
The conclusions for Greenland and Antarctica come from JPL (Rignot et al., 2011) and Laboratoire d’Etudes en Géophysique et Océanographie Spatiale (Czaenave et al.). I stand by the ‘rithmetic.
Ken Miller
Those studies have been known to be flawed for about nine months.
Climate: New study slashes estimate of icecap loss
By Richard Ingham (AFP) – Sep 7, 2010
a new study published in the September issue of Nature Geoscience suggests that the true melt rate might be much slower than that. (Access a PDF of the study here.) A joint team of American and Dutch scientists took another look at the GRACE data and found that Greenland and West Antarctica may be melting just half as fast the earlier studies estimated. As researcher Bert Vermeersen, a professor at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, told the AFP, the earlier estimates failed to account for glacial isostatic adjustment—the rebounding of the Earth’s crust after the end of the last Ice Age:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iFYPF7wJrj-K5GTv1-oZsHhqrzIg
Conclusion, Ken Miller presented Governor Christie likely flawed sea level numbers, well outside of the range of IPCC projections.
