Pirate's Cove

Estimate? If there was only some way to measure this

Rising sea levels a foot higher than thought, placing tens of millions more in danger, study finds

Coastal sea levels are already up to a foot higher than many scientists believe, according to an alarming new assessment from researchers in the Netherlands.

The findings have concerning implications for hundreds of millions living in coastal communities around the world – and especially for Southeast Asian and Indo-Pacific nations – showing rising seas may threaten tens of millions more people than previously estimated after three feet of relative sea level rise. (snip)

“Our study reveals fundamental misalignment issues of sea level and coastal elevation throughout a wide body of scientific literature, which introduces errors and creates large uncertainties in the vast majority of coastal hazard and sea level rise and/or relative sea level rise impact assessments,” the researchers at Wageningen University & Research wrote.

The findings also mean that established models and science need to change, with more than 99 percent of 385 studies included in the research needing revision.

Essentially, scientists have been working from the wrong starting point. That’s because they measured sea level using a decades-old method known as the “geoid model,” showing average sea level based on gravity and the Earth’s rotation and not accounting for factors like tides, current and water temperature.

More than 90 percent of the studies included in the review assumed the current sea level based on geoid models.

Got ya. The actual measurements were not cooperating with the doom prognostications, so, just change it and run it through a computer model. Even though actual measurements show that the 20th Century saw 7 inches of sea rise, which is exactly the center point of the 6-8 inches average sea rise during the Holocene (last 8K years). As I’ve noted ad nauseum, a warm period would need well over a foot because cool periods would be very low to negative.

Anyhow, since they are from the Netherlands, let’s look at the actual tide gauges there. They’re actually pretty good, and all 7 have over 100 years of continuous measurements. All go back into the late to mid 1800s. Too bad they do not cover the Little Ice Age prior to 1850. But, the highest shows .79 feet of sea rise every 100 years. The lowest shows .48 feet. There should be more. So, they’ll change it to scaremonger.

For some regions of the world, the discrepancy was bigger than for others, too. The differences were smaller in regions like Northern Europe and the U.S. East Coast, but larger in many southern parts of the world.

That’s because there was less data available for geoid models in the global south and ocean dynamics are stronger in the region; sea levels there are more influenced by tides, winds and currents. There’s also a calculation that needs to be done to correctly link measurements of the level of the sea and land, which are taken using different satellites.

So, it’ll be a lot harder to massage and f*** with the 1st World data, easier to change in the southern parts.