Decadal Trends in Sea Level Patterns: 1993–2004

Wunsch, Carl; Ponte, Rui M.; Heimbach, Patrick

doi:10.1175/2007jcli1840.1

Cited by 170 publications

(131 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…The loud divergence between sea-level reality and climate change theory-the climate models predict an accelerated sea-level rise driven by the anthropogenic CO 2 emission-has been also evidenced in other works such as Boretti (2012a, b), Boretti and Watson (2012), Douglas (1992), Douglas and Peltier (2002), Fasullo et al (2016), Jevrejeva et al (2006), Holgate (2007), Houston and Dean (2011), Mörner 2010a, b, 2016, Mörner and Parker (2013), Scafetta (2014), Wenzel and Schröter (2010) and Wunsch et al (2007) reporting on the recent lack of any detectable acceleration in the rate of sea-level rise. The minimum length requirement of 50-60 years to produce a realistic sea-level rate of rise is also discussed in other works such as Baart et al (2012), Douglas (1995Douglas ( , 1997, Gervais (2016), Jevrejeva et al (2008), Knudsen et al (2011), Scafetta (2013a, Wenzel and Schröter (2014) and Woodworth (2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 61%

Short-Term Tide Gauge Records from One Location are Inadequate to Infer Global Sea-Level Acceleration

Parker¹,

Ollier

2017

Earth Syst Environ

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Background Long records of sea level show decadal and multi-decadal oscillations of synchronous and asynchronous phases, which cannot be detected in short-term records. Without incorporating these oscillations, it is impossible to make useful assessments of present global accelerations and reliable predictions of future changes of sea level. Furthermore, it is well known that local sea-level changes occur also because of local factors such as subsidence due to groundwater or oil extraction, or tectonic movements that may be either up or down. Purpose Limited data from limited areas of study are, therefore, unsuitable for making predictions about the whole world sea level. Yet, people continue to make such predictions, often on an alarming scale. Here, we use one example to illustrate the problems associated with trying to make sea-level predictions based on a short record (25 years) in a limited region. Methods Linear and parabolic fittings of monthly average mean sea levels (MSL) of global as well as different local (United States Atlantic Coast, United States Pacific Coast) data sets of long tide gauge records.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 61%

Short-Term Tide Gauge Records from One Location are Inadequate to Infer Global Sea-Level Acceleration

Parker¹,

Ollier

2017

Earth Syst Environ

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“…The combined observing system is finding climate-related basin-scale signals on interannual and decadal timescales, such as a 15-year spin-up of the South Pacific gyre described by [5]. On global scales, Argo and Jason, together with satellite gravity measurements, partition global sea level rise into its steric and mass-related components [6], [7], [8] and [9] (also see Fig. 2).…”

Section: Argo and Jasonmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…, Dean Roemmich (2) , Silvia L. Garzoli (3) , Pierre-Yves Le Traon (4) , Muthalagu Ravichandran (5) , Stephen Riser (6) , Virginie Thierry (7) , Susan Wijffels (8) , Mathieu Belbéoch (9) , John Gould (10) , Fiona Grant (11) , Mark Ignazewski (12) , Brian King (13) , Birgit Klein (14) , Kjell Arne Mork (15) , Breck Owens (16) , Sylvie Pouliquen (17) , Andreas Sterl (18) , Toshio Suga (19) , Moon-Sik Suk (20) , Philip Sutton (21) , Ariel Troisi (22) , Pedro Joaquin Vélez-Belchi (23) , and Jianping Xu ( (10) National Oceanography Centre, Empress Dock, Southampton, SO14 3ZH, U.K., Email: wjg@noc.soton.ac.uk (11) Marine Institute, Rinville, Oranmore, Co. Galway, Ireland, Email: fiona.grant@marine.ie (12) (13) Southampton Oceanography Centre, Empress Dock, Southampton SO14 3ZH, U.K., Email: bak@noc.soton.ac.uk (14) Bundesamt für Seeschifffahrt und Hydrographie, Bernhard-Nocht Straße 78, Hamburg, 20359, Germany, Email: birgit.klein@bsh.de (15) Institute of Marine Research, Nordnesgaten 50,5817 Bergen, Norway, Email: kjell.arne.mork@imr.no (16) To accomplish this it was proposed to deploy a large array of profiling floats measuring temperature and salinity to 2000 metres and reporting in real-time every 10 days. The proposal suggested a global spacing of 3°  3° which was based on (i) previous design studies from the global XBT networks, (ii) spatial statistics from satellite altimetry, and (iii) sampling experiments using WOCE hydrographic sections.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Argo - A Decade of Progress

Freeland¹

2010

Proceedings of OceanObs'09: Sustained Ocean Observations and Information for Society

100

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“…Unfortunately, steric and dynamical ocean-level changes are significantly larger than the ice-induced signal in most areas 29 and so should be removed using a combination of ocean models and available data. Such a combination is available for the satellite altimeter period 30 , but for earlier periods this procedure is more speculative. While the improved ocean temperature time series produces less decadal variability in sea level due to the thermosteric process 11,24 , thus reducing the discrepancy between observations and climate models 31,32 , there still remain significant unexplained signals in total sea-level variability.…”

Section: The 20 Th Centurymentioning

confidence: 99%

Identifying the causes of sea-level change

et al. 2009

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PrefaceGlobal mean sea-level rise has increased from a rate of a few centimetres per century over the past few millennia to a few decimetres per century in the past few decades. This ten fold increase in rate is due to climate change and is dominated by melting of land ice and warming of ocean water. The current warming trend is expected to continue and so global mean sea level will continue to rise. In this article, we review recent advances in our understanding of past sea-level changes on decadal to millennial timescales to consider how well future changes can be constrained. The majority of studies suggest that global mean sea-level rise will most likely be less than 1 m over the 21 st century. Importantly, there will be significant departures from the global mean by several decimetres in many areas. As a consequence, future research should be targeted at better constraining the spatial variability in future changes so that high-risk areas can be identified. IntroductionWith about 200 million people living within coastal floodplains and 2 million km 2 of land and $1 trillion worth of assets lying less than 1 m above current sea level, sea-level rise is one of the major socio-economic hazards associated with global warming 1 . The expected rate is, however, extremely uncertain. While the latest IPCC report 2 suggests a range of 0.18-0.59 m of sea-level rise between 1980-1999 and 2090-2099, it emphasises that the contribution from ice dynamic changes is highly uncertain and provides three "illustrative" scenarios suggesting a possible addition of up to 0.17 m from this source. Since then, several studies 3,4 have suggested that a rise larger than 1 m cannot be ruled out. Sea-level rates of this magnitude (m per century) are not uncommon in reconstructions of past sea-level change using geological evidence and it has recently been suggested that similar rates occurred during the previous interglacial warm period 120,000 years ago 5,6 when the volume of land ice was similar to that at present.A "headline" figure of 1 m during the 21 st century represents only the global average sealevel rise. Many different physical processes contribute to sea-level change (see Box 1) and none of these produce a spatially uniform signal. Indeed, one of the few statements that can be made with certainty is that future sea-level change will not be the same everywhere. Thus, the development of regional and local estimates of future sea-level rise -required for effective risk assessment -is one of the primary challenges for the coming years 2 . Prediction relies on models, and the veracity of model output is based on verification against historical and geological data.. However, interpretation of these data requires great care in light of the large spatial and temporal variability in sea-level change. In this article we summarise recent progress in understanding the variability in a suite of sea-level related observations at timescales ranging from decades to millennia. We conclude with an estimate of our current ability to predict...

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Decadal Trends in Sea Level Patterns: 1993–2004

Cited by 170 publications

References 62 publications

Short-Term Tide Gauge Records from One Location are Inadequate to Infer Global Sea-Level Acceleration

Short-Term Tide Gauge Records from One Location are Inadequate to Infer Global Sea-Level Acceleration

Argo - A Decade of Progress

Identifying the causes of sea-level change

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