Sea Level Rise by Satellite Altimetry

[IanC]

What makes you think significant amounts of ice melted between 1800 and 1900?

 

[IanC]

Thompson got a grant to do ice cores on an Alaskan glacier who's name escapes me presently. It turned out that it has only been in existence since the Roman Warm Period. Other than a brief initial report to satisfy funding requirements nothing has been published. Inconvenient I suppose.

Ian, I am embarressed for you. One glacier whose name you cannot remember, only a brief initial report, and nothing published. That is not inconveniant, that is barely even anecedotal. And no link to anything about it.

USGS Release Most Alaskan Glaciers Retreating Thinning and Stagnating Says Major USGS Report 10 6 2008 11 44 25 AM

Editors and Reporters: To interview the author during the Geological Society of America meeting, please contact the GSA Newsroom on 1-713-853-8329. Molnia will be presenting a poster (#76-3) at GSA on Wednesday, Oct. 8, from 8 a.m. to noon in Exhibit Hall E.


Most glaciers in every mountain range and island group in Alaska are experiencing significant retreat, thinning or stagnation, especially glaciers at lower elevations, according to a new book published by the U.S. Geological Survey. In places, these changes began as early as the middle of the 18th century.

Although more than 99 percent of Alaska's large glaciers are retreating, a handful, surprisingly, are advancing.

The Glaciers of Alaska, authored by USGS research geologist Bruce Molnia, represents a comprehensive overview of the state of the glaciers of Alaska at the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st century. Richard Williams Jr., an emeritus senior research glaciologist with the USGS, said the 550-page volume will serve as a major reference work for glaciologists studying glaciers in Alaska in the years and decades to come.

Bona-Churchill is the glacier. we have discussed it before.

the photographs in your link are from the top portion of the map I put up for crick. Muir Glacier

 

[Crick]

Okay, you have a record indicating one glacier retreated in the 1800s. What's your point?

 

[IanC]

Okay, you have a record indicating one glacier retreated in the 1800s. What's your point?

my point? conditions changed and the Little Ice Age ended. ice stopped accumulating and started to melt instead.

I asked you somewhere here what you thought the 'correct conditions were'. there are a lot of factors that go into making local and global temperatures what they are. the LIA was too cold and according to you, the modern temps are too high. what is the happy medium? what is the lag time between turning up the heat (conditions) and the final temperature? if solar is the main reason why the LIA ended, and it has stayed high and maybe gotten higher, why do you think we shouldnt be getting warmer? in the last decade the Sun has been sputtering a bit and the temps have flattened out. a coincidence? maybe.

you seem to have a lot of faith in proxies yet you refuse to acknowledge them for the present. instead you want to just append modern technology to truncated proxies that no longer agree with reality. why do you think the proxies were right before we could confirm them when they are mostly wrong for the present?

 

[Crick]

Okay, you have a record indicating one glacier retreated in the 1800s. What's your point?

my point? conditions changed and the Little Ice Age ended. ice stopped accumulating and started to melt instead.

The Earth's temperatures and the rate at which we've gotten there are many times (~5X) the rate of change present in the entry or exit to the MWP and the LIA. Do you have a suggestion as to why that might be the case?

I asked you somewhere here what you thought the 'correct conditions were'.

Which we both know to be a stupid and bullshit question I would expect to hear from Kosh or jc456, not you.

there are a lot of factors that go into making local and global temperatures what they are. the LIA was too cold and according to you, the modern temps are too high. what is the happy medium?

The desirable conditions are temperatures (and precipitation, wind, storm patterns, etc) at which modern civilization developed - the conditions extant as our current infrastructure was built. We are experiencing rapid change. That is bad. Not the actual temperatures, but that they are coming on far too rapidly for us to adapt to without astronomical cost. The collapse of the WAIS - now unstoppably taking place, will cause the largest migration in human history by orders of magnitude. Do you find that acceptable? No problem?

what is the lag time between turning up the heat (conditions) and the final temperature? if solar is the main reason why the LIA ended, and it has stayed high and maybe gotten higher, why do you think we shouldnt be getting warmer? in the last decade the Sun has been sputtering a bit and the temps have flattened out. a coincidence? maybe.

Or not. Direct measurements of the changes in the sun's total irradiance show that it is insufficient to have cause the warming we've experienced. Thus it's mild fall-off cannot be the cause of the hiatus. Besides, as you've all been told a dozen times and yet continue to ignore, the radiative imbalance at the TOA has not diminished.

you seem to have a lot of faith in proxies yet you refuse to acknowledge them for the present. instead you want to just append modern technology to truncated proxies that no longer agree with reality. why do you think the proxies were right before we could confirm them when they are mostly wrong for the present?

The only proxy I'm aware of having altered its temperature relationship are tree rings.

The world's climate scientists want to append modern instrumented readings onto proxy-developed records because that is all we've got. If there are adjustments to be made, it's far more likely to be required in the proxy record than in the instrument record. Neither are perfect, but you would be an idiot to argue contemporary warming is an artifact of faulty instrument records. An idiot.

 

[SSDD]

The desirable conditions are temperatures (and precipitation, wind, storm patterns, etc) at which modern civilization developed - the conditions extant as our current infrastructure was built. We are experiencing rapid change. That is bad. Not the actual temperatures, but that they are coming on far too rapidly for us to adapt to without astronomical cost. The collapse of the WAIS - now unstoppably taking place, will cause the largest migration in human history by orders of magnitude. Do you find that acceptable? No problem?

You expect the earth to take note of our presence and somehow halt the natural variation in climate to accommodate your wishes?...and we are not experiencing rapid change....there is nothing rapid about the change....a fraction of a degree in a century with a good part of that being due to data manipulation..

 

[SSDD]

Okay, you have a record indicating one glacier retreated in the 1800s. What's your point?

What he has is a record indicating that the bulk of the glacier melted very long ago...what he has is a record indicating that the rapid change you imagine happening today...isn't.

 

[jc456]

Okay, you have a record indicating one glacier retreated in the 1800s. What's your point?

my point? conditions changed and the Little Ice Age ended. ice stopped accumulating and started to melt instead.

The Earth's temperatures and the rate at which we've gotten there are many times (~5X) the rate of change present in the entry or exit to the MWP and the LIA. Do you have a suggestion as to why that might be the case?

I asked you somewhere here what you thought the 'correct conditions were'.

Which we both know to be a stupid and bullshit question I would expect to hear from Kosh or jc456, not you.

there are a lot of factors that go into making local and global temperatures what they are. the LIA was too cold and according to you, the modern temps are too high. what is the happy medium?

The desirable conditions are temperatures (and precipitation, wind, storm patterns, etc) at which modern civilization developed - the conditions extant as our current infrastructure was built. We are experiencing rapid change. That is bad. Not the actual temperatures, but that they are coming on far too rapidly for us to adapt to without astronomical cost. The collapse of the WAIS - now unstoppably taking place, will cause the largest migration in human history by orders of magnitude. Do you find that acceptable? No problem?

what is the lag time between turning up the heat (conditions) and the final temperature? if solar is the main reason why the LIA ended, and it has stayed high and maybe gotten higher, why do you think we shouldnt be getting warmer? in the last decade the Sun has been sputtering a bit and the temps have flattened out. a coincidence? maybe.

Or not. Direct measurements of the changes in the sun's total irradiance show that it is insufficient to have cause the warming we've experienced. Thus it's mild fall-off cannot be the cause of the hiatus. Besides, as you've all been told a dozen times and yet continue to ignore, the radiative imbalance at the TOA has not diminished.

you seem to have a lot of faith in proxies yet you refuse to acknowledge them for the present. instead you want to just append modern technology to truncated proxies that no longer agree with reality. why do you think the proxies were right before we could confirm them when they are mostly wrong for the present?

The only proxy I'm aware of having altered its temperature relationship are tree rings.

The world's climate scientists want to append modern instrumented readings onto proxy-developed records because that is all we've got. If there are adjustments to be made, it's far more likely to be required in the proxy record than in the instrument record. Neither are perfect, but you would be an idiot to argue contemporary warming is an artifact of faulty instrument records. An idiot.

no, I asked for the experiment that shows 120 PPM of CO2 causes/ drives climate. To which I have received, zip, zero, nadda. Ian seems to very capable of handling his own comments. Not sure why you're bringing me into your responses to him. Dude post the experiment or shut up!

 

[SSDD]

Okay, you have a record indicating one glacier retreated in the 1800s. What's your point?

my point? conditions changed and the Little Ice Age ended. ice stopped accumulating and started to melt instead.

The Earth's temperatures and the rate at which we've gotten there are many times (~5X) the rate of change present in the entry or exit to the MWP and the LIA. Do you have a suggestion as to why that might be the case?

I asked you somewhere here what you thought the 'correct conditions were'.

Which we both know to be a stupid and bullshit question I would expect to hear from Kosh or jc456, not you.

there are a lot of factors that go into making local and global temperatures what they are. the LIA was too cold and according to you, the modern temps are too high. what is the happy medium?

The desirable conditions are temperatures (and precipitation, wind, storm patterns, etc) at which modern civilization developed - the conditions extant as our current infrastructure was built. We are experiencing rapid change. That is bad. Not the actual temperatures, but that they are coming on far too rapidly for us to adapt to without astronomical cost. The collapse of the WAIS - now unstoppably taking place, will cause the largest migration in human history by orders of magnitude. Do you find that acceptable? No problem?

what is the lag time between turning up the heat (conditions) and the final temperature? if solar is the main reason why the LIA ended, and it has stayed high and maybe gotten higher, why do you think we shouldnt be getting warmer? in the last decade the Sun has been sputtering a bit and the temps have flattened out. a coincidence? maybe.

Or not. Direct measurements of the changes in the sun's total irradiance show that it is insufficient to have cause the warming we've experienced. Thus it's mild fall-off cannot be the cause of the hiatus. Besides, as you've all been told a dozen times and yet continue to ignore, the radiative imbalance at the TOA has not diminished.

you seem to have a lot of faith in proxies yet you refuse to acknowledge them for the present. instead you want to just append modern technology to truncated proxies that no longer agree with reality. why do you think the proxies were right before we could confirm them when they are mostly wrong for the present?

Apparently 120ppm of CO2 causes arctic ice to increase 60+ % in two years....warming to halt for 2 decades and antarctic ice to reach a new record practically every day/

The only proxy I'm aware of having altered its temperature relationship are tree rings.

The world's climate scientists want to append modern instrumented readings onto proxy-developed records because that is all we've got. If there are adjustments to be made, it's far more likely to be required in the proxy record than in the instrument record. Neither are perfect, but you would be an idiot to argue contemporary warming is an artifact of faulty instrument records. An idiot.

no, I asked for the experiment that shows 120 PPM of CO2 causes/ drives climate. To which I have received, zip, zero, nadda. Ian seems to very capable of handling his own comments. Not sure why you're bringing me into your responses to him. Dude post the experiment or shut up!

 

[IanC]

Okay, you have a record indicating one glacier retreated in the 1800s. What's your point?

my point? conditions changed and the Little Ice Age ended. ice stopped accumulating and started to melt instead.

The Earth's temperatures and the rate at which we've gotten there are many times (~5X) the rate of change present in the entry or exit to the MWP and the LIA. Do you have a suggestion as to why that might be the case?

I asked you somewhere here what you thought the 'correct conditions were'.

Which we both know to be a stupid and bullshit question I would expect to hear from Kosh or jc456, not you.

there are a lot of factors that go into making local and global temperatures what they are. the LIA was too cold and according to you, the modern temps are too high. what is the happy medium?

The desirable conditions are temperatures (and precipitation, wind, storm patterns, etc) at which modern civilization developed - the conditions extant as our current infrastructure was built. We are experiencing rapid change. That is bad. Not the actual temperatures, but that they are coming on far too rapidly for us to adapt to without astronomical cost. The collapse of the WAIS - now unstoppably taking place, will cause the largest migration in human history by orders of magnitude. Do you find that acceptable? No problem?

what is the lag time between turning up the heat (conditions) and the final temperature? if solar is the main reason why the LIA ended, and it has stayed high and maybe gotten higher, why do you think we shouldnt be getting warmer? in the last decade the Sun has been sputtering a bit and the temps have flattened out. a coincidence? maybe.

Or not. Direct measurements of the changes in the sun's total irradiance show that it is insufficient to have cause the warming we've experienced. Thus it's mild fall-off cannot be the cause of the hiatus. Besides, as you've all been told a dozen times and yet continue to ignore, the radiative imbalance at the TOA has not diminished.

you seem to have a lot of faith in proxies yet you refuse to acknowledge them for the present. instead you want to just append modern technology to truncated proxies that no longer agree with reality. why do you think the proxies were right before we could confirm them when they are mostly wrong for the present?

The only proxy I'm aware of having altered its temperature relationship are tree rings.

The world's climate scientists want to append modern instrumented readings onto proxy-developed records because that is all we've got. If there are adjustments to be made, it's far more likely to be required in the proxy record than in the instrument record. Neither are perfect, but you would be an idiot to argue contemporary warming is an artifact of faulty instrument records. An idiot.

here are a couple of dozen proxies from Marcott2013. which ones are 'right'? mashing together a bunch of proxies will usually give you the right general direction, and a vague idea of the magnitude, but it will never give you the preposterous certainty claimed by climate scientists, especially when they are stating 'for a fact' that present day <insert here> is unpresedented for thousands of years.

you are the idiot for believing that proxy reconstructions are the same type of information as modern instrumental data are. you are doubly duped by accepting every new 'adjustment' to that data as gospel.

 

[Crick]

Ian, almost every day and in almost every way, you seem to be trying your damnedest to convince me your a lot dumber than I had ever suspected.

Is your position that we should just shitcan all proxy-derived data? How about that data that proxies the expansion of mercury in a glass tube for temperature? How about that data that proxies changes in the electrical resistance of a thin wire temperature? Should we throw it all out? Should we declare ourselves completely ignorant - too ignorant to actually respond to what we believe we detect happening around us?

Gosh, that seems like an intelligent strategy.

 

[SSDD]

Ian, almost every day and in almost every way, you seem to be trying your damnedest to convince me your a lot dumber than I had ever suspected.

Is your position that we should just shitcan all proxy-derived data? How about that data that proxies the expansion of mercury in a glass tube for temperature? How about that data that proxies changes in the electrical resistance of a thin wire temperature? Should we throw it all out? Should we declare ourselves completely ignorant - too ignorant to actually respond to what we believe we detect happening around us?

Gosh, that seems like an intelligent strategy.

the data that pries the expansion of mercury and electrical resistance can be tested and found accurate....the data that man is using has been tested and found wanting. His results have finally been replicated and his methods have been found wanting as well. There is a reason so much money has been spent in an effort to keep is data and methodology which was paid for by the public out of the public eye....At this point, climate science simply couldn't withstand the blow that exposing his data and methods to the public would deliver.

 

[Youch]

How many of you know what goes into making a SLR estimate from altimetry? of the 3mm/yr claimed by climate science, how much is 'adjustments'? I didnt know but I was concerned that SLR doubled at the exact moment that we started to use satellites to calculate it. it seemed like too big of a coincidence to me.

all the following text is from What is happening to sea levels - Global Warming Solved

So, are the satellite estimates reliable? Well, in order to answer that, we have to learn a little bit about how they were actually constructed.

Unfortunately, satellite altimeters don’t actually measure sea levels directly. Instead, they measure the length of time it takes light signals sent from the satellite to bounce back. In general, the longer the signal takes, the further the satellite is from the sea surface. So, in theory, this measurement could be converted into a measure of the sea surface height, i.e., the mean sea level.
However, the conversion is complicated, and a number of other factors need to be estimated and then taken into account. For instance, the distance of the satellite from the Earth’s surface varies slightly as it travels along its orbit, because the gravitational pull of the Earth is not exactly uniform – see the Wikipedia page on “geoid”, and the maps in Figure 19.

So, in order to convert a particular “satellite-sea surface distance” into a sea level measurement, the “satellite-Earth’s surface distance” also needs to be independently measured, e.g., using the DORIS system.

Another complexity is that light takes slightly longer to travel when travelling through water vapour than dry air. So, the water vapour concentrations associated with a given satellite reading also need to be estimated, and accounted for.
As a result, satellite estimates of sea levels involve the use of complex models, approximations, other measurements and calculations. Unfortunately, this means that if there are problems in any of those stages, it could introduce artificial biases into the estimates, possibly making them unreliable… or even worse, wrong.
Mörner, 2004 was a controversial paper, and several of the researchers involved with the TOPEX/Poseidon analysis objected to Mörner’s analysis, e.g., Nerem et al., 2007 (Abstract). However, surprisingly, these objections were not over his claim that the raw satellite data showed little trend. They agreed with Mörner that the original satellite data didn’t show much of a sea level rise. Instead, their objection was that he should have used theiradjusted data. They felt the raw data was unreliable, and had developed a series of adjustments which they believed made the trends more realistic.

For example, Keihm et al., 2000 (Abstract; Google Scholar access) had decided that the TOPEX satellite was showing an instrumental negative drift of 1.0-1.5 mm/yr between October 1992 and December 1996. So, they adjusted the data by adding a positive trend of 1.0-1.5 mm/yr to that period. Chambers et al., 2003 (Abstract; Google Scholar access) decided that even more negative biases were introduced when the TOPEX satellite switched to its backup instrument in February 1999. So, they introduced more adjustments. This set of adjustments increased the apparent sea level rise from +1.7 mm/yr to +2.8 mm/yr. Neither set of adjustments affected the period January 1997-January 1999, but as Mörner had noted the raw data already showed significant variability for that period due to the 1997-98 El Niño event. Finally, they believe that an adjustment of +0.3 mm/yr is necessary to account for Peltier’s Glacial Isostatic Adjustments (see Section 4).

It turns out that almost all of the +2.8 mm/yr (or +3.1 mm/yr if Peltier’s post-glacial rebound adjustments are applied) sea level rise in the 1993-present satellite estimates are due to adjustments! The raw data (which no longer seems to be in the public domain) doesn’t show much of a trend, after all.

The radical, progressive, Left wing does NOT want to read or hear about this, as it does not conform to their ritual. Do NOT post such factual data in the face of any liberal intolerance of anything that disagrees with their progressive agenda. Be prepared to withstand an onslaught of media and academia sources, funded by federal grants all, that will easily refute your silly post.

 

[Crick]

Do keep us abreast of the coming onslaught of media and academic sources. I'd like to see that. Probably better than Disney World.

 

[mamooth]

The radical, progressive, Left wing does NOT want to read or hear about this, as it does not conform to their ritual. Do NOT post such factual data in the face of any liberal intolerance of anything that disagrees with their progressive agenda. Be prepared to withstand an onslaught of media and academia sources, funded by federal grants all, that will easily refute your silly post.

Wow, you're one seriously whiny little wanker.

Remember Jonestown. Try to slip away before your cult leaders bring out the kool-aid vat.

 

[Old Rocks]

We present articles from peer reviewed journals, and these silly asses yowl, screech, and yammer about Marx, commies, and leftests. They have not a clue that the glaciers, icecaps, and ocean acidity have zero to do with politics.

However, as we saw with that march in New York, the message is getting through to people, especially those that have already been affected by the increase in extreme weather. And the various militarys of the world are taking the threat very seriously.

 

[jc456]

We present articles from peer reviewed journals, and these silly asses yowl, screech, and yammer about Marx, commies, and leftests. They have not a clue that the glaciers, icecaps, and ocean acidity have zero to do with politics.

However, as we saw with that march in New York, the message is getting through to people, especially those that have already been affected by the increase in extreme weather. And the various militarys of the world are taking the threat very seriously.

old scrocks, howmany times must yo be told we don't recognize the old fart peer review. There are no dissenting reviews. how can that possibly be? See you live in a world where you don't want dissent. You only want an outcome. That is not science. It just isn't. So your peer review posts are pointless. WiNNiNg

 

[Youch]

The radical, progressive, Left wing does NOT want to read or hear about this, as it does not conform to their ritual. Do NOT post such factual data in the face of any liberal intolerance of anything that disagrees with their progressive agenda. Be prepared to withstand an onslaught of media and academia sources, funded by federal grants all, that will easily refute your silly post.

Wow, you're one seriously whiny little wanker.

Remember Jonestown. Try to slip away before your cult leaders bring out the kool-aid vat.

In my litany of deniers, I failed to include people like you who, from the margins, ridicule without advancing the debate or refuting my point. Having raised a handful of boys, this reminds me of children trying to make a point without having perspective. Humorous in their case, sad in yours.

Can you refute, with facts, my position, or is all you got words like "wanker" and "Jonestown?"

 

[IanC]

Ian, almost every day and in almost every way, you seem to be trying your damnedest to convince me your a lot dumber than I had ever suspected.

Is your position that we should just shitcan all proxy-derived data? How about that data that proxies the expansion of mercury in a glass tube for temperature? How about that data that proxies changes in the electrical resistance of a thin wire temperature? Should we throw it all out? Should we declare ourselves completely ignorant - too ignorant to actually respond to what we believe we detect happening around us?

Gosh, that seems like an intelligent strategy.

Im having a hard time trying to figure out what you are saying here.

are you suggesting that glass mercury thermometers are the same class of proxy as tree ring widths or 18O cores? tree rings are affected by at least moisture, light, nutrients and warmth. often in an upsidedown U shape where an optimal amount causes increased growth but too much or too little cause decreased growth. sediment type proxies have their own type of problems that need to be hopefully corrected for but still leave large amounts of uncertainty. yet you want me to compare those types of proxies with thermometers (or as you like to call them, glass tube mercury proxies for temperature)?

I have no problem with using proxies to try and figure out what happened in the past. thats all we have and it is better than nothing. typically they give a direction and general range if chosen carefully. I also have no problems with climate models as tools to test our knowledge of what may be important factors in determining the climate. I just think it is foolish to believe that they can forecast the future with any skill whatsoever in a nonlinear chaotic system. but getting them to agree with the past to a closer degree is certainly an honourable goal.

 

[SSDD]

Im having a hard time trying to figure out what you are saying here.

are you suggesting that glass mercury thermometers are the same class of proxy as tree ring widths or 18O cores?

Of course he is. These people have such a skewed world view that they can apparently only see flat surfaces.....hell, he tried to argue with me that anonymous posters on this board suggesting that warmers hold their breath indefinitely to cut down on the CO2 is the same as a public figure, calling for the summary imprisonment and execution of skeptics.