The Murdoch press are at it again; today's Australian claimed that
Sea-level rises are slowing, tidal gauge records show
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.
The Australian then refers to climate change researcher Howard Brady who said that sea levels rises accepted by the CSIRO were
"already dead in the water as having no sound basis in probability".
"In a nutshell, this factual information means the high sea-level rises used as precautionary guidelines by the CSIRO in recent years are in essence ridiculous,"
As it happens the paper that
Watson wrote is constrained by its small data range
Using a 20-year moving average (10 y either side) water level time series limits the current analysis to the year 2000
something that the CSIRO were
keen to point out
“One of the points [Watson] makes in the paper is that because of natural climate variability, which influences the sea level record, it may take 10 – 20 more years of records to determine more conclusively the role of global warming on recent sea level trends,”
Another constraint is that the date was obtained from gauges which are
satisfactorily managed to facilitate the day-to-day operational requirements of commercial ports but do not utilise consistent technologies or operating procedures or contain sufficient survey records to consider vertical land movements at each individual gauge over the record length.
No wonder Phil Watson's data differs from other data, a point that he readily concedes
Further research is required to rationalise the difference between the acceleration trend evident in the global sea level time-series reconstructions
The NSW Department of the Environment were
not pleased with the Australian
Your article has misrepresented our Mr Phil Watson's research paper by saying that "global warming is not affecting sea levels". This is untrue and misleading and it is not what Mr Watson told your journalist. Mr Watson’s research looked only at measurements of historical data. It specifically did not consider predicted linkages between sea level rise and global warming predicted by climate models
Obviously the Australian is not interested in what the scientists
really have to say.
