Falling sea levels

London Telegraph,

6 Aug 2000

 

The tiny country of Tuvalu is not cooperating with global warming models. In the early 1990s, scientists warned that the Pacific coral atoll of nine islands - only 12 feet above sea level at its highest point - would vanish within decades, swamped by rising seas. Sea levels were supposedly rising at the rate of 1.5 inches per year.


However, new measurements show that sea levels have fallen 2.5 inches since that time. Similar sea-level declines have been recorded in Nauru and the Solomon Islands.

 

 

 

Sea levels are falling!

 

In 2003, Nils-Axel Mörner and his colleagues (see below) published a well-documented paper showing that sea levels in the Maldives have fallen substantially – fallen! – in the last 30 years.


I find it curious that we haven’t heard about this.

“The Maldives in the central Indian Ocean consist of some 1,200 individual islands grouped in about 20 larger atolls,” says Mörner.
In-as-much as the islands rise only three to seven feet above sea level, they have been condemned by the IPCC to flooding in the near future.

Mörner disagrees with this scenario. “In our study of the coastal dynamics and the geomorphology of the shores,” writes Mörner, “we were unable to detect any traces of a recent sea level rise.
On the contrary, we found quite clear morphological indications of a recent fall in sea level.”

Mörner’s group found that sea levels stood about 60 cm higher around A.D. 1150 than today, and more recently, about 30 cm higher than today.

“From the shape and freshness,” Mörner says, “one would assume that the sea level fall took place in the last 50 years, or so.”

In the last 50 years!
I find it difficult to understand how the IPCC could have missed this information - unless they did it deliberately.

All they had to do was ask the locals.

 

New perspectives for the future of the Maldives
Nils-Axel Mörner, Michael Tooley, and Göran Possnert,
Global and Planetary Change, Vol. 40, Issues 1-2,
Jan 2004, pp 177-182

Read entire paper (for a fee) at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/

 

“Local people report that the dhonis (local fishing boats) could pass straight across theMaduvvare Falhus thila in the 1970s and 1980s,” Mörner reports, “whilst they in the last 15 years have had to make a detour around the thila, because it is now too shallow. The thila has not grown, so it must be the sea that has fallen.”


“In the IPCC scenarios,” Mörner concludes, “the Maldives were condemned to disappear in the near future.” “Our documentation of actual field evidence contradicts this hypothesis.”

Nils-Axel Mörner,

Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics,
Stockholm University, Sweden

Michael Tooley,

Geography and Archaelogy,
University of Durham, Durham, UK

Göran Possnert,

The Angstrom Laboratory,
Uppsala University, Sweden

 

 

Arctic Sea Level Falling

15 Jun 2006 - Arctic sea level has been falling more than 2mm a year - a movement that [supposedly] sets the region against the global trend of rising waters.

 

A Dutch-UK team made the discovery after analyzing radar altimetry data gathered by Europe ‘s ERS-2 satellite.

“We have high confidence in the results; it’s now down to the geophysics community to explain them,” said Dr Remko Scharroo, from consultants Altimetrics LLC, who led the study.

The European Space Agency’s (Esa) ERS-2 satellite has been making observations of the Earth from its 800km-high polar orbit for over 10 years.
Correcting the data to take account of ocean tides, wave heights, air pressure, and atmospheric effects that might bias the signal, Dr Scharroo and colleagues established seasonal and yearly sea-level trends in the Arctic (from 60 to 82 degrees latitude) for the period 1995 to 2003. The analysis reveals an average 2.17mm fall per annum.


Taking a global view, ERS-2 still records a sea-level rise. It’s interesting, how each study shows that that study’s particular location is the only location where sea levels are falling.


Analysis of Russian tide gauges by Andrey Proshutinsky from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), US, also hinted at a sea-level fall during the 1990s. He said this seemed to fit with the phases of the so-called Arctic Oscillation, a seesaw pattern of change in atmospheric pressure over the polar region and mid latitudes.

“This is something like decadal variability. Sea level goes up and down, up and down - but in general, it rises,” Proshutinsky explained.

See entire article at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5076322.stm


 


Sea levels falling in the Atlantic Ocean

Contrary to popular belief in climatic stability during recent times, the Earth’s climate of the past 1000 years has changed significantly.


The Medieval climatic optimum (AD 700-1200) was a time of extremely favorable climate in northern Europe. Harvests were good, fishing was abundant, sea ice remained far to the north, vineyards flourished 300 miles north of their present limits, and famine was rare. This was the period of great Viking expansion from Scandinavia. Viking settlements were based on cereal grains (wheat and barley) and dairy herds (goats, sheep, and cattle).


Iceland began settling in AD 874 and soon became an independent republic. Greenland was colonized in AD 985 by Erik the Red. By the 12th century, two sizeable communities existed in southwestern Greenland.


During the Medieval climatic optimum, sea level stood at least a half meter higher in southern Florida than today from the first through tenth centuries.

In other words, sea levels in the Atlantic have fallen at least 19 inches in the last 1,000 years.

Climatic deterioration began in the 1200s; glaciers expanded in Iceland and in the Alps. Vineyards began declining in Germany and by the 1300s had completely disappeared in England. Fishing replaced cereal grains as the main source of food in Iceland, and sea ice expanded southward between Greenland and Iceland. Around 1340-50 the more northerly of the two Greenland communities was abandoned to the Inuits. By 1510, only Inuits remained. Cold climate reduced dairy production, and extensive sea ice hampered essential trade with Europe.


Across the Pacific Islands, during the period AD 1270-1475, sea level fell by more than a meter and temperatures declined an average 1½EC. El Niño increased in frequency, and precipitation increased.

Sea levels fell by more than three feet in a thousand years!


And we’re worried about a rise of .03 millimeters (supposedly) per year? Please note that “El Niño increased in frequency, and precipitation increased.”

That’s exactly what is happening today! That’s how ice ages begin!
 

Climatic History of the Holocene

by James S. Aber
http://academic.emporia.edu/aberjame/ice/lec19/lec19.htm

Earth’s climate during the last 1,000 years:

  • Medieval climatic optimum (AD 700-1200).

  • Medieval glaciation (AD 1200-1460).

  • Brief climatic improvement (AD 1460-1560).

  • Little Ice Age (AD 1560-1890).

  • Modern climatic optimum (AD 1890-2000).

Hmmmm....

 

Sea levels are falling in the Pacific Ocean, sea levels are falling in the Indian Ocean, sea levels are falling in the Atlantic Ocean, and sea levels are falling in the Arctic Ocean.

I somehow get the feeling that we’re not getting the full story here.

 

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