sea rise 'not linked to warming', says report

Further support of NASAs recent admission, its all political guidance for the warming bs.

Sea rise 'not linked to warming', says report

by: Graham Lloyd, Environment editor
From: The Australian
January 15, 2013 12:00AM

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THE latest science on sea level rises has found no link to global warming and no increase in the rate of glacier melt over the past 100 years.

A paper published last month in Journal of Climate highlights one of the great uncertainties in climate change research - will ocean levels rise by more than the current 3mm a year?

The peer-reviewed article, "20th-century global-mean sea-level rise: is the whole greater than the sum of the parts?" by JM Gregory, sought to explain the factors involved in sea-level rises during the last century. It found that sea-level rises had not accelerated "despite the increasing anthropogenic forcing" or human influence.

Australia's pre-eminent sea-level scientist, John Church, contributed to the paper, which said it could not link climate change and the rate of sea-level rises in the 20th century.
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Australia is at the forefront of global research on sea-level rises, but must double its funding to $10 million a year to match other countries in the search for an answer.

There is no dispute that sea levels are rising and significant concerns about what the recent increased rate of melt of Arctic ice might mean. But the key question is whether the rate of sea-level rise will accelerate and, if so, when and by how much?

Australian optical space tracking technology developed to help manage remotely operated weapons systems is playing a key role in a global satellite monitoring program.

Ben Greene, a doctor of theoretical physics, said Australia was already a world leader in measuring sea levels.

"We have the precisions with what we are doing to measure sea level rises averaged over a decade," he said. "What we need to know is what the acceleration is."

Dr Greene's company owns the technology that is used worldwide to help measure sea level rise. He has offered the company's facilities profit-free to encourage Australia to increase its research effort in line with other nations.

"We need to move from fear-based to fact-based evidence," Dr Greene said. "We can trust the current models for the next 10 years, but there are problems after 15 years; sea level rises could be better or they could be worse."

The University of Reading paper says contributions to sea level rises include expansion of the water itself as it warms, melting glaciers and ice sheets, groundwater extraction and water trapped in reservoirs.

"We show that it is possible to reconstruct the time series of global mean sea level rise (GMSLR) from the quantified contributions," the paper said.

"Semi-empirical methods for projecting global mean sea level rise depend on the existence of a relationship between global climate change and the rate of GMSLR, but the implication of our closure of the budget is that such a relationship is weak or absent during the 20th century," the paper said.

Dr Greene said overseas opinion was there would be a bit more sea level rise in the short term.

"The interesting thing comes in about 10 years' time if methane and CO2 traps in the ocean start to get released," he said.

"There would then be at least a short term acceleration some time in the 2020s. But the rise may accelerate and then reverse."

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/sea-rise-not-linked-to-warming-says-report/story-e6frg8y6-1226553928313