Comments on: Rahmstorf Sea Level Source Code and Transliteration

By: Una bomba: La subida del nivel del mar no se está acelerando. Proyección: +15 cm en 2100 « PlazaMoyua.org

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 22:38:05 +0000

[...] Rahmstorf Sea Level Source Code and Transliteration [...]

By: DeWitt Payne

DeWitt Payne — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 22:22:14 +0000

I would like very much like to see a mechanism that did not violate basic thermodynamics that would allow ocean heat content and ocean thermal expansion to be uncorrelated. I'm not holding my breath. Re: Ron Cram (#35), The magnitude of the lag between atmospheric temperature and upper ocean heat content is very much a bone of contention at present.

By: Ron Cram

Ron Cram — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 00:01:05 +0000

Re: John A (#9), If you are going to calibrate a near surface global temperature to anything, I would expect it to be Ocean Heat Content. But even that would have time lags.

By: bernie

bernie — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 04:33:46 +0000

Re: Craig Loehle (#31),
Craig:
What struck me more was not the rate of change of sea level, but that it appears to be measured against the anomaly temperature. I can see making a statement along the lines of “the temperature went up by 0.1C and that led to an increase in sea level of .2mm.” But I cannot see a statement “the temperature was .5C above the 1950-1980 anomaly and the rate of change was .2mm” for exactly the reason that you state. Does that make sense?

That said, I still find the clustering of the rates of change in sea level in Figure 2 odd – the more so when you attach the binned time period for each of the data points.

By: Micajah

Micajah — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 02:56:18 +0000

Re: MattA (#19), McIntyre mentions "GISS" in the blog post, and the data as graphed looks a lot like the GISS graph.

By: Craig Loehle

Craig Loehle — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:47:14 +0000

Sorry about the goof at 31.

Do you know why ducks have flat feet?
From stamping out forest fires.
Do you know why elephants have flat feet?
From stamping out burning ducks!

By: Craig Loehle

Craig Loehle — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:38:18 +0000

It is interesting that in a critique of John McLean et al’s paper on the Southern Oscillation Index and world temperature, by Foster, Jones, Mann, Schmidt and 5 others, (in press) it is claimed that you can’t do an analysis with rates (or change from year to year), because rates are not real. The rates in question are changes in world temperature from one year to the next, which is exactly what a yearly sea level rise is. Do these guys need to have a conference call to get their story straight?

By: bernie

bernie — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 13:04:52 +0000

Re: stan (#27), One of my all time favorite quotations.

By: bernie

bernie — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 12:59:55 +0000

Can someone put into words the relationship(s) defined in Figure 2? In particular two cluster of point jump out to me at least. They appear to be shaped like “indifference curves” with their shift suggesting some change in underlying conditions especially since, as you might guess, they are strongly associated with time periods. The first cluster (bottom left) covers roughly (because of the smoothing and binning) 1885 to 1930 with a sharp decline in the rate of sea level increase with little change in temperature. The second cluster from 1930 to 1985 is another period where the rate of change in sea-level appears to be independent of changes in temperature. (I assume the ordering of the clusters reflects the autocorrelation.)
Could the time periods possibly reflect changes in measuremnt methods? Other climatic or geophysical shifts?

By: stan

stan — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 12:27:04 +0000

From Wegman (as quoted in Wikipedia):

"It is important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate community; even though they rely heavily on statistical methods they do not seem to be interacting with the statistical community."

Actually, the team seems to be more interested in being the master of the statistics rather than acquiring a mastery of the subject. Perhaps we could call what they do "Humpty Dumpty statistics" after the character whose innovative use of words was so robust. From "Through the Looking Glass":

`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.' `The question is,' said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.' `The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master -- that's all.'