You almost rightly say, The New York Post, that settlement is lowering coastal cities, and climate change will not raise the ocean – Watt Watt?

recent New York Post (NYP) article, “The terrible map reveals the rapid fall of major coastal cities into the ocean”, reported that a NASA study claimed that several major coastal cities were sinking at a shocking rate due to land settlement and sea level rise. New York City's New York City specifically mentions sea level issues in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles and other cities, suggesting that their problems are due to the combination of settlement and ocean rise, which is exacerbated by climate change. The latter point is misleading. In some cities, land settlement is a well-documented problem, driven primarily by local human activities such as groundwater extraction, poor urban planning and natural geological processes. Settlement is not due to climate change. But despite NASA's claims, long-term sea level rise trend data do not support the claim that oceans are rising at an unusual historical rate. In fact, the ocean has risen at a modest and steady pace for more than a century without a significant acceleration associated with human-induced emissions.

“In many parts of the world, like the recycling ground below San Francisco, the land moves down faster than the sea itself,” wrote Marin Govorcin, the lead author of the NASA study, who specializes in NASA's propulsion laboratory. ”

Commenting on the study, Alexander Handwerger, another researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said: “The speed is enough to put human life and infrastructure at risk.”

“Given this decline, sea levels rising due to climate change are rising, which may be more than double the forecast in Los Angeles and San Francisco in 25 years,” commented New York Shixin.

Land settlement is a local problem, mainly caused by excessive groundwater extraction, infrastructure issues, sediment compaction and tectonic transfer. Climate change is not a factor in settlement.

The study was published in Science Advancesshort-term data citing satellites suggests global sea level rise is accelerating, meaning NYP has failed to question. However, real-world tidal gauge data do not support this claim.

Long-term records of tidal meters (taking into account the gold standard for measuring local sea level changes) suggest that there is no evidence of an abnormal acceleration.

For example, tidal gauge data for NOAA, which has recorded sea level since 1856, shows a steady rise of about 2.85 mm per year, a rate that has remained consistent for more than a century. This is intimately consistent with global tidal meter records, which show that average sea level has risen at a rate of 1-3 mm per year since the 1800s. Importantly, although this gradual rise in gradual growth has not accelerated over the past few decades. See Figure 1 below:

Similarly, San Francisco's tidal meter shows a steady upward trend in sea level, even lower than New York City. (See Figure 2 below)

Sea level rise rate in Los Angeles (shown in Figure 3 below) is lower and slower.

These three tide charts for cities mentioned in the NYP article show that there is no short-term or long-term acceleration at sea level. In fact, globally, with data in the climate glimpse: sea level rises, the acceleration of sea level rises is barely accelerated. Even though the increase in the rise rate of some recent satellite records is entirely attributed to anthropogenic climate change, it only adds 0.3 inches of pre-existing historical trends every decade, and many periods have remained lower than the rise rate of many periods since Earth entered its most recent 18,000 to 12,000 years.

Recently, modest sea-level trends contradict the claims of climate change at “terrible” and accelerated sea-level rise. In fact, several studies have shown that sea level rise has remained relatively constant since the end of the 19th century Little Ice Age, for example, here, here, here and here. If greenhouse gas emissions really drive acceleration, we hope to see a sharp upward trend recorded by tidal gauge over the past 50 years, but we don't.

A 2022 study highlights Climate Realism The media’s claims about accelerating sea level rise are usually based on satellite data from cherry picking, which cannot be consistent with ground tidal gauge measurements.

By confusing land settlement with sea level rise, media frequencies such as NYP mislead the public because the public believes that climate change is primarily responsible for coastal flood threats. This is scientifically inaccurate and disperses the real problems of settlement facing cities. By focusing their energy on causes of land settlement, such as groundwater extraction problems, unstable soils and compaction of land for urban seashores, rather than the smallest or non-existent roles that arise from the smallest or non-existent roles at sea level, decision makers may have a greater impact on prevention and prevention losses.

this New York Post Half the story is correct. If it avoids mentioning that climate change is a factor in the problems faced by some coastal cities, then its reporting will be better.

Anthony Watts

Anthony Watts is a senior researcher in the Environment and Climate at the Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business in front of and behind the camera since 1978 and currently broadcast forecasts are being made every day. He created a weather graphics demonstration system for television, professional weather instruments, and co-authored a peer-reviewed paper on climate issues. He runs the most viewed website in the world on the award-winning site wattsupwiththat.com.

Originally published in ClimateRealism.

Related