Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Sea Level Change Update

Fig. 1
In today's post we take a look at the Permanent Service For Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) update of March 5, 2018.

But first I wanted to mention that I canceled yesterday's planned post about single stations of the ocean bottom pressure (OBP) type.
Fig. 2

Fig. 3
The reason is the data set is either not complete or is too corrupt to be used without extensive filtering as I mentioned in previous postings (The Ghost-Water Constant - 10, Databases Galore - 21).

That will take more time.

Associated with that is the fact that the OBP has promise, but it is nothing more than fine tuning of the Satellite Record.

The whole exercise is to bring the accuracy of sea level in the deep ocean to within a centimeter of accuracy (On The More Robust Sea Level Computation Techniques - 9).

In practical terms, which would be relevant and important to Sea Port Authorities for example, the OBP factor is not paramount.

The PSMSL tide gauge station records are quite substantial in terms of providing them with a glance of the past and an indication of their future experience in sea levels (The Extinction of Robust Sea Ports, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9).
Fig. 4

Nevertheless, I would like to complete the construction of the OBP dataset in terms of both quality and quantity.

Today's graphs show the Northern Hemisphere, Southern Hemisphere, a combination of both hemispheres, and satellite mean average sea level change (SLC).

The hemispheric views cover the years beginning in the late 1800's up until recent years.

The satellite record begins in 1993 and continues to the same year that the tide gauge stations do.

I should note that the golden 23 show a higher sea level finale than the hemispheric and satellite finales do.

The reason for that is the use of sea level fall (SLF) areas in the two hemispheres and their averages.

As a final comment, I will note that the major factor is that this latest data from PSMSL indicates an increase in sea level.

That sea level rise in the golden 23 ended up at 203 mm and change.

For a very good view of the ups and downs of SLC check out the NASA site (Sea Level Change).

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