I am adding a feature that contrasts sea level change (SLC) volatility in relatively close areas.
The four examples today show Yakutat (Fig. 1) which is near Glacier Bay, Alaska, and San Francisco (Fig. 2), both on the west coast of the U.S.eh?, and both covered in previous posts (Proof of Concept - 3).
Fig. 2
These four quickie graphs I did show the contrast of global mean sea level (GMSL) and global mean surface temperatures (GMST) with real local historical sea levels.
The use of GMSL and GMST, as these graphs show, does little to inform the public of the radical volatility of sea level in local areas.
The global mean average is a mathematical tool, but is not a proper way of informing the public because it covers up reality whether intended or not.
Anyway, when one asks the question "why is a town on the west coast experiencing
Fig. 4 Prince Rupert, BC SLR
serious sea level fall (SLF) while the other is experiencing serious sea level rise" (SLR)?
Journalists near one of those locations seem to have no clue as to why serious sea level volatility is taking place, reporting the issue as if it is the new normal, or as if the land has risen 4 ft. recently instead of taking thousands or millions of years (Alaska Dispatch News).
I guess the unknown is the new global mean normal, as cities even closer together than San Francisco and Yakutat (Juneau and Prince Rupert - 400 miles) tell the same tide gauge station story (see Fig. 3 and Fig. 4; cf. The Gravity of Sea Level Change).
The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here. Ballad of a Thin Man, by Bob Dylan (lyrics here):
the brightness bursts and bears the rose
and the ring of water contracts to a cluster
to one drop of azure brine that falls.
O magnolia radiance breaking in spume,
magnetic voyager whose death flowers
and returns, eternal, to being and nothingness:
shattered brine, dazzling leap of the ocean.
Merged, you and I, my love, seal the silence
while the sea destroys its continual forms,
collapses its turrets of wildness and whiteness,
because in the weft of those unseen garments
of headlong water, and perpetual sand,
we bear the sole, relentless tenderness.
Some areas are talking about "king tides" this week ("King Tides Take Over Coastal Towns Just in Time for Thanksgiving", Weather Channel).
Any subject that deals with activities on coastlines around the world is not complete in the Anthropocene Epoch without some discussion of sea level rise (SLR), as one way of envisioning the near future in real time:
To avoid confusion, it’s important to know that king tides aren’t part of climate change; they are a natural part of tidal cycles but they do give us a sneak preview of what higher sea levels could look like. The actual height reached by a king tide will depend on the local weather and ocean conditions on the day.
It is possible that by 2060 to 2070 [an underestimate IMO - Dredd] we could experience tides of the magnitude of king tide events every month due to sea level rise induced by climate change.
This project aims to promote awareness of the impacts of sea level rise, and help to visualize coastal areas that are vulnerable to tidal inundation which can be monitored over time.
(King Tides Project). The subject matter today concerns why SLR is turning regular king tides into more serious flooding events (Fig. 1).
Note especially, though, that the addition of SLR causes flooding at different rates in different areas.
But before we launch into that aspect of the subject, let's refresh our memory about the natural aspect of king tides:
When a new moon or full moon align with Earth and the sun, the gravitational pull on Earth's oceans causes strange things [to] happen. Water creeps up
along the shore and even into coastal towns – some of the highest tides of the year.
"The king tides arise from a combination of two factors. First, this is the time of year, known as perigee, when the moon is closest to Earth, exhibiting the strongest gravitational pull," weather.com meteorologist Jonathan Erdman says. "Secondly, around the full and new moon each month, the Earth, moon and sun are roughly aligned, and that increases the gravitational tug on the tides. Then, if either a storm is approaching or simply onshore winds are persisting, water will pile up along the shore, leading to further water rise."
There is only one factor that causes glacial ice and ice sheets to have a more dramatic gravitational impact on sea level than the Sun and Moon have.
That factor is distance (Fig. 2).
When communities are close to large glacier fields, or close to ice sheets, then as those icy areas melt, the gravity decreases in Newton proportion to the loss of ice mass (Proof of Concept - 3).
Fig. 4 San Francisco history
Media operatives continue to "soften" the reality of the SLR danger that civilization is facing, and will continue to face, whether it wants to face it or not.
The honest reporter will say "king tides did not flood this area in times past, but this area is experiencing SLR now, which is causing the flooding in our time that did not happen in earlier times."
The "Hundred Years War" now under way (Watch The Ice Shelves) is not composed of king tide armies, rather, it is composed of the impact that our fossil fuel use has caused.
The king tide is hitting the "bay area" of San Francisco this week, so I added two graphs which show actual tide gauge station historical sea level change (SLC) data, as well as the actual historical pattern of global mean sea level (GMSL) and global mean surface temperature (GMST) data (Fig. 4).
There is little doubt that local sea level there is on the rise, with GMSL and GMST generally on the rise elsewhere.
Thus, the king tides of today are higher than those of our grandfathers.
What about the king tides of the future?
Check out Fig. 5 for some ideas.
The next post is this series is here.
We can all contribute data or start a chapter:
This year I have focused on ice shelves in several posts.
Some of those Dredd Blog posts discussed a controversy concerning the impact of sea level fall (SLF) on ice shelves when that SLF is caused by one particular type of action, which is ice sheet mass / gravity loss.
Ice sheet mass / gravity loss is known to cause an ongoing decrease in sea level, at
Fig. 2 Low / High Mean Sea Level
and near the coast of the land mass upon which that ice sheet rests.
That would, at the same time, be a cause of ongoing decrease in the sea level upon which the ice shelf floats, thus, the argument arises that SLF, combined with daily tidal ebb and flow, puts inordinate amounts of upward then downward pressure on ice shelves attached to the ice sheets.
We have the example of an actual and quite recent ice shelf collapse, the Zachariae Isstrom, in N.E. Greenland where SLF is an ongoing phenomenon as it is in other such areas (Peak Sea Level - 6), Proof of Concept - 3, 5).
As Dr. Eric Rignot explained, as goes the ice shelf so goes the ice stream flow in the ice sheet (which that ice shelf is holding back or slowing down).
II. An Interesting Source of Egress & Ingress
Regular Dredd Blog reader, Tom, came upon an interesting video (first video below)
Fig. 4 The Great Divide
which depicts dynamic sub-surface processes that carry away massive quantities of colder, dense water from the coastal areas of the continent of Antarctica.
That fluid dynamic is similar to others that carry warmer water under the ice shelves --all of which are contributing to the thinning of the ice shelves (second video below), and thereby helping to speed up of the flow of the hundreds or thousands of ice streams in Antarctica and Greenland ice sheets.
III. The Local and Global Pictures Give The Same Narrative
Once again, I have prepared some graphs to show how important it is to keep in mind the difference between local sea level rise (SLR) and global SLR.
The same holds true for SLF.
Fig. 5 Global Temperature Pattern
For example, there is no global SLF, as generated by ice sheet gravity loss, but there is the mathematical concept of global SLR.
If you will take note of Fig. 1, the issue may become more clear.
On that graph, generated by Dredd Blog software modules, the actual history of sea level at Wilmington is depicted in terms of RLR sea level at tide gauge stations around the globe (see PSMSL).
The herky jerky line on the graph is the actual sea level history at that local tide gauge
Fig. 6 All Together
station, while the smoother lines are the actual patterns of global mean sea levels and global mean surface temperatures.
They are fused into one graph by the software which identifies and collects their patterns, then conforms those collected patterns into the graph space, so that the non-local patterns can be viewed realistically, along with the actual local SLR patterns of both the IPCC (2013) future expectations, as well as the Hansen (2015) expectations.
You can then easily see that Wilmington is above the global mean sea level (GMSL) as well as the pattern of global mean surface temperature (GMST), etc.
In Fig. 6 you can see how those patterns look when normalized with IPCC 5th Assessment (2013) and Hansen (2015) projections.
The local sea level is shown, along with both global mean sea level and global mean surface temperature as needed, to depict relevant historical and future relationship patterns.
IV. Conclusion
As fall and winter now comes to Greenland, spring and summer are coming to Antarctica.
The demise of the ice shelves and ice sheets will proceed.
Local sea levels will continue to rise, the scientists will continue to calculate the mathematical global mean sea level rise, warming at the poles will continue to increase at a rate much higher that at the middle portions of the globe.
15:29 when the ice shelf "Larsen A" collapsed the entire glacier's flow speed toward the sea increased ... 18:50 "Larsen B" ice shelf collapse caused the same thing ... the entire glacier's flow accelerated toward the sea ... 19:30 when the ice shelf goes away so does the restraint on the glacier, and they then move faster, 8 times faster, toward the sea 27:15 the East Antarctica Totten Glacier basin contains about as much ice as all of Western Antarctica, and it is destabilizing 30:30the condition of the ice shelf controls what happens to the ice sheet
A well known then, but probably forgotten now, song of the 1960's was Highway 61.
It was a song with lyrics that described, among other things, a seemingly mythical place.
A seemingly mythical place where strange financial goings on and warfare machinations could take place.
Those types of events could take place there even though such events were unlikely to take place elsewhere:
Oh God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son”
Abe says, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on”
God say, “No.” Abe say, “What?”
God say, “You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin’ you better run”
Well Abe says, “Where do you want this killin’ done?”
God says, “Out on Highway 61” ...
Now the rovin’ gambler he was very bored
He was tryin’ to create a next world war
He found a promoter who nearly fell off the floor
He said I never engaged in this kind of thing before
But yes I think it can be very easily done
We’ll just put some bleachers out in the sun
And have it on Highway 61
That place, Highway 61, has been the main thoroughfare running through the middle of Washington, D.C. during the Glory Daze, then continuing alongside the green river, which flows all the way to a place where the accounting of the Pentagon, Enron, and GE is done (which could not be done legally elsewhere except on that branch of Highway 61 at a place called Wall Street).
A recent photo shows The Spirit of Saint 1% travelling down Highway 61 to make another "free market" killing. Highway 61: the lyrics of this song are here:
I finally found an insidious bug and squished it, because it had been squishing my brain for several days.
I pointed out some of the exercises involved in this project in the last post of this series (The Evolution of Models - 16).
I had been doing a thing using global mean sea level (GMSL) as calculated by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).
They keep GMSL records going back to 1880.
Add to that the global mean surface temperature (GMST) as calculated by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS).
They keep GMST records going back to 1880.
Fig. 2
The task I was working on was to combine all that within a meaningful relation to the records of a single Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL) tide gauge station.
Meaning, displaying the GMSL, the GMST, and one local tide gauge station history in a single graph (e.g. Fig. 1) in terms of a pattern relation between each and every one them.
The difficulty is doing it with the high Hansen projection, as well as the low The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projection, in the same graph.
I did the low IPCC projection part of it (Fig. 1), but I am not yet satisfied with the outcome of the larger scale projection.
Fig. 3
The problem is that the IPCC and Hansen projection numbers are so far apart (e.g. ~15 ft. or more by 2100, compared to ~3 ft. by 2100).
It will take a bit longer, but it will eventually work out and be better than just one tide gauge station display by itself (e.g. Fig. 3).
BTW, the Hansen model (Fig. 2) is looking to be the one to watch IMO, because lately the months and years are breaking global heat records one after the other in a big way.
Something has to give.
My bet is that "the give" will be the collapse of ice shelves that are now holding back the ice streams of the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.
The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.
