PSMSL Update - 2

Fig. 1 1808 - 2015

In yesterday's post I expressed some concern about the decrease in the number of PSMSL tide gauge stations.

Today, I am presenting a graph of the history of the number of active PSMSL tide gauge stations per year (Fig. 1, Fig. 2).

The graph at Fig. 1 does not contain the number of stations for the year 2016, because hopefully only eleven (11) stations have reported their 2016 data as of "02 Jan 2017" (but the other 1,175 will do so soon).

The graph at Fig. 2 does contain the 2016 data (except that which may be late), which is alarming because the data is both monthly and annual data (thus some is either a year late, or no longer existent).

If eleven active stations is all that remains, or funding for tide gauge stations only allows end of year reporting any more, or anything short of what was a good thing for over 200 years, what shall we think?

Yesterday I wrote:

What the satellite records cannot do is help public officials and private people alike to know what exact sea level rise or fall has taken place at a specific location along the coast where they live and work.

Fig. 2 1808 - 2016

That will prove to be problematic as measures are taken to butress sea ports and other public infrastructure against rising tides.

The problem with not continuing tide gauge stations, but rather letting them be removed to rely on satellite global mean average values, is that those values are ineffective for telling engineers the history of sea level in an area they plan to do infrastructure work on (to protect an area from rising seas).

Unless satellites can focus on all the impacted areas in their different rates of rise and fall, the engineers will be at a disadvantage.

Perhaps the United Nations should help various countries to keep their tide gauge programs and facilities active.

(PSMSL Update). There may be some cause for concern, because certain government labs (think daddy warbucks ideology: Lockheed, Boeing, Bombs Away, Inc. etc.) are all into satellite technology because they have a commercial interest in it (The Warming Science Commentariat - 11).

Competent scientists are noticing slanted and/or misinformed papers about PSMSL that are slipping past peer review mechanisms:

"A recent paper by A. Parker and C.D. Ollier (Ocean & Coastal Management, 124, 1–9, 2016), concerned with the use of ‘proven’ sea-level data for coastal planning, contained a number of incorrect or misleading statements about sea-level data sets and measurement methods. In this commentary, we address aspects of sea-level records that could have been misunderstood by readers of that paper. While we agree with the main point made by the authors, that the best possible sea-level data are required by coastal planners, we suggest that planners should base their work on wider and better informed sources of sea-level information.
...
Overall, while we are appreciative of the importance of good sea-level data to coastal studies, and while we agree with the title of PO16 and recognise that the paper had the objective of encouraging the availability of even more good data, we cannot let that paper pass without pointing out the many errors in it."

(Journal of Coastal Research, by Williams, S.D.P.; Woodworth, P.L., and Hunter, J.R., 2016, emphasis added). This paper and the paper I criticized in "The Warming Science Commentariat - 11" may be part of the scientific-knowledge attacks currently underway in the U.S.eh?

Let's not conclude until I get some information from PSMSL.

I have emailed them today to find out what is up with this (UPDATE: Nothing is awry, just slow. Officials all around the world contribute to the database. Patience).

The previous post in this series is here.